Solace at World's End Someone's Puppet

After Phoebe left, he stood there for a mont, taking all the information in.

Ideally, the first move was reconnaissance. They couldn't strike at the head of the church without losing their own heads. But they could cut off the fingers. They needed to hunt down the gang operating in the shadows of Theron City, specifically the cell responsible for the recent kidnappings ntioned in the suppressed file.

Slowly, a blueprint of violence began to take shape in Solace's mind.

"Tracking them won't be the issue," Solace muttered to himself, his fingers drumming a rhythm against his thigh. "Between Phoebe's connections, Nolan's vendetta, and the sheer reach of the Noble houses, locating a street-level hideout is trivial. The problem is the engagent."

"What about weapons?" he whispered.

He considered his options. His sword was decent, but conspicuous. Using Chains or Glass in a crowded slum or a covert infiltration would leave a heavy essence residue, a signature that the Imperial Court's inquisitors could track. He needed sothing analog. Sothing crude, effective, and silent until the mont of impact.

"Guns," he decided, the word feeling foreign yet nostalgic on his tongue.

In a world dominated by Essence and flashy affinities, firearms were often looked down upon as the tools of the weak. A Layer-3 Thread user could reinforce their skin to bounce small-caliber rounds or move faster than a trigger pull. But Solace wasn't planning on fighting Layer-3 Elites in the back alleys. He was dealing with grunts, thugs, and low-level zealots.

Most street-level enforcers hovered around Essence Rank F or barely E . Their threads were mostly undeveloped, mostly passive stat boosts. Against a suppressor-equipped pistol, their reaction tis would be insufficient. A bullet travels faster than a conscious thought to activate a defensive barrier.

"Easy to carry. Easy to conceal. No residue to track unless a special team investigates," Solace mused. "And with Lily's Eclipse shroud and my Refraction Cloak, we won't just be invisible; we'll be ghosts with ballistic capabilities."

The tactical plan was sound. It was efficient.

Now for the stuff related to the church and the elder of the Imperial court. Solace genuinely thought he was going insane.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not ant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't rember anything close to this.

The strange thing was that he felt like he was beginning to forget his mories related to his previous life, like you forget a dream after you wake up.

Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in his chest. It wasn't just a lapse in concentration. It felt as though an eraser was being dragged across the chalkboard of his soul, thodically wiping away the lines that defined who he used to be. The mories weren't just fading; they were being evicted.

He grasped for the mory, but his ntal fingers closed around mist.

There was nothing there.

He tried harder. He tried to rember the face of Alexander's Grandmother. He tried to rember the na of the university Alexander had attended on Earth. He tried to recall the sll of the air in his old city.

Blank.

"Shit!" he cursed.

He cald himself, pushing down the pulsing anxiety that throbbed in his head.

After a mont, he whispered with a hoarse voice. "I am Alexander Quill! I am Alexander Quill."

This gradual erasure of mories, the only thing that felt real was his own na, Alexander Quill, or maybe that was an illusion too. Maybe Alexander and Solace had rged with his transmigration and created whatever Solace was today.

He wasn't naive like the old Solace, nor was he reckless like Alexander. He wasn't weak like the previous Solace, and he also wasn't as detached as Alexander.

He beca a being existing on the edge of dream and reality.

The more he tried to think about his previous life, the more he strayed away from the thought. It was like soone was purposefully playing with his head.

Then a question arose, "Why am I just realising this?"

Looking back, he realised there was always sothing strange with his train of thought. Like soone was purposefully planting ideas in his head. He would always think sothing strange at unusual tis.

mories resurfaced, but this ti he viewed them through a lens of suspicion.

Sothing on the Mountain, or the ti I stopped to talk to a stranger, telling her to struggle, though I couldn't pinpoint what felt wrong with the mory.

He also felt sothing was wrong after Lily and Vivi's match. When he was thinking about Noah and Luna. When he was speculating on how they could be half-Angels.

He felt that the answer to that question was hiding in plain sight, yet he wasn't able to grasp it. Like he was kept just out of reach.

Like every ti, his mind would look at the answer and decide to stray away from the thought.

Another instance surfaced, and this ti, he beca more certain of the entity playing with his head.

The mory was fresh, sharp, and utterly inexplicable.

He froze. His hands began to shake uncontrollably. The blood drained from his face, leaving him looking like a corpse.

He felt stupid. Incredibly, profoundly stupid for not seeing the strings attached to his limbs sooner.

"I am such a fool," he breathed, his voice trembling. "How could I not realize this? I pride myself on logic."

He spoke the sentence aloud, testing the weight of the impossibility on his tongue.

"How... how in the hell did I co to the conclusion that Nicole Richards is a Regressor?"

"It's not just mory loss," Solace realized, a chill seeping into his bones that had nothing to do with frost. "Soone or sothing is playing with my head."