Vanished Vigils
Chapter 26: Vanished Vigils
(Fragmented Memories–III)
She started showing me things after that.
Not world-saving nonsense. I knew enough of that to vomit it.
Other things.
Stupid things.
“Come here,” she said once, grabbing my wrist mid-march.
“We have monsters to kill,” I protested.
“They’ll wait,” she said. “This won’t.”
She dragged me down an alley I’d never cared about before. Past a collapsed awning. Over a fallen sign.
At the end of it, a single flower pushed through a crack in the pavement.
It looked like a weed.
“Congratulations,” I said. “You’ve discovered botany.”
She ignored me.
“Look properly,” she said.
The petals were a ridiculous shade of blue, bright under the broken sky. Tiny veins of white ran through them, like someone had painted lightning across silk.
“How is it alive here,” I asked.
“It blooms for an hour before every collapse,” she said. “Then it’s crushed. Then it blooms again. Over and over.”
“That’s depressing,” I said.
“It’s stubborn,” she said softly. “Like someone I know.”
There was that look again. The one like I hung her stars.
I didn’t know what to do with it, so I shoved my hands in my pockets and scowled at the flower instead.
It trembled in the wind and refused to fall over.
We came back to it in other loops.
Sometimes it was already crushed when we arrived. Sometimes it hadn’t bloomed yet.
Once, I picked it.
She hit me then.
Just a slap to the back of the head.
I deserved worse.
“Don’t interfere with things that are already doing their best,” she scolded.
“Pot calling kettle,” I muttered.
She smiled anyway.
• · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·•
She cooked once.
We’d holed up in a small house.
The kitchen was a mess. Broken crockery. Burnt pans. A rat the size of a cat that she shooed out with magic and a broom.
“Sit,” she ordered.
“I can’t taste anything anymore,” I said.
“Then eat for the memory,” she said.
The stew looked like brown sludge.
It smelled like salt and something vaguely herbal.
I took a bite out of habit.
My tongue didn’t register flavour, not really. Somewhere along the cycle my tastebuds had given up.
Still.
The warmth slid down my throat.
It sat in my stomach like a small, stubborn sun.
When I looked up, she was watching my face.
“Well?” she asked.
“Terrible,” I said automatically.
Her smile didn’t even flicker.
“You finished it last time,” she said. “You can do it again.”
I realised the bowl was already half-empty.
She’d been feeding me between resets.
That was a thought.
“I don’t remember,” I muttered.
“I do,” she said.
That refrain was starting to grate.
And comfort.
Both.
• · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·•
At some point, she gave me a name.
Something else.
Something soft.
She said it when she thought I was asleep.
Murmured it into my hair after we’d both collapsed on some rooftop, too exhausted to move.
She whispered it at the edge of my hearing when she thought the world was too loud for me to catch it.
I don’t remember the sound.
Now, when I try remember, all I get: ███
Back then, though… it fit.
Like it had always been there, waiting.
“Why that,” I asked once, half-drowsy.
She smiled, eyes glinting in the half-light.
“Because it’s yours,” she said.
“Not an answer,” I grumbled.
“Yes, it is,” she said.
She held my hand then.
Fingers laced between mine.
Her palms were rough. Scarred. Too warm.
I let her.
Not because I was in love.
Not then.
Because I was tired.
Because having someone else anchor you when the world kept erasing itself was… useful.
That’s all.
That’s what I told myself.
• · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·•
Love didn’t arrive with fireworks.
No bells.
No pop-ups.
No sudden revelation music.
It snuck in sideways.
In the way I started counting time by her.
Not by gates. Not by deaths.
By when she’d appear in the chair.
By how long it took before she started nagging me about sleep.
By how many loops had passed since she’d last laughed.
I noticed stupid things.
The way she winced every time my hand moved toward my own throat.
The way her jaw clenched when priests called me “sacred tool” to my face.
The way her shoulders dropped in relief every time I didn’t try to throw myself into the core.
Once, I found her crying.
Alone.
