Chapter 23: [Duchy of Inferna] [14] unknown memories [1]
Cassian drifted through a reality he did not know, a ghost who had lost his substance, his very existence no more than a whisper.
The rules of time and space did not apply to him.
All he saw, all he felt, were moments that flowed by like scenes behind a curtain.
And at the center of these moments, he was always there: a boy with hair as black as midnight and eyes like shattered fragments of the sky.
Cassian did not know who this boy was or why he was watching him, but the memories unfolded before his eyes.
The first scene was filled with the warmth of the sun and the scent of happiness.
The car was moving along a winding coastal road.
A cheerful summer song played on the radio, and the boy’s mother, smiling at his father in the driver’s seat, sang along.
The boy, sitting in the back seat, watched the trees rush by outside the window.
The excitement of the holiday was a sweet electricity filling the air inside the car.
His father winked at him through the rearview mirror.
"You ready, champ?" he asked, his voice full of pride and love.
The boy nodded eagerly, wishing that moment could last forever.
Eternity lasted but a moment.
A sharp blare of a horn, with a truck from the opposite lane as its lead soloist, tore through the cheerful song.
Then came the ear-splitting shriek of metal on metal, the desperate cry of tires, and finally, the horrific explosion as the world shattered into a thousand pieces.
Cassian saw it through the boy’s eyes: a spinning world, his mother’s scream, his father’s voice cut short, and the spiderweb of cracks spreading across the glass towards his face.
Then came darkness, and the searing pain in his leg that would follow him for the rest of his life.
It wasn’t just the car that was wrecked that day; it was the boy’s world.
His father took his last breath in that wreckage, and a part of the boy’s soul was left buried beneath that heap of metal.
...
After weeks filled with the sterile smell of the hospital, pain, and loss, he finally returned to the familiar scent of home, but it was no longer the same.
His father’s laughter no longer echoed in the halls, and the armchair he once filled now stood like a bitter monument to emptiness.
The light in his mother’s eyes had gone out. Every time she looked at the boy, she saw that terrible day, the husband she had lost, and perhaps, her own shattered dreams.
The boy’s casted, crippled leg was like an unwanted piece of furniture in the middle of the room; a painful symbol that served as a constant reminder of the accident, of the loss.
One morning, the boy woke to see his mother packing a suitcase. Her eyes were swollen from crying, but it was as if not a single tear remained within her.
She leaned down toward the boy and placed a cold, distant kiss on his cheek.
"You have to be strong," she whispered.
It was not a comfort, but a farewell.
The sound of the door closing created a second fracture in the boy’s heart. He had lost his father, and now his mother. He was utterly alone, until the door knocked again.
It was his grandmother, every line on her face telling a story of memory, a story of love.
The old woman’s eyes were sad, but her embrace was warm. She said nothing, only pulled the boy close and held him tight.
That embrace said everything words could not: "You are not alone. I am here."
They moved to his grandmother’s old, lavender-scented house. That house became a calm harbor where the boy took refuge in his stormy sea.
...
School, which should have been a place for healing, had become an arena where his wounds were reopened daily.
The other children were cruel. They sensed what was different, what was broken, and they struck him at his weakest point.
The slight limp in his walk, the metal brace on his leg, became their entertainment.
Names like "Limp-along!," "Jumping Grasshopper!," and "Scrap-leg!" were whispered behind his back in the hallways and sometimes shouted to his face.
He was always on the sidelines during football games on the playground. No one wanted him on their team.
In games of tag, he was always the first one caught or never included at all.
His loneliness was an invisible cloak he wore.
During recess, he would sit under a tree in the farthest corner of the schoolyard, watching the other children laugh and run. In those moments, he felt as if he were from another planet. Their joy only deepened his pain.
Sometimes, the bolder children would come over and touch the brace on his leg, asking, "Does this hurt?" But most of the time, they just pointed and giggled.
Every day, the sound of the school bell was like an escape from captivity as he made his way home.
For him, school was not a cradle of knowledge, but the cold walls of bullying and exclusion.
