The sky was bleeding again.
Jay stepped into the town square, boots crunching over withered petals that hadn’t been there the night before. The once-vibrant sunflowers by the bakery drooped unnaturally, their colors pale like things remembered incorrectly.
The quest board buzzed softly. A new message etched itself across the wood, like splinters carving into his spine.
Echo 2: Find the bell that never rang. Listen when it does.
000 hovered low, flickering in pulses. His normally clipped voice stuttered.
"Unknown structure located. Coordinates F02. Mapping… rejected."
At the edge of the town, behind houses that blinked in and out of perception, stood an old church. It wasn’t there yesterday.
Its steeple leaned at an impossible angle, the bell tower split with a black crack that ran like lightning frozen in stone. Moss clung to stained glass windows, and one door was missing entirely—swallowed by rot.
Jay stepped inside.
It smelled like old iron and wet dust. Rows of pews lined the hallway like wooden graves. At the altar stood a mural depicting children standing around a large bronze bell, each child holding a ribbon connected to it.
But half the children’s faces were scratched out. Deeply. Violently.
"Corrupted sacred space. Audio anomaly detected."
Jay turned.
He hadn’t noticed the bell itself—hanging like a dark seed from the tower ceiling. Large. Intact. Silent.
He picked up a candleholder and flung it upward.
Clang.
The bell shook—but made no sound.
Behind the altar, Jay found a relic: a silver tuning fork wrapped in red string. As soon as his fingers brushed it, the temperature dropped.
He struck it once against the stone.
Whispers exploded into his mind.
“It rang once.”
“He tried.”
“But it tolls only when they remember.”
Jay clutched his head.
“Wrong cycle. Wrong vessel. Still trying?”
And then a child’s voice, soft and distant:
“I didn’t want to die in the dark.”
000’s voice jolted to life—but it was wrong.
"…I saw this place burn."
"It wasn’t supposed to be like this."
Jay stared at him.
“000… What are you saying?”
"I don’t… I shouldn’t remember."
***
Jay climbed the cracked staircase inside the tower. Each step creaked like ribs under pressure. Shadows stretched in unnatural ways.
Halfway up, the Girl in Red appeared—sitting casually on an invisible beam.
“I wouldn’t go up there if I were you,” she said, smiling without kindness. “That bell... it doesn't toll for the living.”
Jay kept moving. She floated beside him, upside-down.
“If it rings,” she whispered, “someone will remember. And we all agreed not to.”
Jay stopped.
The air was thicker. He could feel memories pressing against him—memories that weren’t his.
“Tell me what this place is,” he said. “Why are there cycles?”
She tilted her head.
“Trade you. I’ll tell you... if you give Ada back.”
Jay’s hand went to the locket in his coat. He said nothing.
“I thought not,” she said, and vanished with a laugh like shattered glass.
At the top of the tower, a skeleton sat curled beside the rope.
Tiny.
A cracked pendant lay in its hand—glass and bronze, shaped like a bell with the engraving: “For Jonah.”
Jay tied the pendant to the bell’s rope. He took the tuning fork and struck it again.
This time, the bell tolled.
Once.
A deep, aching sound that rippled through the air and shook the broken glass windows. It echoed into the earth and into Jay’s chest.
Somewhere outside, someone screamed.
When Jay descended, the mural had changed.
The children were smiling again. Jonah’s face had reappeared.
Outside, fog had cleared just enough for Jay to see an old man standing silently by the square’s fountain.
Tears cut lines through the dirt on his cheeks.
“She was my daughter,” the man said. “I remember now. She rang the bell for the last time.”
***
Back at the inn, 000 floated erratically.
His light turned red for a moment. Then white. Then blue.
He spoke in a soft, almost human voice.
“I’ve been here before. I failed them.”
Then he collapsed to the floor, sparks flickering around his core.
Jay knelt beside him. “Who are you really?”
000 looked up at him—flickering like a broken candle.
“I was the system that rang the first bell.”
The quest board updated silently.
[Echo 2/3 Freed — 1 Remaining]
Jay stood before it.
Behind him, the sky cracked like old porcelain.
📑 Echo Log: Jonah (Recovered)
ID: ECHO-002-JONAH
Cycle Origin: Unknown
Status: Liberated
Trigger: Bell Resonance (Manual Activation)
Transmigrator Involved: Jay
System Response Unit: 000 (First Incident Memory Recovered)
Last Recorded Timestamp: [Cycle Δ-7,444]
📜 Memory Fragment #1: “The Bell that Never Rang”
“Jonah was the youngest. He stayed behind when the others ran. He believed in the promise—if he rang the bell, someone would come. No one did. The cycle reset.”
— Fragment Source: Town Archive (Corrupted)
🎙️ Auditory Residue (Post-Bell Toll)
“I didn’t want to die in the dark...”
“She said it would echo forever. She lied.”
“Where’s Ada? Where’s the sun?”
🖼️ Visual Reconstruction
Child: Approx. 8 years old
Appearance: Tattered red cloak, bronze bell pendant
Location of Loss: Bell Tower, Old Church
Cause of Death: System Lock — No Memory Anchor Detected
Soul Fragment Retention: High (94%)
🧠Emotional Imprint
Primary Emotion: Hope → Disillusionment
Last Thought: “Maybe next time, someone will remember.”
🧩 System Notes
[System Unit 000 Diagnostic Flag]
“Jonah was the first name I ever stored. I failed to anchor him. The memory was quarantined, but... I remember now. This time, Jay heard him.”
Cycle Update: Memory Anchor for Jonah re-established. Mural corrected. One echo liberated.
Comments
Post a Comment