The silence that followed the first judgment did not feel victorious.
It felt unnatural.
Too clean.
Too absolute.
Only moments earlier, the Void of Fallen Universe had been filled with the presence of countless hostile subordinates—an army vast enough to darken even that endless dead realm. Now there was nothing. No bodies. No shattered armor. No blood. No remains. Not even ash. The place looked untouched, as if those enemies had never been there to begin with.
That was what made it unsettling.
Luka stood frozen for several breaths, his weapon still half-raised, staring into the empty dark with a look that shifted between disbelief and quiet fear.
"…I don't like that," he said at last.
Arna slowly lowered her mirrors. Even they seemed hesitant, drifting around her in smaller circles than before, as if her spatial constructs themselves were trying to stay cautious around Vicky.
"You erased them too completely," she murmured.
Aerito, who usually recovered from tension faster than anyone else, was still staring at Vicky with a strange expression. It was not fear exactly. It was something more layered than that—shock, respect, relief, and the painful familiarity of seeing an old legend begin to move again.
"Master," he said softly, "if that truly was a low-level law…"
He did not finish.
He did not need to.
Vicky looked at his own hand.
His palm was steady, but his thoughts were not.
When the Rule of Code had spoken through him, he had not felt rage. He had not felt power in the usual sense either. It was worse—or perhaps greater—than that. He had felt certainty. Cold, flawless, merciless certainty. For one terrifying instant, those hundred thousand enemies had not looked like enemies or lives or threats. They had looked like violations. Like errors on a page that needed correction. Nothing more.
That feeling lingered.
And the fact that it lingered disturbed him more than the judgment itself.
Inside him, somewhere deep in the architecture of his soul, the Rule of Code remained awake.
Silent.
Watching.
Calculating.
The glowing Mark of Judgment had already faded from his forehead, but Vicky could still feel the afterimage of it—as if some invisible seal had been pressed into his mind rather than his skin.
Then something shifted.
A faint pulse moved through his chest.
He flinched.
At first it felt like heat. Then pressure. Then a sudden sharp tug inside his skull, as if a hidden door somewhere in the back of his mind had unlatched by itself.
Vicky's breathing slowed.
His gaze unfocused.
Arna noticed immediately.
"Master?"
He did not answer.
Another pulse struck him—stronger this time.
The void around the group blurred slightly. The platform beneath his feet seemed distant, unreal. Golden lines of code flickered across the edge of his vision, then dissolved into black.
Luka took one step forward. "Hey. You okay?"
Vicky's lips parted, but no words came out.
Inside his mind, something had begun to open.
Not completely.
Just a crack.
Yet even that crack was enough.
The darkness within him split—
—and memory flooded in.
The Void was different there.
Not the ruined dead expanse they stood in now, but a deeper and older emptiness. A primordial silence without ruin because ruin required something to exist first. This was not the aftermath of destruction. It was the untouched place before creation had gathered courage. A boundless, starless abyss where direction meant nothing and time moved only when some greater will gave it permission.
Through that impossible emptiness, Vicky walked alone.
Not the Vicky of now—worn, uncertain, piecing together fragments of a life stolen from him—but another self. Taller in presence if not in form. Calm in a way that bent the void around him. He wore no crown, no divine armor, no absurd display of authority. And yet the darkness itself made way for him as though recognizing something fundamental.
Each step he took left behind fleeting lines of radiant code that dissolved moments later.
There was no fear in him.
Only purpose.
Memory-Vicky moved through the endless void as if searching for something he already knew existed.
Then, far ahead, a faint light appeared.
It was so small that in any normal realm it would have been meaningless. But in that absolute emptiness, it drew the eye instantly. A pale glow. Fragile. Alone.
He approached it slowly.
What he found was an egg.
It floated in the void without support, cradled by strands of soft silver energy. Its shell was enormous, nearly as tall as his chest, and unlike anything born of ordinary life. Dark scales shimmered across its surface like black crystal, but between those scales ran lines of molten gold, pulsing gently as though a heartbeat lived inside the shell. The egg radiated warmth—not just heat, but a feeling. Something ancient, watchful, unfinished.
Memory-Vicky stopped in front of it.
For the first time in the vision, he looked surprised.
"A living thing?" he murmured.
His voice traveled strangely in that formless expanse, not through air, but through intent.
The egg pulsed once.
Then again.
A crack appeared.
