Chapter 16: Memory Drift
The sky was the color of static.
Gray clouds pulsed with streaks of violet lightning, and the wind carried with it the smell of scorched circuits and ozone. As Kai, Ashen, and Lina crested a jagged dune on the outskirts of the Furnace Expanse, they stared down into a shallow basin where something enormous had crashed long ago.
A derelict skyship.
Half-buried in the sand, the vessel's design was unmistakably Pre-Collapse. Its hull shimmered with reactive metals, covered in runes that flickered with dormant power. The nose of the ship was torn open like a can, and out of it spilled fractured cargo crates, data canisters, and—oddly—flowers. Purple ones. Still blooming.
Ashen narrowed her eyes. "Memory bloom. This ship crashed inside a drift field."
Kai blinked. "A what?"
"An unstable pocket where broken timelines leak into reality. The kind of place where time... forgets the rules."
Lina peered through her goggles. "It looks calm now."
"That's the problem," Ashen muttered. "It always starts calm."
They descended slowly, weapons at the ready. As they neared the wreck, Kai's Fragment pulsed. He paused, placing a hand on the hull.
Warm.
The metal shouldn't have retained heat. Not after decades. Not after being exposed to Furnace storms.
Then he heard something. A whisper.
Not in his ears. In his mind.
"...Kai?"
He spun, heart lurching.
The voice—it had been his mother's.
Impossible.
Ashen noticed his expression. "You're hearing things, aren't you?"
Kai nodded slowly. "My mother's voice. Just now."
Ashen cursed under her breath. "This place is deeper in the drift than I thought. We're walking into memories—not our own, not entirely—but some twisted echo made by the Fragment's influence. Be careful what you believe."
They reached the loading bay, where broken drones lay in piles. The walls were covered in vines of memory bloom, petals shifting color in sync with their heartbeat.
Lina stepped close to one of the flowers. It whispered her name.
She jumped back. "Nope. Nope. Hate this."
Kai moved toward the central console, brushing aside the petals. The terminal pulsed as if waking from a long dream.
"It's still functional," he said. "Can we access the manifest?"
Ashen slid in beside him. Her fingers danced over the surface, rerouting energy.
The ship's AI flickered to life.
"This is vessel Cradle Dawn, designation [REDACTED]. You are trespassing in restricted memory space. Do you wish to overwrite the active drift?"
Kai stared at the display. "Overwrite?"
Ashen shook her head. "Don't. If we override the drift, it'll collapse the echo. We need it stable to trace the signal."
"Signal?" Lina asked.
Ashen zoomed in on a blinking point on the map. "There's a Fragment signal coming from the lower deck. Very weak. But definitely real. Not an illusion."
Kai nodded. "Let's move."
They passed through winding corridors, each flickering with impossible images.
A boy ran past them—ghostly. Laughing. Then vanished.
In another room, soldiers stood frozen mid-battle, locked in a moment Kai couldn't place. One turned his head toward them.
"Run," the echo said.
They did.
---
The lower deck was colder.
Frost had begun to form over the panels. That made no sense—the desert was scorching outside.
Ashen touched her Fragment. "The temperature is fake. Psychological projection. The Fragment's protecting itself."
They reached a door marked CORE VAULT. Inside, the room was empty—save for a pedestal and a crystal pulsing faintly with blue light.
Kai stepped forward. His Fragment burned.
This one... this one was calling to him.
Not in words.
In memory.
He reached out.
And the world went white.
---
He stood in a different place.
It was still the ship, but it was whole now. Lights bright. Crew moving.
He saw himself—no older than ten—running through the halls. Chasing after a woman.
His mother.
But she turned around, and it wasn't her face. It was the Warden's.
Kai stumbled back. The image fractured.
Then another flash.
A black sky. A throne of stars. Himself—older, crueler—sitting on it.
"Power," his future self said, "is a choice."
Kai roared and severed the connection.
Back in reality, he gasped and fell to one knee.
Ashen caught him.
"It's always worse when it speaks to you," she whispered.
Kai nodded, sweat trailing down his face.
Still, the Fragment hovered now, unguarded.
He reached out again—slowly this time.
The crystal responded.
A thread of energy flowed into his core.
He felt it—not just power, but clarity.
A technique formed in his mind:
Drift Step.
A movement technique that bent causality. Let him move between what would have happened and what didn't.
It was risky. But it was perfect.
"Let's get out of here," he said.
The moment they stepped outside the vault, the ship began to collapse.
Drift fields destabilizing.
The sky above them cracked slightly—light bleeding through the edges of the world.
They sprinted out just as the wreck imploded behind them, the flowers screaming in silence.
Ashen looked back. "That ship was caught in someone's dying dream."
Kai didn't respond.
Because deep in his chest, the new Fragment whispered.
"You are not alone, Kai Ardent. You are becoming."