Chapter 27: Echoes of a Forgotten Self
The door hissed open as Ren pressed the key into the void-etched socket.
Stone gears turned. Sealing magic unraveled.
And then—he remembered.
Not all at once. But a thread. A whisper.
"Your name was erased, Ren Kamizuki. But your truth was not."
The chamber beyond was dark. But the Codex Nullum pulsed in his hand, a steady glow like a heartbeat. Selvara stood behind him, silent, eyes half-shadowed by her silver bangs.
"Go," she said. "This room remembers you better than the world does."
Ren stepped forward.
A wave of vertigo struck him.
Memories—not his, yet undeniably his—flooded in.
A war-torn world. A sky cracked open by gods. A boy standing alone beneath a storm of divine fire, holding a weapon that bled silence.
"He who bore the Nullfang once... will bear it again."
Ren staggered back, breath caught.
The Codex flipped a page on its own.
System Alert: MEMORY SHARD UNSEALED.
➤ Name Fragment: Kamizuki (Confirmed)
➤ Ancestral Lineage: Voidborn Candidate (Level 1)
➤ Weapon Compatibility: Null-Class (UNLOCKED)
➤ Fragmented Title Acquired: "Remnant of the Rejected Throne"
Selvara caught him. "You saw it, didn't you?"
Ren looked up. "Who was I?"
She didn't answer. But her hand trembled slightly in his.
Meanwhile, at the Academy Council Hall…
House banners fluttered. Ardent red. Veylor gold. Solmere blue. Nullborn black.
The Faction Council had begun.
Auron sat smugly beneath the Veylor crest. Across from him, the House Nullborn rep—a woman in priestly gray—watched with unreadable eyes.
Lira watched from the Solmere balcony, her fingers clenched on the railing.
"Ren Kamizuki is no longer just a student," the Headmaster said grimly. "He has awakened a Void-Class resonance. The question is no longer 'if'... but what we do about it."
Arguments erupted.
"Seal him!"
"He's one of us—House Nullborn will claim him!"
"Void-Class power is a threat to the Pantheon itself!"
From the shadows, a masked observer took notes with a quill that shimmered like starlight.
Later…
Selvara stood on a tower balcony with Ren, staring out across the mist-lit academy.
"You were never meant to be ordinary," she whispered. "The gods made a mistake… and now they fear you'll remember."
Ren's fingers tightened around the Codex.
Let them fear.