Vicky, standing in the present, felt the sensation of that moment as if it were happening to him now—the quiet surprise, the odd tenderness, the immediate alertness of realizing that something impossible had been left alone in the dark.
The crack widened.
Then the shell split.
A small head pushed through the opening.
Not a hatchling in the weak, helpless sense. Even newborn, it carried presence. Its scales were a deep silver-black, reflective like polished obsidian under moonlight. Thin horns curled back from its brow like unfinished crescents, and its eyes—
Its eyes were bright gold.
Clear.
Curious.
Ancient in shape and newborn in emotion.
The dragonlet blinked at him.
Then sneezed out a small burst of silver flame that vanished almost immediately into the void.
Memory-Vicky stared at it for a moment.
The hatchling stared back.
Then, clumsily, with broken pieces of shell still hanging from one wing, it crawled forward and pressed its head against his leg as though the choice had already been made.
Present-Vicky felt something tighten painfully in his chest.
The vision shifted.
Not abruptly, but in flowing sequences, like pages turning themselves.
He saw himself carrying the dragon through the void, wrapped in a cloak of dark light to keep its fragile new body warm. He saw himself feeding it glowing fragments of condensed energy gathered from dead stars and broken realms. He saw himself standing patiently while the hatchling stumbled around his feet, trying to flare its tiny wings and failing, then trying again, stubborn and angry at the idea of weakness.
Days passed.
Then more than days.
In memory there was no fixed calendar, but growth made the passage clear.
The hatchling became larger, stronger. Its limbs lengthened. Its scales hardened into elegant plates edged with silver fire. Its wings broadened into vast metallic arcs, each vein glowing faintly like lines of engraved law. And always, always, it stayed near him.
The void did not feel empty when they traveled together.
The dragon followed Memory-Vicky everywhere with the shameless loyalty of a child who had chosen its entire world in a single instant.
Another scene emerged.
The dragon—larger now, almost able to carry a mountain in its claws—was trying to shape its breath into a controlled stream rather than wild bursts. They stood upon a broken fragment of a dead realm drifting through the dark. Jagged stone floated around them, and rivers of shattered starlight poured below like upside-down waterfalls.
"Again," Memory-Vicky said.
The dragon huffed in annoyance, smoke curling from its nostrils. "I did it right."
"You did it loudly," Memory-Vicky answered.
The dragon narrowed its glowing eyes. "Power should be loud."
"Only when you are trying to impress someone."
"I am trying to impress you."
That earned the faintest hint of a smile from him.
The dragon reared back, drew in a breath, and released a narrow beam of silver-black flame. This time it did not explode wildly. It cut cleanly through three floating masses of stone, then curved at the end under sheer force of will before dissolving.
Memory-Vicky nodded once. "Better."
The dragon immediately lifted its head higher. "Then say it properly."
"What?"
"That I am amazing."
"You are improving."
"That is not the same thing."
"You will survive without praise."
"No," the dragon declared with total seriousness. "I require it."
The present Vicky, watching from within the vision, almost smiled despite himself.
The scenes kept coming.
He saw the dragon learning to fold space with its wings. He saw it circling Memory-Vicky while he explained laws of balance older than stars. He saw it sleeping coiled around him in the silence between collapsing realities. He saw it become beautiful and terrifying all at once—a true dragon of primordial bloodline, vast beyond reason, with scales like moving night and golden eyes that could outshine suns.
And then he heard it.
"Father."
The word struck with more force than battle.
The memory sharpened around it.
They stood atop a silent cliff of black crystal overlooking a field of unborn constellations. The dragon—now colossal, regal, his presence enough to make dimensions hesitate—lowered its head beside Memory-Vicky.
"Father," the dragon said again, quieter this time.
Memory-Vicky looked at him. "You've been calling me that more often."
The dragon's expression, despite all its ancient power, turned strangely simple. Almost shy.
"You found me before I had a name."
Memory-Vicky said nothing.
The dragon continued, "You fed me. Trained me. Protected me. Taught me how not to become only a beast."
Its great wings shifted, sending waves through the void below.
"You gave me purpose before I understood the word. If that is not a father, then the word means nothing."
For a few seconds, Memory-Vicky simply looked at him.
Then he reached out and placed a hand against the dragon's armored snout.
"You choose your own meaning," he said.
The dragon's eyes softened.
"Then I choose that one."
The vision moved faster after that.
Vicky saw the name spoken into being.
Soverek.
It fit the dragon instantly, as if the void itself approved.
