Chapter 51: Memories l
The room was large.
Not by Novaria’s standards, not decorated with the imported marble and crystal chandeliers that noble estates back there considered baseline. The materials here were different, the wood darker, the fabric woven in patterns that didn’t exist anywhere on Novaria’s continent, the furniture built with the particular care of craftspeople who had been perfecting their work for generations without outside influence.
But it was fitted for someone of status.
Her status specifically.
Yuki set Leon down on the bed with the same careful deliberateness she’d carried him with since the courtyard. Straightened the blanket over him. Stood there for a moment looking at his face.
Then she pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down.
And watched him sleep.
...
White.
Everything was white.
Formless and boundless and absolutely without feature in any direction Leon looked.
He looked anyway.
Where am I.
"Oh. You’re awake."
He turned toward the voice.
A boy. Sixteen maybe, not older. Black hair, relaxed posture, amethyst eyes that looked down at Leon with an expression that sat somewhere between amusement and recognition. Like he’d been waiting here for a while and wasn’t surprised Leon had shown up.
"My name’s Leon," the boy said. "And this." He gestured at the endless white around them. "Is your mindscape."
Leon looked at him.
"Leon."
"Yep."
"My name is also Leon."
The boy’s mouth curved. "No. My name is Leon." He tilted his head slightly. "You’re Leonis."
A pause.
"Oh right." Something in the boy’s expression shifted, like a memory surfacing. "Silford."
He laughed.
Actually laughed, easy and unguarded, like something about the whole situation genuinely got him.
Leon looked at this person who had just told him his own name, who was standing in what was apparently his mind, who seemed to know things about him that he hadn’t shared with anyone.
He had absolutely no idea who this was.
But the boy clearly knew exactly who Leon was.
Which meant one of them had information the other didn’t.
Leon crossed his arms.
"Who are you," he said.
"You’re burning through ki," the boy said, hands in his pockets, completely casual about it. "I won’t bore you with the mechanics. The point is your life is in danger."
He smiled.
"Original me."
Leon stared at him.
Original.
He turned the word over. Looked at it from different angles. It didn’t get clearer from any of them.
The boy’s smile dropped.
He turned his head slightly and frowned at empty space beside him.
"Oi. Crimson." His voice went flat. "Didn’t you say he’d have recovered his memories by now?"
He was talking to nobody.
Then the nobody responded.
A figure materialized beside him, similar build, similar age, but wrong in the specific details. Blood red hair. Crimson eyes so deep they looked like something that had been burning for a long time.
He appeared with the energy of someone who had been listening from just outside the conversation and had been waiting to be addressed.
"Well," the red haired boy said, tilting his head slightly, "technically speaking, yes." He frowned, genuinely working through it. "He should have recovered his memories just from making contact with his fragments."
A pause.
"Technically."
The black haired boy stared at him.
"Technically," he repeated.
"The operative word being technically, yes."
Leon looked between the two of them.
"Someone," he said, "needs to explain what’s happening. Now."
Crimson took a step forward.
The other Leon did the same, both of them closing the distance until they were standing directly in front of him, hands extended.
Leon looked at the hands.
Then took them.
They pulled him upright, and the white space shifted around them, not changing exactly, just becoming somehow more present, more real, the way a room feels different when you’re standing in it versus looking at it from the doorway.
"Seems like we’ll be going on a long journey," the black haired boy said.
"Long is an understatement," Crimson said, glancing sideways at him.
They both turned to Leon.
Crimson spoke first, his crimson eyes settling on Leon with a weight that didn’t match how casually he was standing.
"While you may have forgotten," he said. "Your soul remembers. Doesn’t it."
Leon said nothing.
"So say it," Crimson continued. "Say her name."
Something moved in Leon’s chest.
Not a thought exactly. Older than thought. The kind of thing that lives somewhere below memory, below conscious access, in whatever part of a person persists when everything else has been stripped away.
He’d been forgetting something.
He’d always been forgetting something.
He could feel the shape of it now, pressing against the inside of his ribs, urgent and familiar and just out of reach.
What was it. What was it.
The other Leon stepped closer.
"Remember," he said quietly. Just that. "Remember her name."
The shape sharpened.
And then it hit him.
Like a door opening onto somewhere bright.
He gasped.
Looked up.
"Mira?"
...
**Date: 31/08/2009**
**Planet: Earth**
**Location: Somewhere in the Asian continent**
---
That night, something crossed the sky.
Not a shooting star. Not a satellite burning up on reentry. Something that moved with too much purpose for either of those things, a streak of blue cutting clean through the upper atmosphere and descending fast, impacting somewhere in the quiet outskirts with enough force to leave a crater in the earth.
In the center of it, wrapped in cloth that had no business existing on this planet, was a baby.
Newborn. By the looks of it, it couldn’t have been a day old.
The hair was white, startlingly white, before it began to shift, darkening slowly strand by strand as the mana that had carried it here dissipated into an atmosphere that had none. The eyes, briefly, glowed sapphire. Then that too faded, settling into a deep amethyst that blinked once at the night sky above before going dark with sleep.
The crater sat quiet.
Nobody saw it.
Almost nobody.
An old man with grey hair and the particular unhurried walk of someone in their sixties who had stopped being in a rush for anything stood at the edge of it, looking down with an expression that moved through surprise, confusion, and something softer before settling.
