—When the Gate of Memory Reopens, Everything Is Revealed
The night was unusually deep.
Shawn returned to his room and sat quietly at his desk. His mind lingered on the final letter of that word. The air felt frozen by a spell; even his breath carried a sense of ritual.
OMMETA.
He whispered the word—so softly it barely touched the air.
As the third whisper of OMMETA left his lips, the Apad on the desk suddenly lit up.
The screen flared white, and then—an ancient interface assembled from strange symbols floated midair, dreamlike and surreal. It was the same totemic image he had once seen in the Meta Genesis Realm—V.
"Identity mapping initiated. Verification: 89% complete. Unlocking sequence Alpha-01 in progress."
The system voice burst in—fragmented, distorted, as if echoing across fractured timelines.
A tremor passed through Shawn's chest. He didn't breathe, didn't blink—just listened, as if a single motion might cause the moment to vanish.
This interface had been sealed away for years. Only the "Bound Individual" could reopen it—unlocked by a precisely spoken awakening keyword.
As the first beam of light crossed the screen, a three-dimensional memory ring began to rise, slowly unfolding like an invisible door before him.
Shawn closed his eyes.
From the depths of his mind, a voice began to echo:
"Memory never abandoned you. It lingered—a silent sentinel awaiting your call."
Suddenly, the world flickered.
An invisible vortex coiled around him. His consciousness was pulled into an endless current. Gravity vanished. Space and time collapsed.
When he opened his eyes again, the familiar study was gone—
He stood upon an endless, grayish-white realm. Beneath his feet stretched a land woven from cracks in the void. Overhead, the stars no longer formed constellations, but drifted apart like collapsing glyphs of ancient oracles.
No wind stirred here.
He knew this place.
It was the edge of the Rift—a transitional zone between the primitive and the modern.
A place he had never truly reached, yet had always carried deep within his soul.
And there, within the weightless silence, a figure emerged from the ambient light.
Her form was both defined and ethereal. She appeared like a reflection of himself—or perhaps a presence long-awaited in dreams.
Lucy — not an illusion, not a memory.
But real—undeniably real.
She stopped in front of him. Her gaze held the weight of forgotten epochs.
"You've finally returned."
Her voice was gentle but unwavering, as if she had known of his arrival for a thousand years.
"I... I've returned?"
Shawn's voice rasped, as though echoing from a distant corner of time.
"You forgot your name. You forgot the Rift. But you remembered OMMETA. That's the key."
She touched his forehead, and a soft vibration spread from his brain, unlocking a cascade of memories long buried.
Flashes surged through his mind:
An ancient interstellar library once known as the Tower of Meta-Knowledge;
A cataclysm spanning eras, shattering the transmission of wisdom into fragments;
And that moment—when among countless parallel selves, he was the only one capable of carrying the Return Code.
He said nothing, only looked into her eyes.
And in that instant—he saw himself.
The version of him from another dimension.
They were Soul Kin—
Two reflections of the same soul, shaped by different timelines and fates.
Not soulmates in the romantic sense, but multifaceted echoes of the self across spacetime.
Each awakening and shaping the other.
"You... are me?"
Shawn asked, slowly.
Lucy smiled gently.
I am your reflection who chose the path of guardianship.
And you are the me who entered the real world—
To become the Child of the Rift."
Shawn blinked, caught between confusion and disbelief. "Wait... what do you mean 'the me'? That doesn't even make sense."
She met his gaze with calm certainty.
"We set this plan into motion long ago—
A project called The Bridge of the Rift."
Shawn took a step back, his brows furrowing. "We? What plan? I don't remember any of this."
"I became the Guardian. You became the Walker," Lucy said softly, as if recounting a dream.
"You had to live a rewritten life—grow through forgetting, awaken through illusion."
Shawn let out a shaky breath, running a hand through his hair. "This... this sounds insane. Why would we do that?"
"Only by crossing your own fog," she said, her voice like a thread pulling through the dark,
"could the Bridge truly connect to the source of all worlds."
Shawn's mouth opened, but no words came. His eyes flicked to the floor, then back to her, searching for something solid in a sea of shifting truth.
Beneath him, the Rift now appeared as a deep, light-filled river—eternally still, yet faintly trembling.
And at that moment, he finally understood—
It was not Lucy who had been protecting him.
Nor was it he who had been searching for her.
It was—
Both of them, working together to build the Bridge of Consciousness that would link the ancient and the now.
Lucy stepped closer. In her palm, a radiant light began to spin—
Forming a glowing sigil composed of countless fragments.
The shape of memory.
The beginning of a mission.
"You must summon all the Core Fragments as soon as possible,"
she said, urgency tightening each word.
"Before they do.
Only then can the Rift Bridge be completed."
Shawn's shoulders tensed, as if unseen eyes had turned toward him from the dark.
"They? Who are they?"
he blurted out.
Before she could answer, a piercing metallic echo rang from the depths of the void—
Like a mechanical beast tearing through the edge of reality.
Lucy turned sharply.
For the first time, fear flashed across her eyes.
"No... it's the O.S.S again."
Then she looked back at him, steady but intense:
"Are you ready, Shawn?"
He nodded lightly.
The wind of the Rift had finally begun to stir.