He saw Soverek growing even greater—his wings spanning continents of broken sky, his flame turning from raw destruction into disciplined annihilation, his roar strong enough to shake the roots of dimensional walls. And through all of it, the bond remained unchanged.
Soverek never stopped calling him Father.
Not once.
Then the memory changed.
The warmth disappeared.
The next vision arrived like a wound tearing open.
A battlefield.
So vast it defied scale.
Billions stood there.
Not soldiers in any mortal sense, but powerhouses—beings forged from divine cores, primordial entities with collapsing halos, war kings crowned in devoured suns, abyssal creatures carrying laws of extinction in their bones. Endless ranks of impossible life, all gathered under one purpose.
To kill.
The sky above them was broken into layers, each one reflecting a different reality. Lightning moved upward. Fractures in space spilled oceans of dead light. Entire armies stood on suspended planes of shattered causality, their weapons humming with enough force to erase lesser worlds.
And at the center of it—
Vicky.
The older him.
Memory-Vicky stood alone upon a plateau of ruined white stone stained with the residue of fallen gods. There was no fear on his face. No panic. Only a terrible calm.
At his side, larger and more magnificent than ever before, stood Soverek.
The dragon's scales burned with silver-black brilliance. Ancient runes moved beneath them like currents under ice. Every breath from his jaws released heat that bent the battlefield. His golden eyes were fixed on the advancing hordes.
The armies began to move.
The entire battlefield thundered.
Billions of enemies surged forward.
The memory shook with the scale of it.
Present-Vicky felt the pressure of that charge as though all those ancient killers were rushing toward him now, through time, through memory, through the thin barrier between what was and what had been hidden.
Soverek stepped in front of Memory-Vicky.
The dragon's massive wings spread wide enough to darken broken suns.
"Father," he said.
Even amid the roar of the battlefield, his voice was clear.
"Leave."
Memory-Vicky did not move.
Soverek turned his head just enough to look back at him. There was no fear in that gaze—only fierce devotion.
"I cannot defeat all of them," he admitted.
The honesty of it hurt more than bravado would have.
"But I can hold them."
Memory-Vicky's expression remained unreadable. "Soverek—"
"No."
For once the dragon interrupted him.
Flames leaked from between his teeth as he stared at the impossible army ahead.
"If you stay, they will throw everything at you at once."
A line of enemy formations ignited in the distance as Soverek's aura flared.
"If you leave now, they will still have to go through me."
The battlefield trembled harder.
Soverek lowered his body slightly, claws digging into fractured stone.
"I may not be able to win," he said, each word carrying more weight than steel, "but to save you…"
His wings opened wider.
Silver-black fire poured across the ground.
"I will gladly give my life."
Then he said it again.
One last time before the vision broke.
"Go, Father."
The present Vicky lurched.
His eyes snapped open.
The platform in the Void of Fallen Universe returned around him in a rush—Arna's mirrors, Luka's tense stance, Aerito's watchful face, the dim drifting lines of code, the dead silence left behind by erased enemies.
He staggered once.
Arna caught his arm immediately. "Master!"
Luka moved closer. "What happened?"
But Vicky barely heard them.
His heart was pounding in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
The memory clung to him with brutal clarity—the egg, the hatchling, the training, the quiet word Father, the battlefield, the last stand.
"…A dragon," he murmured.
Aerito's expression sharpened. "What?"
Vicky pulled slightly away from Arna, not out of rejection, but because he needed air despite standing in a place where air barely counted.
"I saw…" He pressed a hand to his forehead. "I saw a memory."
The Rule of Code stirred within him.
Then it spoke.
"Memory Synchronization Detected."
Its voice echoed inside his mind with the same cold precision as before, but now Vicky could sense something else in it—access, filtration, arrangement. As if it were sorting through sealed chambers inside him that had only just begun to crack.
Vicky's eyes narrowed. "Was that memory mine?"
"Partially."
The answer came at once.
"The vision contained your memory and the memory imprint of a subordinate linked to your origin."
Luka frowned. "Can someone translate that into normal language?"
Aerito, however, had gone very still.
Vicky ignored the others for the moment and focused inward. "Say it clearly."
The Rule obeyed.
"The dragon you saw was Soverek."
At the name, something pulsed again in Vicky's chest.
"Soverek is one of your subordinates."
Arna stared. "A subordinate?"
Luka looked offended on the dragon's behalf. "That sounds way too small for a dragon calling him Father."