...
At the end of each day, behind the cold and cruel walls of the school, the warmth of his grandmother’s house and her unconditional love awaited him.
The moment he stepped through the front door, all the world’s cruelty was left outside.
The smell of a freshly baked cake or a simmering dinner wafting from the kitchen was like a welcoming ceremony.
His grandmother would instantly read the sadness on his face and, without asking a single question, would sit him down beside her.
His happiest moments were when he rested his head on his grandmother’s lap in the old, worn, but comfortable armchair. The old woman would stroke the boy’s hair with her calloused yet gentle hands and tell him tales of olden times, of her own childhood.
In those tales, the heroes always overcame hardship, and good always triumphed.
These stories were like magic potions that renewed the boy’s hope.
Sometimes they would go into the kitchen together and bake cookies. Seeing the boy’s face covered in flour, his grandmother would let out a heartfelt laugh that spread to every corner of the house.
In this home, his injured leg was not a flaw; it was just a part of him.
His grandmother looked at him not with pity, but with love.
To her, the boy was neither ’Limp-along’ nor ’Scrap-leg’; he was simply her one and only grandson.
This loving sanctuary was the only salve that healed the wounds he received in the outside world, mending his very soul.
...
Years chased the seasons. The boy grew into a young man.
The white in his grandmother’s hair multiplied, and her steps slowed. Her once-strong voice that told fairy tales had now faded to a whisper.
The roles had reversed; now her grandson looked after her, gave her medicine, and tucked her in.
One autumn morning, the boy woke to a strange, deeper silence in the house than ever before.
He entered his grandmother’s room. The old woman looked as if she were sleeping in her bed. There was a peaceful, tired smile on her face.
But her chest was not rising and falling.
The boy called out to her, touched her shoulder. No answer.
In that moment, he understood that this bottomless silence was death itself.
The last sanctuary, the last warmth, the last love in his life had been taken from him.
That day, the clocks in the house stopped, the birds fell silent, and even the sun seemed to shine paler.
There were billions of people in the world, but now, he was truly alone.
His father was gone in an accident, his mother by her own choice. His grandmother had left him in the natural course of time.
But the result was the same: the boy was like a lone leaf in the vast universe, with not a single branch left to cling to.
...
The scene changed again.
He was an adult now. Life had imprisoned him behind the cash register of a supermarket.
Every day was the same. He would wake up in the early hours of the morning, struggle to get ready with his aching leg, and go to work.
Throughout the day, hundreds of different faces, hundreds of different products, and a single, monotonous sound: "beep... beep... beep..."
He would force a smile for the customers and say, "Have a nice day."
In the evenings, he would return to his cheap, one-room apartment and fill his stomach with a meal heated in the microwave.
His life was a colorless, meaningless cycle stretching from home to work, and work to home.
It was a shitty life.
He was being crushed under the weight of his own existence.
But within this gray reality, he had a single, colorful window.
The screen of his computer.
When that screen came to life, the boy began to breathe again.
His only entertainment, his only passion, his only escape was a game called "Child of the Dawn: Call of the Sun."
This was no ordinary game. It was a massive universe that offered the player limitless freedom. You could be a hero saving kingdoms, or a demon setting the world on fire.
The boy forgot the weariness of the day and the cruelty of life by entering this digital world.
Here, he had no crippled leg. Here, he was not an outcast. Here, he was not powerless.
He was whatever he wanted to be.
Cassian watched this virtual universe through the boy’s eyes.
Countless stories streamed across the screen.
In one, there was the epic journey of a protagonist who started in a humble village, joined an academy, formed a harem of beauties around him, and finally challenged the evil gods.
In another, he was a demon commander from the depths of hell, waging a bloody war against humanity.
In another scenario, he was an insidious agent in the cold lands of the north, secretly spreading plagues in the name of the empire.
Sometimes he was a cult leader performing dark rituals, and other times a knight living for his honor.
These stories, these characters, were reflections of the thousand different lives the boy could never live.