Chapter 252: “You were not meant to remember.”
Adam landed softly.
No thud.
No splash.
Just… stillness.
The ground beneath him wasn't rock. Wasn't dirt.
It felt like pages.
He looked down.
The surface was made of thousands—maybe millions—of paper-thin sheets, all overlapping like fish scales. Each one pulsed faintly red, and tiny letters crawled across them like ants trying to escape a burning forest.
He crouched.
Picked one up.
The letters on it stopped moving the moment his fingers touched the page.
Then—very politely—it burst into flame and disintegrated.
"Huh."
He dusted his hand off and stood.
The walls around him shifted. Not like a tunnel. More like a throat deciding whether to swallow or let him pass.
He walked forward.
There was no light source—just that same red glow leaking from the paper beneath his feet.
Eventually, the tunnel opened into a chamber.
No, not a chamber.
A library.
Or what was left of one.
Bookshelves floated in the air, broken and half-melted. Scrolls hung midair in slow spirals like they were falling through syrup. An upside-down chair slowly rotated near the ceiling, where gravity seemed to be having an existential crisis.
Adam stepped inside, and the air immediately became thicker—like he'd walked into a room full of silent arguing ghosts.
A voice rasped from behind one of the shelves.
"I smell ignorance."
Adam turned slowly.
A pale figure stepped out, wearing a scholar's robe covered in scorch marks and little sticky notes that read things like "Do Not Eat Time Crystals" and "Don't trust the soup."
The figure pushed up his cracked spectacles. "Another hero?"
"Hardly," Adam said.
"Good," the man replied. "Last hero melted. Very unhelpful."
He walked past Adam like a bored librarian, eyeing the ruined shelves.
"This place is the Forbidden Archive," he explained. "We collect things that should never have been remembered. Unfortunately, we forgot to install an alarm system. So the… thing upstairs got loose."
Adam followed, hands in his cloak pockets.
The man stopped before a hovering scroll and tapped it with a stick.
The scroll hissed and curled away like a kicked cat.
"Right," he muttered. "That one bites."
He turned to Adam. "Why are you here?"
"Because the pit smiled at me," Adam said.
The man stared.
Then nodded. "Yep. That'll do it."
He gestured toward a torn doorway, half-submerged in red mist. "Go through there. That's where it ends."
"Ends?" Adam asked.
"For most," the man said, adjusting his glasses. "Or begins. Depends how much sarcasm you're made of."
Adam headed toward the doorway.
The mist thickened.
And something shifted in the walls.
It wasn't sound.
It was… tone.
Like the air itself was mumbling.
Whispers.
Flickers of broken voices.
"…he's awake…"
"…shouldn't be here…"
"…again? how many times must he climb?"
Adam stepped through.
And the world flipped.
—
Layer Two – The Hall of Errors
He hit ground again.
This time, the floor was smooth obsidian.
The air crackled faintly with the scent of burnt code and regret.
Massive stone pillars rose in the dark, each etched with phrases in languages long dead—and a few written in Comic Sans, which honestly felt like a war crime.
A large stone tablet floated in the center of the room.
Carved onto it was a single question:
"Why?"
Adam squinted.
Then touched the tablet.
It asked again.
"Why?"
"I dunno," Adam muttered. "Felt like a Tuesday."
The tablet vibrated.
The ground trembled.
And then something spoke.
A voice—deep, monotone, and far too bored to be a god.
"You answered wrong."
A pair of eyes opened in the dark.
Huge.
Tired.
Slightly bloodshot.
"You're supposed to reflect," the voice groaned. "Like… existentially. Do a soul journey. Cry a bit. Learn something."
Adam scratched his neck. "Bit late for soul-searching. I already read the end of the book."
The voice paused.
"Did you highlight anything?"
"No."
The voice sighed. "You're impossible."
Then the darkness peeled back.
And something stepped forward.
It looked like a monk made entirely of rejected ideas. His robe was stitched from half-finished prophecies, and he had an hourglass embedded in his chest that flowed sideways.
"I am the Error-Keeper," he said. "Guardian of Broken Logic and Unused Plotlines."
"Cool," Adam replied. "I'm Adam."
"…Adam?"
The monk blinked.
The hourglass in his chest stopped for a second. Then reversed. Then exploded and reformed.
"Oh no," the monk whispered.
"Oh yes," Adam said, cracking his knuckles.
The monk backed up slowly. "You… you're not supposed to be here yet. You're still sealed."
"I sneezed and broke it," Adam said casually.
The monk turned, grabbed a book off a floating shelf, flipped a few pages. "That's not even a valid escape method!"
"Guess it is now."
The monk froze.
Then dropped the book and ran.
Full speed.
Yelling.
"HE'S BACK! HE'S BACK! THE SYSTEM LIED—HE'S BACK!"
Adam blinked. "That's new."
He looked around.
The entire room began to collapse.
Not fall apart—collapse. Folders closed, memories unwrote themselves, light bent the wrong way and apologized.
Adam walked forward.
Calm.
Unbothered.
He passed through the crumbling data-space like someone walking through a dream melting from heat.
At the center of it all was a spiral.
A floating crimson ring of layered circles, pulsing gently.
Adam touched it.
The world paused.
For a second, he saw her.
Aurora.
Sitting on her throne.
Eyes focused.
She turned—as if she felt him.
Back in the collapsing hall, Adam smiled faintly.
Then the ring absorbed him.
Gone.
—
Somewhere Else – Deeper Than Below
Adam fell through nothing.
No light. No sound.
Then—
Feet hit ground again.
A flat plane.
Black.
Empty.
And across it… something waited.
No form.
No shape.
Just a presence.
Cold.
Old.
Watching.
Adam stepped forward.
"No noodles this time?"
Silence.
Then a voice.
"…You broke the order."
Adam shrugged. "Didn't like the layout."
"You were not meant to remember."
"Well," he said, cracking his neck. "I do."
The silence pulsed.
Then the voice said simply:
"Then come."
Adam smiled.
And stepped forward.
A/N
Please I'm currently writing an exam so my work will be mid but bear with me for just two weeks and I will be back fully.
Thank you 🫶🫶