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Chapter 65 – Quarantined Thoughtscape
"Sometimes the mind breaks not from what it remembers, but from what it never had the chance to forget."
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The light wasn't light, not really.
It shimmered like broken thoughts spilling across water—reflections of things that had never happened, or perhaps happened too many times. Erevan stood motionless at the threshold of the quarantined zone, the node interface humming softly behind him. No alarms. No resistance. Just a pulsing invitation.
ENTER: THOUGHTSCAPE_OMEGA-RED // Status: Volatile
Serah's hand hovered near her weapon, but she didn't draw. Not yet.
"I don't like it," she said quietly. "This isn't how the Tower usually protects corrupted thoughts. This feels... deliberate."
Yuren had already begun scanning the air. "It's layered. Not just data corruption. This whole space is woven like a psychic net. It's not meant to keep something out. It's meant to trap something inside."
Erevan nodded, stepping forward. "Then we go in together."
---
The moment they passed the veil, the world shifted.
Not violently.
But intimately.
The platform beneath them dissolved into mist. Gravity forgot how to behave. The very air turned thick with emotion—fragments of thought drifting past them like wisps of breath in winter.
A child's laugh.
A scream that ended before it began.
A voice calling out a name never given.
Serah shivered. "What the hell is this?"
Erevan closed his eyes.
"It's memory," he said softly. "But not just mine."
---
The landscape stabilized slowly, resolving into a scene that none of them expected.
It was a home.
Or at least, it looked like one. Simple stone walls. A table set with half-finished food. A hearth with no fire. Dust settled on everything, but nothing decayed. Time had been suspended, locked in a moment too fragile to break.
Erevan recognized it instantly.
Not because it was real.
But because it was familiar.
"I think this place was made from me," he said.
Serah gave him a cautious look. "You mean it's a reconstruction?"
"No," Erevan replied. "I mean… this is a life I never lived."
---
They explored the house in silence.
Every room told a story. One not pulled from Erevan's past, but from possibility—echoes of a self that had never become the Abysswalker. The bedroom held a journal written in his handwriting, but filled with the thoughts of a man who had never been torn apart by the Tower.
Entries spoke of tending gardens. Of reading stories by candlelight. Of holding someone close on stormy nights and dreaming of nothing more than growing old.
Serah sat on the edge of the bed, flipping through the pages. "This isn't just a trap. This is comfort. The kind that keeps you here."
Yuren nodded grimly. "A containment loop. Quarantine doesn't always mean isolation. Sometimes it means... sedation."
Erevan's hand trembled as he picked up the journal.
He read a line aloud:
> "There's peace in forgetting the war you were meant to fight."
The words hit like a blow.
Because part of him wanted to believe them.
---
He moved to the window.
Outside, a garden grew in perfect symmetry. Trees that never shed. Flowers that never wilted. A sky painted in permanent dusk, as if mourning the day that never came.
And standing in the garden—
Her.
The woman from the journal. The one he'd never known. Her face wasn't clear, but her presence was. Soft, patient. She looked up and smiled at him with the kind of warmth that no battlefield had ever offered.
For a moment, Erevan couldn't move.
Couldn't breathe.
A thousand lives crashed down in that instant—lives not lived, moments not taken. The Tower hadn't just stolen his freedom. It had stolen his maybes.
---
Serah's voice cut through the haze, firm but kind.
"Erevan. This place isn't real. You know that."
"I know," he said, barely above a whisper. "But the pain it hides from is."
---
Suddenly, the garden flickered.
The woman's form twitched, and the smile distorted. Her body stuttered like a corrupted file caught in replay.
The air grew thick again. This time, with a presence.
Something was watching.
No—not watching.
Listening.
A voice whispered through the room.
> "You were never meant to carry this alone."
Erevan turned sharply. "Who said that?"
No answer.
But the window was gone.
And the house—
It had no walls anymore.
Just void. Stretching endlessly, filled with fragments of identities that never solidified. Like the mind of a dying god, replaying all it could've been.
---
"Erevan!" Serah called out. "It's collapsing. This place—it's unfolding itself into our minds. We need to get out before it seeds!"
Yuren's voice cut in: "No good. The exit's been overridden. We're locked in until the core thread resolves."
"Then we trigger it," Erevan said.
He stepped forward, toward the void, holding the false journal in one hand and his real memory crystal in the other.
He pressed them together.
Light surged. But it wasn't bright. It was deep—like layers of self peeling back.
One life denied.
One life endured.
And something else—
The seed of a question:
> What would you have become... without the pain?
---
The answer came not as words, but as choice.
[Accept the False Peace] – Retain identity. Lose mission.
[Reject the Dream] – Continue path. Bear the full weight.
He didn't hesitate.
Erevan crushed the journal in his fist.
"I am not a dream," he whispered.
"I am the consequence."
---
The void howled in response.
The house disintegrated.
The thoughtscape cracked like glass struck from within. Serah and Yuren were pulled back as emergency recall protocols slammed online, ejecting them from the unraveling mental realm.
Erevan remained just a moment longer.
In the last seconds, the woman's figure reappeared.
Not smiling.
Just watching.
As if to say: You could have been happy.
He met her gaze and answered:
"I'll find peace after I earn it."
And then the world blinked out.
---
[SYSTEM RETURN: THOUGHTSCAPE_OMEGA-RED]
> SUBJECT: Erevan
Outcome: Successful Excision
Status: Memory Integrity Intact
Subconscious Contamination: Contained
New Trait Unlocked: [Anchor of the Self]
Description: You are no longer vulnerable to false-memory contamination.
Bonus: +Resilience, +Clarity under psychic attack.
---
The three of them reappeared in the node's edge chamber, still gasping for breath.
Yuren steadied himself, eyes wide. "You okay?"
Erevan nodded, slowly. "It tried to show me a life I'd trade everything for."
Serah looked at him, voice soft. "And?"
"And I remembered who I am."
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Author's Note:
This chapter marks a turning point in Erevan's psyche. The Tower doesn't just destroy lives—it rewrites them. But what if part of resistance isn't rage… but remembrance?
If this chapter hit you, let me know in the comments. Every stone, every word matters.
Up next: Chapter 66 – The Architect's Path
Ready to dive into it?