At first, everything felt like a dream.
A beautiful dream—vast and luminous.
Astrid traveled through the universe as if she were part of it, moving between stellar currents without the slightest effort. Where chaos once existed, she brought order; where the void reigned, she planted the seed of life. She was the new protector of existence, the bearer of the brooch that sang with the voice of worlds.
But that was only a façade. As she journeyed on, the song began to change.
First came dissonant notes.Then whispers.
On Althrea, a planet covered in oceans of crystal, Astrid raised entire continents from the depths of the sea. Its inhabitants—translucent beings of shifting forms—welcomed her with songs of gratitude. They offered her gifts, monuments, devotion. She smiled, blessed their waters, and departed.
Yet that night, as she watched the waves from orbit, she heard the murmur of a language she did not know.
A word formed within the sound of the tides: "Do you remember?"
The whisper did not come from outside.
It came from within.
Astrid placed a hand over her chest. The brooch burned with a blue light. She closed her eyes. For a brief instant, she saw ruins—not of Althrea, but of another world, one covered in inverted towers and fire.
And beside those ruins, a face.
Her own face…
but different.
Every time Astrid used the brooch, she had visions that did not belong to her memories. Yet each one made that feeling of emptiness fade a little more—even as she felt that… she was remembering something she did not want to remember.
In the months that followed, she visited dozens of worlds: Kharion, where gravity meant nothing; Serai, where flowers sang the names of stars; Nindara, where day and night happened at the same time.
There she brought balance, restored order. But on every planet, something inside her mind fractured a little further.
When she slept, the dreams hunted her:
—Ruins.—Screams.—A hand reaching out in the darkness.—And always, a woman's voice repeating her name.
She would wake up gasping, not knowing where she was, unable to remember what was real.
Some mornings, while traveling through space, she would glimpse unfamiliar landscapes when she looked sideways at distant planets. Other times, she thought she saw people walking through walls—ghosts of the past that vanished when she blinked.
And in the reflection of glass, her face would change: sometimes older, sometimes younger, sometimes covered in blood.
She tried to ignore it.She tried to believe it was part of the process of becoming something greater—that perhaps the brooch was simply testing her.
But the brooch would not fall silent.
Every time she used it, its voice slipped into her mind—a metallic song filled with echoes. It showed her fragments of memories that were not hers: dimensional fractures opening, worlds merging into a single existence.
And always, at the end of those flashes, a figure with brown hair and violet eyes appeared: Elisa.
The name returned to her mind with the force of thunder.
"Elisa…"
She spoke it again and again, testing how it sounded on her lips. Every time she said it, she felt a stab in her heart, as though a hidden door within her were trying to open.
"Who the hell are you!? That girl Elisa, my reflection covered in blood—who are you!? I've never seen a girl like that, and I've never been through anything like this! So why the hell do I keep seeing something I don't even know!?"
Astrid shouted the words almost to herself, as if trying to force her mind to stop thinking about it.
On a planet called Solenne, the fracture reached its breaking point.
The world was dying. Its oceans were evaporating, its atmosphere dissolving, and its core roared like a beast about to explode. Millions cried out for help, and Astrid descended wrapped in golden light like a living comet.
She spread her arms.
Power flowed from the brooch in torrents of gold.
The tremors stopped.The seas filled once more.Mountains rebuilt themselves stone by stone.
The planet breathed again.
But in the midst of her miracle, an invisible crack opened in her mind.
The sky distorted.Sound vanished.
And for a moment, Solenne ceased to exist.
In its place appeared another world.
A world she knew.
A red sky.A shattered ground.Cities in ruins.
She saw bodies, heard screams, felt the heat of flames licking at her face.
It wasn't Solenne.
It was something older.Something lost.
A word escaped her lips before she even realized it.
A name that had been sleeping in the deepest part of her soul.
"Vellhara…"
The vision shattered. The air returned. The planet seemed stable again, the mountains intact. Astrid fell to her knees, gasping, clutching her head with both hands.
Tears burst forth without permission.
That name…That world…
She knew what it was.
It was hers.
For hours she wandered aimlessly through the newly restored valleys. The plants greeted her, the skies shone peacefully. Everything seemed calm, and yet she could not stop trembling.
She remembered scattered fragments: a crystal tower, an explosion of light, the voice of a woman telling her, "Save me." The voice of her own mother.
She remembered standing before a mirror that did not reflect her face—but another's.
She remembered dying.
"No…" she whispered, shaking her head. "It's not real… it can't be real!!"
The brooch on her chest pulsed once, as if responding.
And then the ground began to tremble.
The sky cracked open.The sunlight vanished.
And in the blink of an eye, Solenne collapsed again.
Mountains split apart, oceans evaporated, and the atmosphere burned like a curtain of fire. The catastrophe was instant, as though the planet had never been saved at all.
Astrid stood alone in the center of a field of ashes.
Everything she had restored had become ruins.
She didn't remember doing anything.She didn't remember releasing her power.
But something inside her knew the truth: it had been her.
She fell to her knees.
Tears burned her skin as the wind dragged dust and fire around her. The landscape she saw—the desolation, the destruction—felt painfully familiar. It was a landscape she was finally remembering.
She raised her gaze toward the blackened sky, toward the void opening above her head.
And she spoke only one sentence:
"My world was Vellhara…"
Her voice broke—half scream, half sob. The echo of her confession traveled across the dead planet, resonating among the crumbling remains of mountains. And the question that had been eating away at her for weeks—who she was—was finally answered by her own voice.
"I am Astrid… Astrid Evershine."
For the first time since the universe had been reset, absolute silence returned.
And within that silence, a new crack opened inside Astrid—not in her mind, but in her soul.
Because she had remembered not only who she was…
but what she had lost.