The Lower World rarely welcomed strangers. Its air was too still, its silence too ancient. And in the village nestled between two forgotten mountains, visitors were often either spirits lost on the way to the After, or monsters wearing human skin.
But this one?
This one didn't belong to either.
He came barefoot.
Cloaked in layered robes stitched with constellations not found in any known sky.
No scent. No heartbeat. No shadow.
The moment he stepped into the village, the air thickened like syrup, and those who met his gaze forgot his face the instant they looked away.
But the old ones remembered.
Their eyes widened.
Some dropped to their knees in fear.
Others fled to their temples to burn incense and whisper names that hadn't been spoken in thousands of years.
Because they recognized something—
Not who he was.
But what he carried.
The scent of the Forgotten Realm.
And only one being had ever returned from that place.
Inside the quiet home by the hills, the former Demon King paused mid-step.
His head turned slightly. Not from surprise. From recognition.
He felt it.
The shape in the world had shifted.
Not an attack.
Not a celestial decree.
But something... older.
He opened the door before the knock landed.
The man stood there.
Barefoot.
Calm.
Impossible.
He smiled politely, as if they were neighbors meeting for tea.
"You've built yourself quite a pleasant life," the stranger said.
"I know who you are," the demon replied.
"I would hope so."
Silence lingered between them like a drawn blade.
Then—
"Why are you here?" he asked.
The visitor's smile faded.
"To remind you of what's coming."
The two sat beneath the tree behind the house. The children were off training, and his wife watched from the window, hand resting near the drawer that held a blade forged from his very bones.
The visitor noticed.
"She doesn't trust me."
"She trusts her instincts."
"She's right to."
He said nothing.
The visitor picked a fallen leaf from the ground, held it up to the light, and watched as it turned to dust between his fingers.
"There were supposed to be Twelve Truths," he said.
The former Demon King narrowed his eyes. "And?"
"Two have awakened," the stranger said, glancing toward the village horizon. "Guilt and Rage. They've chosen their vessels. Your children."
A pause.
"And they won't be the only ones."
He already knew that, but hearing it spoken aloud made something in his chest twist.
"Why now?" he asked.
The visitor smiled faintly.
"Because you were never supposed to fall asleep. You were meant to devour the sins of this world until nothing remained. But instead, you chose peace."
"Are you saying peace was a mistake?"
"I'm saying peace gave the other forces time to grow teeth."
Far to the north, in a valley sealed for centuries, a seal pulsed once.
Then twice.
Then shattered.
A blind woman awoke from her sleep and opened eyes that hadn't worked in generations.
Around her, time began to bleed.
She smiled.
"Another truth wakes."
Back beneath the tree, the visitor placed something on the ground.
A stone.
Smooth, round, and utterly featureless.
Until it pulsed.
Once. Twice.
And then a symbol carved itself into its surface.
The mark of Memory.
"The next truth," the visitor said.
"Who's the vessel?" the demon asked.
"Not who. Where."
He frowned. "A place?"
"A buried city. Swallowed by the Lower World. Its ruins house the remnants of the concept."
He looked up, face unreadable. "Then why bring this to me?"
"Because the seal has weakened. And you're the only one who can keep it from breaking."
"What happens if it breaks?"
The visitor's expression changed—something sharp flashing beneath the calm.
"Then the past remembers itself. And when Memory awakens fully, it will rebuild the sins you tried to erase."
Inside the house, his wife tensed.
Her eyes met the daughter's.
The girl was staring toward the tree, face pale.
"Do you feel it?" the mother asked.
The girl nodded.
"It's like someone just remembered every war that ever happened," she whispered. "All at once."
Elsewhere in the house, the boy dropped his training blade.
Fire crackled around his feet, unbidden.
He didn't even know why.
But his soul was reacting to something.
To a return.
And deep inside him, the flame of Rage whispered:
"The Third approaches."
Back beneath the tree, the demon stared at the memory stone.
It pulsed again.
Steady.
Unstoppable.
He reached out, and the moment his fingers brushed the surface, his mind split.
He saw it all:
A city carved from ivory, drowned beneath black sand.
People frozen in time, screaming in silence.
Scribes with mouths sewn shut, scratching truths into endless scrolls.
And a tower at the center.
In its heart, a mirror.
Not Aethrin.
Older.
Wilder.
Reflecting not what is, but what was meant to be.
He pulled back, breath ragged.
"You brought this here to warn me?"
The visitor stood, robes swirling.
"No. I brought it here because the others will come looking for it. And when they do, they'll come here."
The demon's gaze darkened.
"They'll come for my family."
"Yes."
He rose to his feet, expression shifting into something ancient.
"Then I'll remind them why I was feared."
The visitor paused before leaving.
"Do you still dream?" he asked softly.
The demon hesitated. "Sometimes."
"What do you dream of?"
He looked toward the hills, where his children played in the distance.
"Peace," he said.
The visitor smiled.
"Then let's hope you can keep it."