Aerito glanced at Luka but said nothing.
Vicky's jaw tightened. "Why did I see his memories?"
"Because after integrating me," the Rule of Code answered, "you gained limited access to connected memory paths. The memory you just witnessed is a recovered thread from your sealed past."
Vicky's gaze darkened. "How much did I recover?"
A pause.
Then:
"Less than ten percent of the memory accessible through my current synchronization."
Luka let out a disbelieving breath. "That was less than ten percent?"
Arna looked troubled. "Then the full truth…"
Aerito finished quietly, "...must be enormous."
Vicky kept his eyes forward. "And Soverek?"
The Rule responded instantly.
"Your next destination is tied to him."
Something in those words made Aerito's expression tighten.
Vicky noticed. "You knew?"
Aerito did not answer directly. "I suspected."
The Rule continued, indifferent to tension.
"Your next required action: rescue Soverek."
Silence.
Even Luka, who always found something to say, had none for a moment.
Vicky spoke first. "Rescue him from where?"
"Universe 157."
The number hit strangely.
Not a world name. Not a realm title.
A designation.
A prison entry.
Vicky frowned. "What happened to him?"
The Rule of Code answered with merciless simplicity.
"He was imprisoned to suppress his power."
The temperature of the scene seemed to drop.
Arna's mirrors halted for a fraction of a second before rotating again.
"Imprisoned… because he was too strong?"
"Affirmative."
Luka's face darkened. "Who imprisoned him?"
"Data incomplete."
Vicky's expression hardened. "Then how do you know all this?"
For the first time since the judgment, the Rule's answer carried the faintest trace of something almost like superiority—not emotion, but absolute confidence in function.
"Because I can read the structured pathways of your memory."
"After my integration, your sealed cognition became partially accessible."
"The memory you received is only a fraction. To recover more, you must absorb additional fragments."
Aerito looked toward Vicky. "That part makes sense."
Vicky shot him a glance. "Only that part?"
Aerito exhaled through his nose, half-amused, half-weary. "Master, with you, nothing is ever simple."
The Rule continued.
"Your second fragment is connected to Soverek."
That sentence landed harder than the rest.
Vicky's gaze sharpened. "Connected how?"
"Unknown in full."
"Confirmed in direction."
"Soverek possesses knowledge of your next fragment."
Arna stepped closer. "So finding the dragon is not just about saving an old subordinate."
Luka caught on quickly. "It's also how we get to the next fragment."
Aerito nodded once, grim now. "Which means someone powerful had a reason to lock him away before he could speak."
Vicky fell silent.
The image of Soverek standing before an impossible army returned to him with brutal force. That final line. I will gladly give my life.
The instinct that rose in Vicky then was immediate, irrational, and undeniable.
Not duty.
Not strategy.
Not fragment-hunting.
It was something much older and simpler.
He had to reach him.
He had to.
Arna studied Vicky's face and seemed to understand enough not to interrupt. Luka, unusually, stayed quiet too.
Only Aerito spoke, and even he did so carefully.
"If Soverek truly is in Universe 157, then that place won't be normal."
Vicky looked at him. "Why?"
Aerito gave a humorless smile. "Anything numbered like that instead of named usually belongs to one of the classified structures."
"Meaning?" Luka asked.
"Meaning it is either hidden, sealed, erased from common records…" Aerito's smile vanished, "…or used as a prison no one is supposed to return from."
Luka groaned. "Great. Another cheerful destination."
Arna folded her arms. "Do you know where Universe 157 is?"
Aerito hesitated.
"Not exactly. But I know what kind of routes might lead toward numbered universes."
Vicky's tone sharpened. "Then say everything."
Before Aerito could answer, the Rule of Code spoke again.
"Further information unavailable until additional synchronization."
Luka threw up his hands. "You know, for a cosmic law thing, you're annoyingly dramatic."
No one laughed.
Vicky stared into the dark ahead. "Universe 157…"
He repeated it like testing the shape of an enemy's name.
Then, after a long pause, he asked the question that had been forming since the Rule first spoke the number.
"What exactly is a universe?"
The others turned toward him.
Not because the question was foolish.
Because of how sincere it sounded.
For Vicky, this was not philosophy. It was a crack in identity. A sign that the scale of what he had forgotten was far larger than even they had been treating it.
Aerito answered first, though slowly.
"A universe is… a complete system of existence."
He searched for words Vicky could use rather than words meant
To be continued...