The rain in Sector 4C didn't fall like water.
It fell like memory.
Heavy, persistent, and without rhythm — the kind of rain that crawled into your collar and made you feel like you'd forgotten something important.
Aether City's oldest district bore the storm like an old wound.
The buildings leaned into each other like secrets, their walls choked by ivy and moss, whispering old names through the cracked neon signs.
High above the dripping alleys and shattered rooftops, the simulation towers glowed.
Silver beams stretched upward like lances piercing the sky, pulsing with data streams and aura fields.
Inside one of those towers, Riven Thorne stood perfectly still.
The chamber around him was silent. Circular.
Lined with emitters and hardlight projections.
On the wall, a red glyph blinked.
[Simulation: Inactive]
He exhaled.
"Tempest Room," he said quietly.
"Activate blind run. Highest difficulty."
A pause. Then the glyph turned gold.
[Simulation loading…]
The world around him shattered.
A battlefield emerged — rusted ruins, broken sky, shrieking winds.
The enemies spawned fast: beasts with no form, forged of flickers and motion, rushing him with algorithms designed to kill faster than thought.
Riven moved.
Not like a trained soldier.
Not like a flameborn warrior.
Like something watching from outside.
He dodged before the claws extended.
Moved before the data could stabilize.
Each step was too precise.
Too quiet.
Each strike he made — a single, clean motion. No waste.
And every time he landed a blow, the simulation hesitated.
Not out of coding delay.
But fear.
---
Outside the chamber, Instructor Vex frowned.
"This is wrong," she said, adjusting the feed.
"His predictive response time is too fast. He's not reacting — he's pre-loading."
Kael Dross stood beside her, arms crossed.
"It's not wrong," he said.
"Then what is it?"
Kael stared at the screen.
At Riven's calm expression inside the chaos.
"It's remembering."
---
Ten minutes later, the simulation ended.
The chamber returned to stillness.
Riven stood alone.
He wasn't breathing hard.
He should've been.
As the lights faded, he looked up at the mirrored ceiling —
and for a split second, his reflection didn't match.
The eyes were gold.
Not his.