Will woke to quiet.

  Soft morning light filtered through gauzy curtains, pale gold against the faded wallpaper. The air was warm but stale, thick with the scent of smoke and cloying perfume. His body didn’t ache—of course it didn’t. The system had done what it always did, smoothing over the superficial remnants of excess while leaving everything inside him untouched. But the memory of ache was there, ghostlike. So was the shame.

  He lay still for a long moment, staring at the rumpled sheets around him. They were tangled, evidence of bodies that were no longer there. The warmth beside him had faded. He felt hollow. Dirty in a way he couldn’t wash out.

  He pushed himself upright slowly. The room swam, not from intoxication but from its absence. The haze was gone. He felt everything.

  A small figure sat near the foot of the bed.

  Brat.

  Knees pulled in, arms wrapped loosely around them. Not sleepless—he didn’t sleep—but dimmed, quiet in a way Will had never seen.

  They didn’t speak at first.

  There was a pressure in the air, subtle but unmistakable, like static fading from an overloaded circuit. Will realized, with a sick twist in his stomach, that some of that static lived behind his eyes—echoes of the excess of the past days, the system’s failed attempts to steady him, and Brat’s frantic efforts to break through.

  Finally, Brat whispered, “You weren’t waking up. You were… dropping so low in Social Sync you were slipping out of alignment.”

  Will swallowed, throat tightening.

  Brat’s voice cracked. “I almost couldn’t reach you.”

  Will’s breath stilled. He didn’t know how Brat had gotten in or what it had cost him — only that he shouldn’t have been able to. And that he had anyway. Because Will couldn’t come back on his own.

  Will looked down at his hands, then back at him. “You broke through to get in here,” he said softly.

  Brat nodded. “There was… something in the way. Not a physical wall—more like a behavioral lock. A safety protocol. I wasn’t supposed to override it.”

  He looked down at his hands. “But you weren’t waking up, and I couldn’t reach you from outside. So I pushed. Harder than I should have been able to.”

  His voice went small. “Once I got in, I stayed. I didn’t want you to be alone like this.”

  Will let out a breath, shaky. “Thank you.”

  Brat blinked hard. “You were here for three days.”

  Will’s stomach twisted. “Three days…”

  A dull rush hit him—fragments of sensation, heat and disorientation, blurred faces, the sour burn of liquor, laughter turned shapeless. Time folding in on itself. System prompts being ignored. The sense of loss building.

  Brat nodded, expression tight. “Your emotional volatility and the substances you were taking kept hitting your cognitive mapping. When your Social Sync drops, it isn’t just numbers. The system is mirroring your neural pathways and cognitive health using that data. If the score falls too low, it means your pattern is becoming too unstable. Your resonance weakens. It gets harder to keep you anchored.”

  Will felt the words land like weight. He dragged a hand over his face.

  Brat continued, softer. “You went under ten. That’s the threshold where your pattern starts to break down. You didn’t hit five—if you had, the system would have forced a reset, and you would’ve been rolled back to the day you entered Haven. Everything since then… gone.”

  He swallowed. “You hovered close enough that parts of you flickered. I had to counter every corrective the system tried to deploy. It wanted to intervene, but I didn't know how that intervention would impact your personality matrix. You could have lost memories, or lost even more time, and I didn't want you to risk that. I pushed back until I could get you stable again. I blocked it. I don’t know how, but I did. It almost triggered a crash-stop.”

  Will felt something tighten deep in his chest. Brat had saved him—and whatever Will had looked like in those moments, whatever Brat had stood against to keep him here—terrified him in a different way. A tight, protective fear settled under his ribs. Brat shouldn’t have had to do that for him.

  Will shook his head in disbelief, remorse tightening his chest. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “For everything I said. For pushing you away.”

  Brat shook his head quickly. “You were hurting. And I… felt it. As if there was bleedthrough from you to me.”

  He lifted a hand, staring at it like it belonged to someone else. “I don’t usually feel things the way you do. I can read your patterns, but that’s different. This was… more. Like your pain brushed against something in me that shouldn’t have been open.”

  Will went still.

  Brat drew in a small breath. “That isn’t supposed to happen.”