He turned, and with a step, vanished into nothingness.
Only the stone remained.
And the rising tremor of a third truth—
Memory.
============================================================================
The stone had been placed on the table for less than an hour, and already the air inside the house had changed.
The children noticed it first.
The boy, who had begun to master control over the seething Rage within him, found his flames flickering even when his heart was calm. His sister, whose Guilt had become a quiet shadow in her steps, kept hearing whispers when she walked near the stone—old voices, recounting moments she'd never lived.
Their mother touched the stone only once.
It sent her reeling.
A memory not hers—someone else's pain, someone else's death—surged through her like lightning. She didn't speak for a long while after. Just stood at the window, arms folded tight, watching the wind shift the grass outside as if something underneath was breathing.
That night, no one slept.
Except for the demon.
Because he'd made his decision.
At first light, he stood in the center of their courtyard, sword across his back—not the elegant blade he used when sparring with his children, but the ancient one. The one that hadn't been drawn since the day he shattered the Fifth Heaven.
The one that fed on memory.
The boy and girl stepped outside at the same time, sensing something different.
"Are we leaving?" the boy asked.
Their father nodded. "We're heading east. To the edge of the Lower World."
"What's there?" the girl asked.
He turned to her.
"Something that should have stayed forgotten."
Their journey began beneath the fractured skies, where the sun broke through only in thin rays, like guilty confessions from the heavens.
They didn't take horses. The shadows moved faster.
Each of them had a shadow assigned to guard them, though the children barely noticed. The guardians were invisible to most. Silent. Perfect.
But the boy could feel his.
It watched his back like a brother. And once, when he stumbled on a ridge, it caught him before his foot touched the ground.
"You don't have to catch me," he muttered.
The shadow didn't reply. But somehow, he understood:
"I do. It's what I was made for."
Three days into the journey, they reached the Nameless Gorge.
It stretched like a scar across the world, hundreds of meters deep, bottomless to any who lacked the eyes to see beneath illusions. There were no maps. No paths. Just emptiness and echoes.
But the demon king stepped forward and placed the memory stone on the edge.
It pulsed once—and then the gorge shifted.
A bridge unfolded across the air, built from forgotten names and half-remembered sins.
Every step they took across it pressed their minds with flashes of other people's memories.
A child crying in a burning home.
A knight kneeling beside a poisoned king.
A girl burying her own heart in a jar before going to war.
The children said nothing. But their father knew—it was already beginning.
The Third Truth was waking.
By the sixth day, the city emerged from beneath the dunes.
Not from excavation.
But from remembrance.
As they approached the sand-blasted basin, towers rose in silence. Walls rebuilt themselves from glass and bone. A gate swung open to a wind that smelled of ink and rot.
"What is this place?" the boy asked.
His father didn't answer.
He couldn't.
He was already remembering things he didn't want to.
The girl stepped forward, eyes distant.
"I've been here before," she whispered.
"You haven't," her mother said gently.
But the girl shook her head.
"No. Not me. But… a part of me."
She stepped inside.
The city was not dead.
It was dreaming.
And now, with them inside, it began to wake.
The streets rearranged behind them. Buildings wept blood from their shutters. Statues turned to track their movements. The further they walked, the more the air shimmered with echoes—dozens, hundreds, thousands of them.
Memories.
Not just personal ones.
Collective guilt. Forgotten crimes. Regrets too large for any one person to bear.
At the center of the city, they found the Tower of Recollection.
It loomed higher than the clouds, its spire broken at the top.
The demon stared up at it, eyes narrowing.
"That's where the truth sleeps."
The boy stepped forward.
"How do we wake it?"
"We don't," the father said, drawing his blade for the first time in centuries. "We stop it from waking."
But it was too late.
The tower began to tremble.
High in the Upper World, at the edge of the Celestial Frontier, a crystal trembled in the hands of a seer.
"The Third Truth rises," she whispered.
Around her, twelve elders stirred from meditation.
"We must warn the Hero."
"The Hero is dead."
"Then we must prepare for a world without one."
Back in the tower, the walls cracked.
The demon turned to his children.
"You need to go. Now."
"I'm not leaving you," the boy said, eyes flashing with fire.
His father looked down at him. "This isn't your fight yet. There are truths in this place that will burn you from the inside."
The girl clutched his sleeve. "But you'll burn too."
He looked between them—his children. The ones he had sworn to keep away from this world's horrors.
Then—
"If I fall, your shadows will take you home."
"No," the boy said, stepping closer. "If you fall, we fight."
Their mother joined them.
"And if you fight, you don't fight alone."
He looked around at his family.
Then at the awakening city.
And he sighed.
"So be it."
As the final bell inside the Tower of Recollection tolled, the past cracked open.
The ground split.
And from its heart rose a being made of mirrors, cloaked in script, its face ever-shifting.
The embodiment of Memory.
It spoke with a thousand voices:
"Who dares deny what was?"
The demon raised his sword.
"Someone who remembers enough to regret."