The stairwell to Node 14 wasn't made of stone or steel—it was stitched from memory.

  Kai’s steps did not echo. Instead, they left behind glyphs—tiny fragments of forgotten syntax, whispering meanings once sacred but now revoked. The air was thick with the scent of archived sorrow, and each breath he took felt like a line torn from an unwritten book.

  He had survived thirteen nodes. But this one… this one hummed.

  Not with energy—but with anticipation.

  “Something's watching,” Kai murmured, his voice slicing the static like a scalpel. Rynera, at his side, said nothing. Her form flickered—glitching—not from weakness, but from the weight of unreconciled timelines.

  They reached the threshold.

  A gate—not a door—stood before them. Twelve locks, each corresponding to a previous node, disengaged with a sound that wasn’t sound at all. It was concept collapsing into access.

  Node 14: The Palimpsest Garden

  The node unfolded not like a world, but like a page overwritten so many times that its original meaning bled through the surface.

  Trees stood tall—not of bark and branch—but of script and spiral. Roots were prose. Leaves were footnotes to deities long deleted. A sky that blinked like a cursor stared back at them—waiting, daring them to write something irreversible.

  “We’ve entered a layer of overwritten history,” Rynera said. “This node is where forgotten edits go to die.”

  A figure waited by the reflecting pond—a mirror of liquid narrative, always rewriting itself into near-truths. She wore a gown made from Kai’s old failures. Each fold pulsed with echoes of pain—Sineve’s face, Arken’s final scream, the city of Noxdeep turned to ash.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Her eyes were Kai’s. But older. Tired.

  “Welcome,” she said, “to what you discarded.”

  Kai didn’t flinch. He stepped forward, each footfall rewriting the grass into rot.

  “You’re one of them,” he said.

  She smiled. “No. I’m what you could have been. Had you chosen to forget.”

  Fight of Reflections

  It wasn’t a battle of blades.

  Not yet.

  Instead, it was a duel of memory distortion. She, the Warden of Regret, invoked “Selective Remembrance.”

  Kai remembered saving Sineve.

  He gasped. Joy surged.

  Then it shattered—false.

  He screamed. Rage bloomed.

  “Pain is an anchor,” he growled. “And I’ve built cities from it.”

  He countered with “Unforgiven Loop.” The world folded, her smile cracked. The reflection pond shattered into countless versions of herself, each blaming Kai for something different.

  And one… forgave him.

  He turned to that version—and slashed it away.

  “I don’t need forgiveness,” Kai said coldly. “I need clarity.”

  Final Blow – Quill of Reclamation

  Rynera passed him a blade—not a sword, but a stylus carved from rewritten bone.

  Kai plunged it into the Warden’s chest. Not killing her.

  Rewriting her.

  She screamed—not in pain—but in redefinition.

  “I am... I was... I will—”“No,” Kai whispered. “You were me. But I’m not you.”

  The Palimpsest Garden collapsed.

  Kai and Rynera stood on scorched pages.

  Node 14 was claimed.

  [Codex Ladder Update: Node 14 Secured – Title Earned: The One Who Does Not Forget]

  Back in the Null Ascent, Rynera touched his shoulder. “You rewrote her.”

  “I rewrote me,” Kai said.

  Ahead, the next node flickered into visibility.

  Node 15: The Prism Crypt.

  Where reflections become truths… and truths devour identity.