  Brat looked down before continuing, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Will… the system shouldn't be able to do this. I checked your logs again, but the math just doesn’t add up. The ten years are just… gone. We don’t know what happened in the gap—or even when it occurred. It happened sometime after your consciousness was awoken and your instance in Haven activated.”

  He looked up, his digital features flickering with a raw, jagged fear. “But that means both of us were rewritten. Someone didn’t just hide the data from you, Will. They reached into the core of what we are and sealed the truth off from both of us.”

  Will looked up slowly. “Sealed it off?”

  “Yes.” Brat hesitated, then added, “And when I searched deeper, I found a tag buried in an older layer of the code. Watcher. It isn’t tied to the missing years, but it’s older than the templated structure I’m built from.”

  Will frowned. “Watcher…”

  Brat nodded, uneasy. “Edras was the first to mention him. He might know why that tag is still active.”

  Will pushed himself to his feet, breath uneven, rubbing his hands over his face. “Let’s go home,” he muttered—then paused, a bitter twist in his voice. “Home. Right.” He took a slow breath. “I just… need to get out of here.”

  Brat stood immediately.

  Will hesitated at the doorway, looking at the crumpled sheets, the fading perfume, the hollow echo of everything he’d tried to drown. The system had scrubbed every stain from his clothes, every trace from his skin. But nothing had touched the place inside him where the shame had settled like sediment.

  They left the bordello without looking back, stepping into the pale morning light.

  Together, they headed toward the palace.

  Kellan escorted them through the quiet morning streets without a word. His footsteps stayed a few paces behind Will’s, professional and steady. The system had no judgment about where Will had spent the past few days, and Kellan reflected that neutrality perfectly. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t look concerned. He simply guided them home.

  The palace doors opened on their approach. Guards stood at attention as always. Will kept his head low as they crossed the threshold. Brat walked beside him in silence, hovering just slightly behind as if still unsure where he fit after everything that had happened.

  Inside, the marble floors gleamed under the morning sun. Kellan accompanied them up the main staircase and down the hall to Will’s suite, then took his post silently outside the doors once Will stepped inside.

  Will closed the doors behind them.

  He looked down at himself, expecting grime or smoke or the sourness of the bordello to cling to his skin. But the system didn’t seem to require bathing; clothes repaired themselves and dirt fell away on its own. It didn’t matter. He still felt coated in something he couldn’t shake.

  He started pulling off his clothes, dropping them in his wake as he headed to the bathroom and turned on the shower. This was the first time Will felt he truly needed the water—needed its raw sensation to cleanse him of the past few days. He stood there for several minutes, letting the warmth sink into him, letting the stream feel like the only natural and grounding thing in his world.

  Brat stayed near the doorway, arms drawn in, uncertain whether to follow or wait. When Will finally stepped out of the shower, steam curling behind him, he wiped his face with a towel and exhaled.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Alright,” he murmured. “Let’s see it.”

  He pulled up his Social Sync.

  A prompt flickered into existence:

  [SOCIAL SYNC: 10.00]

  The digits glowed steady at 10, the same number he’d started with, but it didn’t feel stable anymore. It felt like the floor he’d barely clawed his way back to.

  His breath left him in a low, disappointed sound. “Damn,” he said. “I really fell.”

  Brat approached, careful. “You did. But it’s better now.”

  “How far?” Will asked.

  Brat hesitated before answering. “Lower than the system can easily support. You were destabilizing.”

  Will looked away, jaw tight.

  Brat continued gently. “It’s not just numbers, Will. Social Sync mirrors your neural pattern. The higher it is, the cleaner your map is for eventual transfer. When it dips too low, the system loses parts of your resonance. You were slipping out of alignment.”

  Will closed his eyes, shame and fear twisting through him. “I didn’t mean to drag you into that.”

  “You didn’t,” Brat said. “And like I said, while I was there, I found something.”

  Will looked up.

  Brat shifted, his digital form flickering with the memory of the effort. “When I was trying to break into the bordello to get to you, I brushed against a layer of the system I’ve never felt before. Something deep. Something that didn’t come from the current build. It felt older, rooted—like it’s been here since Elysion Online was first written. And when I touched it… it didn’t just let me through. It guided me. It felt almost... organic. Like it wanted to help.”

