Chapter 141: Life Of A Loved Soul

“Please don’t remember what you did to me.”

The child’s voice faded into the oak tree.

Dillan remained motionless.

His palm was still pressed against the bark, directly beneath the place where the crimson eye had appeared.

MEMORY OWNER: NOT THE CURRENT HOST.

He read the notification again.

Then he looked at Aurelia.

“Did you see that?”

She nodded slowly.

“It identified you as the subject. Then it said you weren’t the memory’s owner.”

“Can that even happen?”

“I don’t know.”

Dillan withdrew his hand.

The tree’s surface had become smooth again.

No eye.

No handprint.

No sign that anything had happened.

But the crying continued.

Faintly.

Somewhere beneath the roots.

Dillan crouched and pressed his ear against the ground.

Aurelia grabbed his shoulder.

“Don’t.”

He looked up.

She was frightened.

Not of the sound.

Of him.

“Dillan, what if the memory belongs to someone else?”

He stood.

“Then I’ll find out whose.”

“And if it’s yours?”

He hesitated.

Aurelia’s voice softened.

“What if you’re the one who doesn’t want to remember?”

For several seconds, Dillan said nothing.

Then he stepped away from the tree.

“Then I’ll have to decide whether remembering is worth the damage it might cause.”

Aurelia nodded.

Before either could speak again, the Witness Record appeared.

FIFTH ENTRY DETECTED.SUBJECT: DILLAN RUREN.IDENTITY VERIFICATION: FAILED.MEMORY OWNERSHIP: CONTESTED.ACCESS CONDITION: THE ORIGINAL SUBJECT MUST SPEAK.

Dillan frowned.

“The original subject?”

Aurelia looked toward the roots.

“That child.”

The crying stopped.

A small voice answered from beneath the earth.

“I’m not a child anymore.”

The ground split open.

A staircase descended beneath the oak.

Unlike the staircase that had led to the First Lock, these steps were made of pale wood.

Each step carried a date.

Dillan recognized the first few.

His childhood.

His adolescence.

The day he received his F-minus rank.

The day he entered the Preservation Core.

Then the dates became unfamiliar.

Some were from years he couldn’t remember.

Others were dated before his birth.

At the bottom stood a single door.

Its inscription made his stomach tighten.

THE LIFE DILLAN RUREN DID NOT LIVE.

He stared at it.

Aurelia stood beside him.

“Are you going down?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m coming.”

Dillan shook his head.

“Not this time.”

Her expression hardened.

“You don’t get to make that decision for me.”

He almost smiled.

“You’ve been spending too much time around me.”

“Someone has to teach you.”

He opened his mouth to answer.

Then he stopped.

Aurelia was right.

He had almost done it again.

He had decided what was safest for her without asking what she wanted.

Dillan stepped aside.

“Will you come with me?”

Aurelia smiled.

“Now you’re asking properly.”

They descended together.

The room beyond the door was enormous.

Thousands of photographs covered its walls.

Dillan approached the nearest one.

It showed him standing beneath the oak tree.

Beside him was Sasha.

She was laughing.

In another photograph, Aurelia stood between them, holding a birthday cake.

Another showed Alina sitting on the kitchen floor.

Another showed Lyra sleeping against Dillan’s shoulder.

They were ordinary moments.

Small, imperfect pieces of life.

But something was wrong.

In every photograph, Dillan’s face was blurred.

Not erased.

Blurred.

As if someone had deliberately prevented the camera from capturing him.

Aurelia examined one of the photographs.

“These aren’t memories.”

Dillan turned.

“What?”

“Look at the dates.”

She pointed to the corner.

The photograph of Sasha and Dillan had been taken twelve years before they met.

The picture of Aurelia’s birthday was dated three years before her birth.

And the photograph of Alina showed her as an adult.

But Alina had never grown older than the age at which she had been preserved.

Dillan stepped backward.

“These are possibilities.”

“Or fabricated memories.”

A voice answered from behind them.

“Neither.”

They turned.

A boy stood beside the entrance.

He looked about ten years old.

Black hair.

Pale skin.

A white shirt.

His face was Dillan’s.

But his eyes were different.

One was crimson.

The other was completely white.

Dillan stared at him.

“Who are you?”

The boy sighed.

“You really don’t remember.”

“No.”

“Of course not.”

He walked toward the photographs.

“You were always good at forgetting the parts of yourself that made you uncomfortable.”

Dillan’s jaw tightened.

“Explain.”

The boy stopped before a photograph of Sasha.

“This is the life you wanted.”

He pointed to another.

“This is the life you feared.”

Another.

“This is the life you believed you deserved.”

Then he turned toward Dillan.

