The buildings pulsed with light, responding to the movent of those within them, as if the city itself breathed along with its people.
And at the center of it all stood a figure.
Not the woman.
Him.
Jude felt his breath catch. It wasn't just soone who **looked** like him. It wasn't a trick of mory or illusion. The man standing at the heart of the city's golden light was him. Or rather, who he had been.
His past self stood with a presence Jude could barely comprehend. Power rippled off him in waves, not chaotic, not destructive, but controlled, commanding. He was speaking to soone, though the words were lost in the hum of the city's energy. The people around him watched with reverence.
Not fear.
Not submission.
Respect.
Jude swallowed. "Who…"
The woman's voice was gentle. "You were one of the first."
The world around them shifted again, mories unraveling, rewinding, showing him pieces, fragnts, glimpses of a ti when this city had been sothing else. Sothing whole. A ti when he had not been wandering, lost in a world that no longer fit him.
He had been ant for this.
He had helped create this.
And then,
Jude gasped as the golden vision shattered. The city that had been so alive, so bright, so filled with purpose, collapsed. The golden lights flickered, then died. The people, those woven with fire, those who had walked with such confidence and certainty, faded.
Sothing had happened.
Sothing had taken them.
Sothing had stolen everything.
Jude staggered back, his vision snapping back to the present, his heartbeat hamring against his ribs. The woman still stood before him, watching, waiting, as if allowing him ti to process what had just been shown.
He swallowed hard. His hands were shaking.
"What… what happened?" His voice was hoarse, barely controlled.
The woman exhaled, and for the first ti, the fire surrounding her dimd, as if the mory pained her as much as it did him.
"They ca," she said softly. "And they unmade us."
Jude's breath caught. "The void."
She nodded. "Not as it is now. It was different then. It was more than an absence. It was a force, a will, sothing with purpose. It saw what we had built, what we had **beco.** And it could not allow us to exist."
Jude's hands curled into fists. "Why?"
The woman looked up, toward the sky, where the golden constellations still shimred, distant echoes of a lost world. "Because we were too close."
Jude frowned. "To what?"
Her gaze t his, and in it, he saw sothing he had not expected.
Sorrow.
"To becoming more than what we were."
The words settled deep, heavier than he was prepared for. He could feel the truth of them, not just in her voice, but in the way the city still responded to him, still recognized him. They had been sothing else. Sothing greater than just mortals wielding power. Sothing on the verge of transcendence.
And the void had stopped them.
It hadn't just attacked. It hadn't just destroyed.
It had erased them.
It had buried them so completely that even their own mories had been lost. Even his mories had been lost. Until now. Until the city had woken, until he had set foot on its broken streets, until it had recognized him and given him back the pieces of himself that had been stripped away.
His chest felt too tight, his breath uneven. His past self had been one of them. One of the first. One of the ones who had stood against the void.
And they had failed.
Or, no.
They had survived.
Not all of them. Not many.
But so.
And sohow, impossibly, he was one of them.
Jude closed his eyes, steadying himself. The fire in his veins no longer felt foreign. No longer felt like sothing that had been given to him by the city.
Because it hadn't.
It had always been his.
He opened his eyes. "What do I do now?"
The woman studied him for a long mont. Then, slowly, she smiled.
"You rember.
Jude exhaled.
And this ti, when the city's fire rose to et him,
He did not resist.
I'll get started now.
Jude felt the fire in his veins settle, not extinguished, not diminished, but no longer foreign. No longer sothing forced upon him. It had always been his. The realization sent a deep pulse through his bones, an undeniable certainty anchoring him in a way he had never known before. The city responded to him, not as an intruder, not as an outsider, but as sothing that belonged. He had walked these streets before. He had built them. And he had watched them fall. The woman before him no, not just a woman, sothing more, studied him with a quiet intensity, waiting, asuring. He t her gaze and found himself unafraid of the truth it held.
"You rember," she said.
Jude exhaled. The weight of it all pressed against him, but for the first ti, he did not buckle beneath it. He stood.
"What do I do now?" he asked. His voice was steady. The fire coiled beneath his skin, not in conflict, but in agreent.
The woman's expression softened, as if she had been waiting for this mont. "Now," she said, "you reclaim what was taken."
The air around them pulsed, the golden threads of energy shifting, rearranging. The ruins of the city flickered with sothing almost imperceptible, a mory of what they once were. Jude could feel it, the remnants of the past still lingering, waiting to be uncovered. He reached out, fingers brushing against the nearest stone, and the world shuddered.
The vision ca suddenly, violently.
The city was alive again. People walked the streets, laughter echoing through the corridors of towering structures that pulsed with golden light. The sky above shimred with constellations unlike any Jude had ever seen, shifting patterns that moved with purpose. This was no ordinary civilization. These were not ordinary people.
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