White.
Blinding. Endless.
No floor beneath his feet. No sky above. Just light.Raw. Unfiltered. Burning through thought and skin alike.
He steps forward…
And the world bends.
Not breaks.Not crumbles.
Rewrites.
He blinks—Now he's standing in a classroom.
Old desk. Chalkboard. Dust hanging in the air like snow.
And at the front…Her.
But not the girl.
A woman now.
Older. Eyes tired. Wearing a teacher's smile.
She looks up from the board.
"Yurei," she says gently. "You're late."
He doesn't move.
The walls hum. Everything's too perfect. Too still.
This is a construct.
He knows it.
She knows he knows.
Still… she speaks.
"This is where it began. Before the loops. Before the mask. Before the Architect learned how to build cages out of memory."
She taps the board.
Words appear without chalk.
Project Origin: Class Zero – Shadow Integration Trials.
And beneath it… his name.
"Do you remember?" she asks.
He shakes his head.
"No."
"Good," she says. "Because you were never supposed to."
The door opens behind him.
A child walks in.
Small. Pale. Hollow eyes.
Yurei stares.
It's him.
At age seven.
The moment before it all started.
Before they took him. Before they carved the shadows into his spine.
The child doesn't speak.
Just walks up to the desk.
Sits down.
Waits.
The woman continues.
"This was the first cycle. The original test. We called it Eclipse Memory Theory. What happens when you overwrite a soul again… and again… and again?"
She looks at him.
"And how many times will it break before it stops coming back?"
He clenches his fists.
"You're one of them."
She nods.
"I was. I helped design your pain."
Then walks to the window.
Pulls back the curtain.
Outside—nothing.
Just a void. Empty.
Except…
For strings.
Thousands.
Glowing threads stretched from the child's chest to the darkness beyond.
Each string labeled.
System Alpha.Mask 003.Architect Seedline.Emotion Suppression.Subject Deletion (Failed).
"You were the prototype," she says. "The one that couldn't forget. No matter how hard we tried."
He breathes shallow.
The boy at the desk looks up.
Eyes meet.
And everything hits him.
The needle.
The voice.
The girl in the white dress—
"Break him gently."
He turns away.
Too late.
The strings snap.
All at once.
The boy screams—
But no sound comes out.
Only shadows.
Pure. Untamed.
They erupt across the room.
Devour the light.
Tear through the walls.
And the woman?
Still smiling.
"Good," she whispers. "You're remembering now."
She burns.
But doesn't fall.
And from her ashes—Another voice rises.
Not human.
Not machine.
[REDACTED FILE UNLOCKED][Welcome Back, Original Host.][All Systems Purged – Memory Core Restored.]
He stands in the dark.
Alone.
Except for the child.
The two versions of himself… staring at each other.
He kneels.
Reaches out.
The boy touches his hand—
And they merge.
Not physically.
Not mentally.
Existentially.
And for the first time—
Yurei feels complete.
[TRUE NAME RESTORED: ███████][Shadow Protocol: Transcendence Path Chosen][Ascension Countdown Initiated…]
The world begins to shake.
Because now?
He's not climbing anymore.
He's becoming the Tower.
To be continued…