What the Flesh Remembers
Sequencing: Anachronic
Cognitive Insights: Disabled
Primary Entities: Beshel Sarn | Feya | Ro’kaza
Wandering Entities: None detected
Verification Status: Confirmed
Beshel Sarn listened without interest, so intent was he on looking ahead. This was not his first time on the ramparts at dawnbreak, and he could not wait to witness it once more.
A bright light from the east illuminated the scene suddenly. The other sentry stopped talking. Deep in the sky, the Doomed Star peered from behind the event horizon, spilling the first breath of inscrutable light. The rays of amethyst swept across the expanse. The long night was lifting.
The first to spot it was the sentry who looked out from the narrow, slitted viewport of the tall watchtower.
“Lock it down!” The shout rang out from above, followed by a series of echoing pulses from all the amplifiers dotting the wall, one after another. A din of repeated commands filled the air, bouncing like echoes trapped inside a chamber. The world inside the walls contracted.
Beshel looked through his visor. Something akin to a smile appeared on his face when he finally noticed that thin moving line on the horizon, closing in. It shimmered, growing thicker and larger. It was no longer a line; it was a wave, rushing in, swallowing the world in front of it almost as fast as the light that illuminated its path.
“10,” the static-laced countdown began from the speakers.
“8.” Beshel was the last among the men standing on the ramparts to put down his scope and crouch behind the armored parapet.
“6.” The others cowered completely behind the protective barrier, pressing their heads against the cold metal, eyes clenched shut.
“3.” Beshel kept watching the converging wave for nearly as long as the countdown went on.
“2.” Only the sentinel shells, giant hulking mechs, stood tall atop the rampart, still proud. The rest held their breath.
With the last echo of the final number, a shockwave hit the wall, sending it into a violent tremble. Then came the heavy impact—like a giant’s fist smashing against the hard surface, the noise slamming through like a drumming tempest. It scraped along the entire arc like a bow on strings, resonating and tearing a long, sorrowful wail from the metal, as if from a dying beast.
As soon as the cacophony subsided, they rose from the floor and looked at the world outside the walls. It was a desolation, a land of empty. The mountains, hills, pathways, and outposts—everything that had stood there just moments ago—was now gone, as if it had never existed. A barren slate of land stretched out before them, over which columns of smoke advanced from the horizon, the same direction from which the wave had come.
Time drifted faster now; Beshel’s eyes stayed unblinking as he scanned the horizon. The light of the Doomed Star shone on the purple arc of the sky, and little by little, the columns drew in towards the wall.
The redoubt ordered the cannon to fire one charge—a celebratory shot, as had become tradition for welcoming a new dawn. A streak of red plasma cut through the sky. All the small creatures atop the wall drew deep breaths of air, perhaps to feel within themselves the last remnants of the in-between world before the new one fully formed.
He felt that emptiness again, the same as the last time he had watched the dawnbreak. Everything passes—men, stars, cycles—and there is no use clinging to these rocks, no use fighting it out on some island in midstream. The tired fingers open, the arms fall back, and you are still dragged into the river, cycle after cycle. It never stops.
Another shout from the watchtower shattered the silence, disturbing the ritual with a phrase never uttered at such an hour: “Life at the gates!”
A murmur of dread spread among the ranks. The sentries began climbing over the parapets to look out and to the left, where the mouth of the gate stood. Beshel looked too. Right at the threshold, he saw them—two disheveled bodies, ravaged and mutilated, castaways at the shore of Soulsmire Core, delivered by a resetstorm, a force that left nothing living in its wake.
What does this mean?” A question rose among the creatures standing, confused, on the ramparts. No answer. It had never happened before. The dawn brought only desolation and reformation; it had never returned a soul, let alone one still attached to a body.
Someone else was watching. A faint pulse jolted Beshel, vibrating across a familiar frequency channel only he could recognize, a transmission carried from realms far beyond these gates.
His reaction was instant and trained. Silently, he slid into the corner where the flight of metal stairs curved down from the rampart, hidden from all eyes. The message flashed across his display—terse and direct.
He was back on the watchwalk before anyone noticed his sudden disappearance, joining the line of outstretched heads looking over the parapet at the medevac drones, which readied their pneumatic cranes to lift the two fragile remnants of life into the air.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