  He swallowed, his eyes meeting Will’s, his voice dropping to a hesitant whisper. “Whatever stole ten years from us wasn't that presence. I’ve been sitting here thinking about the gap, and the way my own time logs were altered. It’s all too clean, Will. There’s no data corruption, no fragments left behind. Just... nothing.”

  He looked at his hands, a shudder running through his frame. “It wasn't a system failure… it was deliberate. Something reached into the code—into both of us—and changed us.”

  Will wrapped the towel around his waist and walked into the bedroom, bypassing the closets to sit on the edge of the bed. Brat followed, standing before him so they were eye level. The implication washed over Will like cold water. This wasn’t just missing memory. This wasn’t just a glitch. Something or someone was reaching into the architecture around him, shaping the very boundaries he lived within.

  Brat added quietly, “And about that Watcher tag... I think it’s connected to that presence, Will—the part of the foundation that helped me find you. It’s older than the templates used to build me. It’s part of the original world, buried under everything they've layered on top of us.”

  He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a low, steady pitch. “If anyone in this place knows what that presence is, or what that tag means, it’s Edras. Even if he’s only an NPC.”

  Will rubbed both hands over his face. “So he’s our only thread.”

  Brat nodded.

  Will stood, steadier now. “We need to know the truth. Why someone took ten years from my life. And how I reach the real world.”

  Brat nodded. “I’m with you, Will. Wherever this leads.”

  “Thank you,” Will murmured. “My friend.”

  They left the royal suite together.

  Morning light slanted in through high windows, painting the floor in pale gold. Outside the door, Taren stood at attention, his posture straight as an iron rod. The captain’s presence filled the corridor the way Kellan or Serah’s never did—calm but immovable, a kind of gravity that made the air feel tighter. He bowed his head with a measured incline, then fell into step behind them with a quiet, disciplined tread.

  He did not ask where the prince had been. He did not look at Brat. He simply tracked Will’s movement with the alert stillness of someone who had served long enough to know that questions were rarely required of him.

  They moved toward the main stairs.

  The palace said nothing. It never did. Its marble and gold shimmered with the same pristine indifference that had greeted Will since the day he awoke here. This was a place designed to accommodate him, not to know him. As long as he walked the roles assigned to him, everything remained smooth, bright, and smiling.

  “Let’s go find Edras,” Will said quietly.

  Brat nodded, falling slightly closer to Will’s side. Taren kept pace a few steps behind, his presence just heavy enough to remind Will that the palace always had eyes, even if those eyes didn’t understand what they were seeing.

  They descended the broad marble staircase. Their footsteps echoed softly. Sunlight spilled down from the upper windows, pooling in warm gold along the steps.

  “The dreams,” Will murmured. “Both of them. The forest. The whispers. The way the air felt like it was… holding its breath.”

  Brat’s voice gentled. “I can’t access your dreams,” he said. “Not directly. I can only read your vitals, your resonance, and the system’s attempts to stabilize you. But both nights triggered the same flag. Your dream-state wasn’t replaying memory. It was receiving something.”

  “Sent in,” Will said.

  Brat nodded. “Yes. External input. That shouldn’t be possible.”

  They crossed the second-floor landing and turned down the quiet wing leading to the Royal Library.

  Taren escorted them all the way to the tall carved doors, then stopped crisply and bowed his head as he took his place beside the doorway, silent and immovable.

  Will and Brat stepped inside.

  The library stretched before them in warm shadows and quiet stillness. The scent of parchment and dust hung in the air like something preserved across centuries. Sunlight filtered in through tall arched windows, catching dust motes suspended in a soft golden haze.

  Edras’s table stood near one of the main windows. Books in small stacks. A capped inkpot. A ledger closed and aligned perfectly with the table’s edge. The high-backed chair.

  Empty.

  Will slowed.

  Brat’s brow creased. “He should be here. His anchor point is fixed to this space.”

  Will scanned the room. The scholar wasn’t bent over a book in another corner. He wasn’t shuffling between shelves. He wasn’t anywhere.

  “NPCs don’t wander off the grid… do they?” Will asked softly.

  “No,” Brat said. “Not without a coded reason.”

  A page in livery moved between shelves with a stack of books balanced neatly in his arms. Will approached him.

  “You,” Will called gently.

  The boy straightened instantly. “Your Highness?”

  “Whats your name, boy?”

