Parallel Memory

Chapter 669: The Echo That Remain

The sound of the world was gone.No clash of blades. No roars of demons. No desperate cries echoing across the torn heavens.

Only silence.

Zero floated in an endless sea of white—neither sky nor ground, neither light nor shadow. His breath didn’t echo. His heartbeat was absent. His hands were translucent, as though they no longer belonged to him.

He looked down—and saw his body dissolving into countless motes of blue light, scattering upward into the void.

”Not again...” he whispered, his voice trembling in the weightless air. ”Not this place...”

The white expanse rippled like water. The air fractured—and from that fracture stepped himself.

The version of him from Earth. Wearing the same gray hoodie, the same glasses, the same look of exhaustion that haunted him every day before Edolas had even existed to him.

”You’re here again,” his Earth self said quietly, voice calm yet heavy with warning. ”You really shouldn’t be.”

Zero blinked, disoriented. ”I didn’t choose to come here.”

”No,” his other self replied, pushing up his glasses. ”You never do. That’s the problem.”

From the far horizon, a low rumble crawled through the void. The light warped—and then darkness began to bleed in. A crimson mist spread across the white sea, and from it, a throne emerged—shattered, jagged, and crowned with flame.

Upon that throne sat the Emperor of Destruction.

Tall, armored in obsidian, with eyes burning like dying stars. His voice was low, almost melodic, yet filled with venomous power.

”So,” the Emperor murmured, resting his chin on one gauntleted hand. ”The fragile little human has broken the balance again.”

Zero turned toward him, his pulse quickening despite the absence of a heartbeat. ”You’re still here... haunting this place.”

The Emperor smiled faintly. ”You make it sound as though this realm belongs to you. But it does not. This is the echo between souls—the boundary where the anchor of worlds begins to erode. And you, child, have trespassed here far too many times.”

His Earth self sighed, almost impatiently. ”You’re both idiots,” he muttered. ”You keep tearing at the veil without realizing what it costs. Do you think Edolas can survive a second collapse?”

Zero frowned. ”Collapse?”

His Earth self’s tone hardened. ”Every time you reach this place—every time your consciousness brushes against mine or his—you disturb the flow that binds worlds together. You’ve done it before. You nearly destroyed your soul back then, and now it’s happening again.”

He gestured at Zero’s dissolving form. The blue particles drifting upward had grown unstable, flickering between colors—blue, silver, and black.

Zero clenched his fists. ”Then tell me what to do. Aamon—he’s destroying everything. I can’t just leave it. If I die there, if I give up, the entire world burns.”

The Emperor of Destruction laughed—a slow, echoing sound that shook the void itself. ”And what does that matter? Let it burn. Let all of it burn. That is the destiny of mortals who toy with powers beyond their reach.”

Zero glared at him. ”You think destruction is destiny?”

”It is the only truth,” the Emperor said coldly, rising from his throne. Each step sent ripples through the air, distorting the very fabric of the space. ”Creation is an illusion. Order—fleeting. Only destruction endures. And you—you—were born to be my vessel of that truth.”

The words echoed like thunder. For a moment, Zero felt something stir within him—a pulse of dark energy, the same one that had answered him in the battle against Aamon.

His Earth self stepped forward sharply, grabbing his shoulder. ”Don’t listen to him,” he said, his tone grave. ”He’s trying to fuse with you. Every time you fight too close to death, your consciousness slips—making it easier for him to claim your soul. That’s what’s happening right now.”

Zero’s eyes widened. ”So if I stay here—”

”You’ll vanish,” his Earth self interrupted. ”You’ll fade from both worlds. Your body will become his. Your soul... will cease to exist.”

The Emperor chuckled. ”And yet, he hesitates. Even now, when the world outside crumbles, he fears the truth of what he is.”

”What I am?” Zero repeated.

The Emperor’s smile widened. ”The Anchor of Edolas. The convergence of will across two worlds. A being born from imbalance—the moment your Earth soul refused to die and tethered itself to this plane. You call it fate, I call it inevitability. But do you know what that means, boy?”

He extended a hand toward Zero, fingers curling into a claw.

”It means you have the power to rewrite destiny itself.”

The space trembled. Fractures of crimson lightning ripped across the void. Behind the Emperor, silhouettes of burning cities and collapsing skies appeared like memories trapped in glass.

”You could end Aamon’s existence,” the Emperor continued, his voice rising. ”Undo every failure. Revive every life lost. All you need is to surrender to the instinct that defines us—power unrestrained.”

Zero’s eyes narrowed. The temptation was overwhelming. The idea that he could save everyone—Mia, Lilith, Eleanore, the entire world—if he simply stopped resisting.

But his Earth self’s grip tightened. ”That’s not saving them,” he said harshly. ”That’s erasing them. You’d be rewriting existence through destruction. It’s not creation—it’s annihilation wearing mercy’s mask.”

Zero gritted his teeth. ”Then what am I supposed to do? I can’t defeat Aamon like this. My body—my mana—everything’s breaking apart!”

The Earth self hesitated. ”You can’t fight him alone. You were never meant to.”

Zero frowned. ”Then why—why did it all lead to this? Why did I end up as the ’Anchor’?”

The Emperor’s laughter cut through the air again. ”Because fate is cruel. Because balance demands sacrifice. Because for one world to stand—another must fall.”

And with that, the crimson mist surged forward, swallowing the white expanse. The Emperor’s figure towered over both of them now, his aura filling the space like molten iron.

”Come, Anchor,” he said, voice resonating like a god’s command. ”Let me show you the truth of destruction.”

Zero tried to resist—but the black flames began crawling up his arm, merging with the flickering light that made up his body. His Earth self struggled to pull him back, shouting his name.

”Zero—listen to me! If you give in now, there won’t be an Edolas to return to!”

”I know that!” Zero roared, his voice echoing across the collapsing void. ”But if I don’t do something, everyone dies anyway!”