Under Evernight's guidance, the Express crew carefully traversed that sea of shattered memories.
Countless flickering fragments drifted past them like cold meteors, each carrying a severed piece of the past.
In these disjointed images, they witnessed time and again that solitary figure—Phaethon, or rather, the one gradually becoming "Asterion"—silently burying one companion after another.
No solemn ceremonies, no excessive words, only the repeated act of covering familiar faces with earth, until graves piled up like cold coordinates marking "loss" hammered into the boundless wasteland.
One by one, generation by generation... the living faces that once surrounded him gradually withered like autumn leaves.
Eventually, by his side, aside from the three who had accompanied him from the beginning—Phainon, Cyrene, and one other—no trace of any other acquaintance could be found.
Then, the image froze, dimmed, like embers burned out.
Asterion embarked on the next Eternal Recurrence once more.
---
The first recurrence ended, the second recurrence began.
---
The second recurrence ended, the third recurrence began.
---
"Wait? Hold on?! Over four hundred times already... just how many recurrences has Phaethon... spent in Amphoreus?!"
Stelle seemed to gradually understand. She looked at a memory fragment—in the scene, a young Cipher was clinging to Phaethon's leg like a little pendant, acting spoiled, while Phaethon, in a tone mixed with helplessness and some unfathomable exhaustion, gently patted the little girl's head and addressed her as "Cipher 496."
This form of address with clear numerical designations finally made the crew clearly realize the chilling truth—that Asterion had likely experienced not just a few resets, or even dozens, but repetitions numbering in the hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands!
However, her question vanished like a stone dropped into the sea. No one present—Welt, Dan Heng, even the knowledgeable Herta and Screwllum—could provide a definite answer.
They could only, like observers swept along by the current of fate, with increasingly heavy hearts, watch time and again as that white figure, between the ruins of civilization and its rebirth, once more embarked on that seemingly endless path of recurrences.
---
After crossing who knows how many silhouettes of recurrences, when the Express crew stopped again, faced with the scene before them, everyone's brows furrowed tightly.
"These places covered in fragments and blankness... are increasing." Welt's voice was low and grave, full of ominous premonition.
He looked around, seeing the threads of memory like severe gangrene, large stretches of blankness intertwined with incoherent fragments, forming a chaotic and desolate landscape.
"Before, these 'anomalies' only appeared occasionally at the end of each recurrence, as a mark of termination. But now... they have spread like a plague, covering most of individual recurrences."
Memory itself was becoming riddled with holes.
He turned his inquiring gaze to Evernight, who had consistently guided them through these memory anomaly zones, a trace of barely perceptible urgency in his tone:
"Miss Evernight, with your experience, do you know what this situation is? Why has memory decayed to such an extent?"
"It's memory..."
However, it wasn't Evernight who answered Welt.
A familiar yet unfamiliar voice, carrying a slight tremor, came from beside Stelle.
It was Mem, who had been quietly floating all along.
Its small, pink figure also seemed to tremble slightly, its voice somewhat unsteady as it replied:
"It's memory... because... the only thing that can affect one memory... is another memory."
These words sent a chill through everyone's hearts.
"It's right," Evernight glanced at the little pink squirrel-like creature, a complex light flickering in those red pupils as she took over.
"Before, I couldn't be entirely certain, but witnessing the decay process across so many recurrences, I have to infer... these places that now appear as blankness may have originally contained other memories."
She paused, as if weighing her words, finally speaking the unsettling conclusion:
"It's just... they are not here anymore."
Evernight's words were light, yet like a boulder dropped into a deep pool, they stirred ripples of unease spreading through everyone's hearts.
"Not here anymore?" Stelle instinctively turned to The Herta in the group, hoping for a more rational explanation.
Unfortunately... The Herta merely shook her head gravely. On her face, usually marked by pride and an air of knowing everything, there now also appeared a trace of worry.
Even she, faced with this strange phenomenon occurring in the deepest layers of consciousness and memory, lacking sufficient information to support a conclusion, could not give a definite answer.
Although the Express crew couldn't yet fully piece together all the reasons those memories had become fragmented and filled with large blank stretches...
In truth, the root of this phenomenon was easy to understand, if you were willing to imagine that ultimate burden—
Consider: when a person's consciousness suddenly receives a massive amount of memory completely not their own...
Would they still... have even a shred of spare energy left to actively remember, like a normal person, the small details of "their own" life unfolding around them?
For that bearer, these passively flooding memories belonging to "others"—whether willing or not—had long since merged and blurred over the long years, becoming part of what they recognized as "their" memory.
The boundary between the true "self" and the vast "other" had long blurred, perhaps even nearing collapse.
And when, for some reason, they ultimately lost that passively carried vast memory containing all the details of "others"...
What would remain, besides the pitifully few memories that were originally "their own"?
Nothing but... a blankness that could no longer find any color...
---
Continuing along Asterion's long memories, the Express crew had fallen into a speechless silence.
Words seemed so pale and powerless at this moment. Any emotion or commentary, faced with this weight that transcended the scale of time, became insignificant noise.
Aglaea 362587
Tribbie 7785236
Mydei 9636958
...
In a few memory fragments with edges already blurred and broken, they glimpsed these cold, piercing appellations.
These suffixes in the millions, like the cruelest epitaphs, and their implications... needed no explanation.