[EN] Chapter 13: Thirst for Fragments

# Chapter 13: Thirst for Fragments

The white void was honest. Here, existence was measured by the density of memory, and will was the measure of one's structural integrity.

Zero focused on the minute vibrations generated by his own footsteps. Each time the data crystals beneath his feet crunched, he confirmed that he was still 'here.' But that certainty was precarious. Like the residuals he had encountered in Chapter 12, he knew that the moment his will buckled, he too would scatter like salt, absorbed into this achromatic landscape.

He faced the residuals once more.

They were everywhere. Some knelt, clawing at the empty air as if trying to grasp something invisible; others walked in endless circles, chanting meaningless words in a rhythmic, hollow drone. They were no longer sentient beings—merely husks, shells driven by a single, obsessive impulse.

Zero approached them. Curiosity and a desperate instinct for survival outweighed his fear.

"Who… who are you? Do you know where we are?"

The only response came from the nearest residual, its form severely distorted, blurring into a smudge of static. As it turned its head, a waterfall of glitched text cascaded down its face.

[…]mem…ory… insufficient… …my… name is… the noise… between 0 and 1[…]

Its voice was a cacophony, sounding like ten thousand shards of broken glass grinding against one another. Zero realized instinctively that communication here was not a matter of language, but of 'resonance.' Instead of struggling to recall a memory, he pushed outward the small spark nestled deep within him: the raw, primal will to survive.

As he concentrated, a faint ripple of blue light emanated from his fingertips. It was a signal—a declaration: *I am here, and I wish to remember.*

When the ripple touched the residual, a strange reaction occurred. The residual's blurred silhouette snapped into focus for a fleeting second, and a tiny sliver of light leaped from its core. It was a silver fragment, no larger than a flea.

Zero snatched the fragment reflexively.

In that instant, a sharp jolt pierced his brain, and a flood of alien imagery surged inward.

*The cold touch of metal. Someone’s tender laughter. The scent of freshly baked bread paired with the warmth of a tranquil afternoon sun.*

These were not Zero's memories. They were sensations of a place he had never visited, of people he had never known. But as the fragment dissolved into his consciousness, something miraculous happened. The blurriness at his fingertips vanished, replaced by sudden, jarring clarity. The texture of his skin, the tiny nick on his nail—it was as if a high-resolution render had been applied to his physical form, granting him a sudden, vivid sense of tangibility.

'Memory… creates form.'

Zero shuddered. In the Ghost Layer, memory was not mere information. It was physical mass, the only reliable building material in this collapsing world.

He began to move frantically among the residuals. Instead of speaking, he projected his will, harvesting the dregs of memory they clung to. Some residuals resisted, pushing him away in a desperate attempt to hold onto their remnants; others poured out their fragments willingly, as if shedding a heavy, unbearable burden.

With every fragment absorbed into his body, Zero's sense of self expanded in a grotesque, unnatural way.

*The sorrow of an unknown stranger, the flutter of a first love, the visceral terror of death on a battlefield, the piercing blue of an ocean seen in childhood.*

The problem was that none of it belonged to him. As the memories of others bled indiscriminately into his consciousness, Zero began to spiral into a profound identity crisis.

'Who am I? Have I ever seen the ocean? No, I was born in a city of metal. But this sadness… this suffocating sense of loss… is it mine, or does it belong to someone I’ve devoured?'

In a world without mirrors, he felt the contours of his own face. The tactile sensation of his skin was now so vivid it was nauseating, yet he had no idea what lay beneath that surface. He was draping himself in a 'pseudo-identity' sculpted from the lives of strangers.

He felt himself becoming a collage of memories. A crude doll stitched together from the shredded remnants of other people's existences. Yet, paradoxically, these fake memories were the only pillars supporting him in this white void.

After drifting for an eternity, a discordant light caught Zero's eye.

It was different from the dim fragments he had collected. On the horizon, where the white sky met the white earth, a powerful white light pulsed with rhythmic precision. It flickered like a massive heartbeat, or a desperate SOS signal sent from the edge of existence.

'The Memory Beacon.'

It was a relic of the Old World left behind in the Ghost Layer, and the only gateway to the next stratum. The light emanating from the beacon was more than illumination; it was drawing in scattered data from the surroundings, temporarily weaving a 'path' through the void.

Driven by instinct, Zero began to run toward the light.

As he sprinted, the countless pseudo-memories he had harvested swirled in a vortex within his mind. Thousands of voices whispered to him: *Go back. This is a garden of the dead. Seeking the truth brings only agony.*

But Zero surged forward, cutting through the noise. He understood now. Even if his current self was a counterfeit assembled from the pieces of others, the will to stand upon those lies and find the 'true me' was the only absolute truth he possessed.

As he drew closer to the beacon, the scenery began to shift. Faint after-images of a city overlapped with the pure white space: the skeletal frames of collapsed skyscrapers, shattered neon signs, and digital rivers flowing between the ruins.

It was a projection of memory—a cross-section of the Old World preserved by the beacon.

Gasping for air, Zero reached the center of the beacon. A massive, crystal-like apparatus hovered in the air, its interior glowing with the tangled threads of ten thousand memories.

The moment he tentatively reached out to touch it, the beacon's light swallowed him whole.

He felt his consciousness being torn apart by an intense gravitational force. But this time, he wasn't afraid. In that flash of agony, as his identity was dismantled and reconstructed, he heard it—faintly, but unmistakably—his own 'real' voice.

*…Deeper.*

It was the call of the next layer of the Oracle Shell.

Zero closed his eyes. The mask composed of other people's memories peeled away, revealing the hollow void beneath. But he no longer feared that emptiness.

Because it was empty, it could be filled with anything.
Because it had been erased, it could be rewritten.

Gathering his will into a single point, he dove into the core of the beacon. A white flash engulfed the world once more, and the entity known as Zero left the Ghost Layer, plummeting into a deeper, darker abyss—closer to the truth.

Behind him, the white desert slowly closed. But he was no longer alone. The memory fragments of the countless souls he had absorbed now acted as tiny lanterns in the dark, lighting the path ahead.

It was a chorus of tragic shards, but it was the only weapon he had.