Just her in a corridor, back against the wall, knees drawn up.
Tears ran down her face in absolute silence.
I should have walked away.
Reset would clean it up.
Instead, my feet betrayed me.
I stopped.
“What are you doing,” I asked.
She startled. Scrubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“Praying,” she lied badly.
“To who,” I asked.
She laughed, wet and messy.
“Whoever’s left,” she said. “You, mostly.”
“I’m a terrible choice of god,” I said.
Her gaze lifted, met mine.
“For someone who hates himself so much,” she said, “you work very hard to keep strangers alive.”
“I’m stubborn,” I said.
“That, too,” she murmured.
Something in my chest twisted.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like I’m… worth anything,” I snapped.
She stood.
For a heartbeat, I thought she’d walk past me.
Instead, she stepped in.
Close.
Too close.
Her hand came up, hovered near my face, then dropped.
“I don’t know how to look at you any other way,” she said.
Her smile then—
I know it was sad.
I know it hurt.
The details are gone now. Blurred.████.
But the weight of it sits under my soul even here, in this different body, on this different world.
Back then, in that ugly corridor, I did something stupid.
I reached out and took her hand.
She froze.
“…why?” she whispered.
Because I realised I was less tired when she was there.
Because the idea of waking up without her suddenly seemed worse than dealing with her nagging.
Because, in that world where everything got erased, she was the only thing that remembered me.
None of that came out of my mouth.
“Because I want to,” I said instead.
It was clumsy.
She made a sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob.
“Then hold on,” she said. “Even if you forget why.”
“Promise me,” I said another day, lying on some rooftop that stank of ash.
The stars overhead weren’t stars. Just holes in the sky where light leaked through from somewhere
worse.
She lay beside me, head on my arm. Her hair tickled my cheek.
“Promise what,” she asked.
“If I forget,” I said, “you’ll find me.”
Her grip on my shirt tightened.
“Idiot,” she muttered.
“Is that a yes,” I pushed.
She sighed.
“Even if your soul is dragged through ten thousand worlds,” she said quietly, “I’ll find you.”
It sounded like an oath.
Binding.
I closed my eyes.
“Good,” I said.
I didn’t ask what it would cost her.
And I never saw her again.
[♪♪♪]
The bells rang.
The world folded.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
“…don’t…”
“…promise me…”
“…you’ll…”
“…please…”
In one cycle, I woke up sobbing over words I couldn’t remember.
She vanished.
Like she’d never been there.
They had nothing to do with this room. This world. This body.
They came from somewhere else.
From phrases I couldn’t grab. From a face I couldn’t remember. From a name that, when I reached for it, turned: ███
I clutched my head.
“Who,” I breathed.
The question fell flat.
Silence pressed in.
I went looking.
Through corridors.
Through cities.
Through continents.
Through cycles.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Every time the world reset, I searched earlier.
At the gate. At the fountain. On the rooftop. In the infirmary. In the alleys where the blue flower bloomed for its one pitiful hour.
She wasn’t there.
No robe. No ash hair. No sad eyes.
Priests didn’t mention her. The Veiled Man’s tantrums didn’t account for her.
The scripts didn’t have a space where she fit.
When I asked, people looked at me like I was finally cracking.
“Who?” they’d say.
As if the syllables I was chasing had never existed.
The world had always been ugly.
Now it was empty too.
The first time I jumped off the tower with no one trying to grab my ankle, the silence after the impact felt wrong.
Like the world itself was waiting for a line that never came.
See you in the morning.
But morning came without her.
[♪♪♪]
Reset.
No chair beside the bed.
No hand offering water.
No smile.
Just me.
Then, in one of those loops where I wasn’t quick enough to die first, I saw something else.
Not her.
Something… around her shape.
The crack in the pattern I’d ignored for too long.
The root under the rot.
The thing that laughed every time the bells rang.
I didn’t find her.
I found something else.
The one who was the root cause of the regression.
━━━━━━ʕ• · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·•ʔ━━━━━━
