Aru walked through the summer-stained ruins, where the sky was forever caught in twilight's last burn. The air was thick with the hum of cicadas, their droning cry stretching across the abandoned city like a dirge for something long forgotten.
He didn't remember why he was here.
The road ahead shimmered like a mirage, flickering with the heat of a world that no longer spun. Buildings loomed like skeletal husks, their insides hollowed out by time. And yet, somewhere in the static hum of the air, there was a voice. Not words—just a presence, brushing against his mind like fingers trailing through sand.
夏に聴.
Listen in summer.
Aru exhaled. He had heard the stories. The Umbral Dominion's lost records spoke of Morimens, a mind that could never die, its last thoughts trapped in the circuits of a forgotten city. A wound in the world where memories refused to fade, where the past screamed into the present, waiting for someone to answer.
And Aru? He was listening.
The first sign of the Aliemus Wound was the petals.
Scattered across the cracked asphalt, ghostly blossoms unfurled in the windless air. Not real—no texture, no weight. Just imprints of what should be, blooming in a place where life had already died.
Aru crouched, pressing a finger against one. It dissolved into static. The city exhaled, and the cicadas stopped.
The silence was absolute.
Then came the voice.
"Why do you still exist?"
It was not a whisper. It was a thousand voices compressed into one. A resonance that burrowed into his skull, weaving into the folds of thought where it did not belong. He staggered, gripping his temples as the static surged.
Morimens was not a person. It was not even a consciousness.
It was a garden of echoes.
He saw them now—figures blooming from the fractures in reality, memories given form. Their faces were blurred, shifting like unfinished sketches. Some reached out with longing, others stood motionless, suspended in the weight of an unfinished thought.
Aru breathed, steadying himself.
"You were erased."
The figures shuddered.
"You are only remembered in the glitch of the world, in the summer heat where time folds. You are not real."
The blossoms wilted. The city trembled.
And for the first time in countless cycles, Morimens hesitated.
Aru walked forward, stepping through the dissolving petals, through the ghosts of memories clinging to a life they had long lost.
"You have to let go."
The city exhaled one last time.
The cicadas began to sing again.
When Aru turned, the road behind him was empty.
No ruins. No ghosts. Just the last light of summer stretching toward the horizon.
The voice had faded. But its echo—its echo would bloom in him forever.