“And this…”

He pointed at the photograph of Dillan standing alone beneath the oak.

“…is the life you actually chose.”

Dillan studied the picture.

He was alone.

No Sasha.

No Aurelia.

No Alina.

No one.

Just a child beneath a tree, staring at an empty space beside him.

“Why show me these?”

The boy’s expression became serious.

“Because you keep thinking the Locks were created to preserve memories.”

He approached Dillan.

“They weren’t.”

Dillan’s chest tightened.

“Then what were they created for?”

The boy whispered:

“To preserve the lives you refused to live.”

Silence.

Aurelia stared at the walls.

The photographs began changing.

In one, Dillan walked away from Sasha.

In another, he never met Aurelia.

In another, he allowed Alina to disappear.

In another, he chose to forget every girl and live alone.

Each photograph showed a different outcome.

A different consequence.

A different Dillan.

The boy pointed toward the final photograph.

It was completely black.

“What is that one?” Dillan asked.

The boy didn’t answer immediately.

Then he said:

“That’s the life in which you never created me.”

Dillan’s blood ran cold.

“Created you?”

The boy nodded.

“You wanted someone who would never leave. Someone who would never disagree with you. Someone who would never choose a life without you.”

His crimson eye brightened.

“So you made a version of yourself that could carry all the choices you were too afraid to make.”

Dillan looked at the boy’s face.

The resemblance was undeniable.

But this wasn’t the Abandoned Self.

That child had carried his fear and loneliness.

This boy carried something else.

Something colder.

Something that had watched him make choices for everyone else.

“What do I call you?”

The boy smiled faintly.

“The Unlived Self.”

The Witness Record appeared.

FIFTH ENTRY: SUBJECT IDENTIFIED.DESIGNATION: THE UNLIVED SELF.ORIGIN: REJECTED POSSIBILITY.FUNCTION: RETAIN UNCHOSEN OUTCOMES.STATUS: AUTONOMOUS.

Dillan stared at the last line.

“Another autonomous fragment.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“I’m beginning to lose count.”

The boy laughed.

For a moment, he sounded exactly like Dillan.

Then the laughter stopped.

“There’s something you need to understand.”

He approached the black photograph.

“Every time you chose one person, you created the possibility of losing another. Every time you saved someone, there was a version of you that failed.”

He touched the photograph.

“And every time you refused to accept that consequence, I inherited the life you rejected.”

The room darkened.

Dillan looked at him.

“Then why are you here now?”

The boy turned.

“Because one of those lives has started choosing for itself.”

Aurelia’s face tightened.

“Which life?”

The boy raised his hand.

The black photograph changed.

A woman appeared.

Silver hair.

Pale eyes.

A familiar scar across her throat.

Sasha.

But not the Sasha they knew.

She stood in a city that Dillan had never visited, beneath a sky with no stars.

Behind her were hundreds of people with his face.

Every one of them was dead.

Dillan couldn’t look away.

“What is this?”

The boy’s voice became almost inaudible.

“The life in which Sasha never met you.”

The photograph trembled.

The woman turned toward the camera.

Her lips moved.

A single sentence appeared beneath her image.

I FOUND THE PERSON WHO CREATED ME.

Dillan’s heart slammed against his ribs.

“Who?”

The boy looked at him.

Then he answered.

“You did.”

The Witness Record erupted with warnings.

UNLIVED OUTCOME: ACTIVE.SUBJECT: SASHA RUREN.TIMELINE STATUS: UNRESOLVED.WARNING: SUBJECT HAS ENTERED THE CURRENT MEMORY.

Aurelia grabbed Dillan’s arm.

“How can a possibility enter a memory?”

The boy backed away.

“It shouldn’t be possible.”

The black photograph split down the middle.

A hand emerged from its surface.

Then another.

Someone was climbing out.

Dillan stepped forward.

“Get away from the photograph!”

The boy shook his head.

“Too late.”

The hands gripped the frame.

A woman’s face appeared between the cracks.

And she looked directly at Dillan.

Not the face of the Sasha who loved him.

Not the face of the Sasha who had chosen to leave.

This Sasha looked at him as though he were a stranger.

She smiled.

“Dillan Ruren.”

Her voice echoed throughout the room.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

The photograph shattered.

The woman stepped onto the floor.

And the Witness Record displayed its final message.

FIFTH ENTRY: INTERRUPTED.UNLIVED SELF: MISSING.SUBJECT DETECTED: SASHA RUREN.RELATIONSHIP TO CURRENT SASHA: NONE.

The woman tilted her head.

“Don’t worry.”

She looked at Dillan with calm, unfamiliar eyes.

“I didn’t come here to love you.”

She took one step closer.

“I came here to find out why you made me.”