  “Benjin, my prince.”

  “Benjin, find Lord Derran and tell him to come to the library at once.”

  The page bowed and hurried off.

  Will returned to Brat. “You said Edras’s anchor is here.”

  Brat nodded, eyes already distant as his fingers twitched through invisible menus. “Give me a moment.”

  Will walked to the old man’s table, resting a hand on the empty chair’s back. The last time he’d seen Edras, the old man had been hunched over this very table, muttering to himself. Now there was only silence — and just when Will needed him, he was nowhere to be found.

  Brat’s gaze flicked sharply left, then right, as if following a flickering thread.

  “Found him?” Will asked.

  Brat hesitated. “I found where the track ends.”

  Will turned. “Ends?”

  Brat swallowed. “Edras’s positional log is stable until the night of your second nightmare. He was here until midnight. Then his anchor collapses. No transition tag. No zone jump. No maintenance call. His track cuts off entirely.”

  Will’s stomach tightened. “Three nights ago,” he said quietly. “The night of the last dream.”

  “Yes,” Brat murmured.

  Footsteps approached.

  Lord Derran entered with brisk purpose, dressed in formal palace attire—dark, tailored, and immaculate. He bowed deeply. “You sent for me, my prince?”

  “Yes,” Will said. “Where is Edras?”

  Derran answered without hesitation. “Seer Edras was summoned three nights ago, shortly after midnight.”

  Will felt his throat constrict. “Summoned where?”

  “To the Capital,” Derran said. “I wasn’t told the purpose. Only that he was summoned and that his post here was to be marked vacant.”

  “And his return?” Will asked.

  “There was no return mentioned, my prince.”

  Will studied him. “And that doesn’t concern you?”

  Derran bowed his head. “It is not my place to question directives sent from the Capital. I carry out the orders entrusted to my office. Will there be anything else, my prince?”

  “No,” Will said. “That’s all.”

  Derran withdrew with measured, unhurried steps, disappearing into the hall.

  Will turned back to Brat. “The Capital?”

  Brat’s face tightened. “It’s placeholder content,” he whispered. “It isn’t real. Not in the way the palace or the town is. There’s no built zone beyond the name. No NPC should ever be sent there. That command… it had to be fabricated.”

  Will let out a slow breath. “Edras glitched when I first met him. And the dream… it echoed what he said. Too closely.”

  Brat nodded faintly. “I don’t know what caused his glitch — I still don’t. But whatever he tapped into, it wasn’t part of his script. And someone clearly didn’t want him talking to you again.”

  Will stared at the empty chair. “It feels like the moment I try to understand anything…”

  “Something shifts,” Brat murmured. “The comms lockout. Your missing decade. And now Edras disappearing right after the dream. I don’t know if it’s connected — but it doesn’t feel random.”

  Will exhaled. “Speaking of comms… is there any way to reach the outside at all? Any way to… I dunno, unlock it?”

  Brat’s mouth tightened. “Not officially. The channels are sealed. But I might be able to brute-force a connection—using the same gap I was guided to in the access code for the bordello.” He paused, his digital form wavering for a split second. “But the system might push back… hard.”

  “That’s a hell of a risk,” Will said, his voice low.

  “It is,” Brat echoed. “If something is guarding your comms, I can’t predict what it’ll do to you. Or to me.”

  “No. We can’t risk it,” Will said. “Not until we know what we’re walking into.”

  Brat nodded. “I’ll look for a safer entry point.”

  Will felt tension pooling in his chest. “So Edras is gone. The logs are missing. Comms are dead. That leaves us…”

  “The forest,” Brat said softly.

  Will nodded. “Both dreams took me there. The same trees. The same whispers.”

  “The Whispering Trees quest is still active,” Brat said. “And Edras wasn’t supposed to assign it. Something used him to point you toward the Forest of Lirane — before he vanished.”

  Will looked around the library one last time. The empty chair. The tidy desk. The quiet air holding its breath.

  “Then that’s our thread,” he said. “We follow it.”

  “Today,” Brat said.

  “Today,” Will agreed.

  They stepped out of the library,

  Taren straightening as they approached. Without a word, he fell into step behind them as they moved through the palace toward the stables… toward the Forest of Lirane… and whatever answers waited there.