Chapter 32: The Things We Remember

Chapter 32: Chapter 32: The Things We Remember

Liora stayed seated on her bed long after the door closed behind Felix, eyes drifting to the small device he’d left beside her.

She stared at the gaming console for a while before finally reaching out to touch it, unfamiliar under her fingers, sleeker than the handhelds she remembered, the controls refined, the display sharper, the whole interface nothing like what she’d known four years ago.

She turned it over in her hands. "Four years..."

Barely a whisper. So much had changed.

She pressed the power button. The screen lit up, and she worked through the menu, several games already installed, some unfamiliar, a few she recognized. "His picks aren’t bad," she murmured.

Then she saw it. A game she used to play constantly back at the academy. Her finger stopped over the title, and after a long moment she selected it.

It loaded, and the familiar opening music started, and she froze, it was the same game, technically, but everything about it had changed.

New maps, new characters, new mechanics, new modes. She worked through the menus faster now, curiosity outpacing her. "They added this?" A new competitive mode, gear she’d never seen, balance changes across the board, and she read through every bit of it before finally starting a match.

Her movements were uncertain at first. Then muscle memory took over, her fingers speeding up, her whole posture shifting, the timid girl disappearing somewhere underneath pure focus. For the first time in years, she looked completely absorbed in something.

One match became another, then another, and time simply stopped registering. She didn’t notice the food tray sliding through the slot in her door. She didn’t notice footsteps outside.

She didn’t even register how hungry she was, until the door opened and a guard stepped in to collect the tray and she finally looked up.

"Wait!"

The guard stopped. She looked down, the tray sat untouched. Panic flickered across her face. "I— please wait outside."

He looked confused but stepped back out anyway. The second the door shut, she grabbed the food and shoved down several bites as fast as she could manage, cheeks puffed out, swallowing hard before shoving the tray back near the door. "Done."

The guard collected it and left. She stood there a moment, then looked back at the console in her hands, something unfamiliar settling in her chest. She sat back down on the bed, console still in her grip, and suddenly the memories came.

---

Academy days. Friends crowded around a screen. Arguments over strategy, someone shouting after a loss, someone else celebrating a win. Late nights, competitions, the rush of seeing her squad’s name climb to the top of the rankings and those ridiculous stretches where they got so absorbed they forgot to eat, exactly like tonight.

Her fingers tightened around the console. She remembered laughing. Actually laughing, before any of it happened, before the rift, before the darkness, before she killed them. Her friends. Her teammates. The people who’d known her before she became whatever she was now.

Her eyes blurred, and a tear slid down her cheek, then another, and she lowered her head.

Four years of trying not to remember, because remembering meant seeing their faces again but tonight she remembered something else too. The good parts. The happy ones. The life that had existed before everything got destroyed.

She wiped her face. "Thank you," she said quietly, to no one in the room.

She looked at the console again. Something had reminded her that her life used to hold more than blood and darkness. Something simple. Something harmless. Something she’d genuinely loved once.

She started playing again, and kept at it, every day after that, the console became her escape.

When the memories got too loud, she played.

When the fear crept back in, she played. When the darkness inside her felt closer than usual, she disappeared into another world instead.

For a few hours at a time, she wasn’t a monster.

She was just Liora. A gamer.

---

**Monday Morning**

The mission plaza was already crowded by the time Felix’s team gathered near the departure point. Everyone was there except Felix.

Aria checked the time. Checked it again.

"Where’s our healer?" Kael asked, looking around.

"Overslept, probably," Darius said.

"Felix? Impossible," Lena said, arms crossed. "He’s annoyingly punctual."

Seraphina stood quietly with the rest of them, saying nothing, though her eyes kept drifting toward the entrance.

Aria already had a decent guess what was going on, she’d been at the celebration herself the day before, though she and her parents had left early once things started getting loud, and what she’d heard secondhand afterward suggested Felix and Cassian had gotten a little too competitive with the drinks.

Fifteen minutes past the scheduled time, Felix finally stumbled into the plaza: hair a disaster, eyes barely open, steps noticeably unsteady, wearing the expression of a man who’d just discovered a brand-new tier of suffering.

He stopped in front of the group. "Is... the briefing over?"

Everyone just stared.

"Oh, this is beautiful," Kael said, grinning.

"Where were you?" Darius asked.

Felix rubbed his forehead. "My niece."

The group paused. "What?"

"I’m an uncle now."

Kael’s expression softened instantly. "Wait, the baby?"

Felix nodded, a small smile breaking through despite everything. "Yesterday was the celebration."

"And?" Darius said.

"I drank."

"How much?"

He thought about it. "Too much."

Kael burst out laughing, Lena hid a smile behind her hand, and even Aria’s expression softened at that.

Seraphina, though, just watched him, the messy hair, the tired eyes, the way he kept pressing his fingers to his temples, the small smile that kept surfacing whenever his niece came up. She noted all of it, carefully.

He caught her staring. "Morning, Seraphina."

"Good morning," she said, voice calm and level.

He smiled back, then visibly regretted moving his own head. "Ah." He shut his eyes. "Never drinking again."

"We’ll see about that," Kael laughed.

---

Aria finally called the group to order. "Enough."

The joking died down fast. She pulled up the mission display, a large holographic map unfolding above it.

"Today’s assignment is an S-rank gate." The mood shifted instantly, every joke gone, the whole team snapping into focus. "It opened yesterday. Preliminary scans show a heavily forested dimension, high mana density, multiple high-rank signatures already detected."

"Boss?" Ryan asked, adjusting his gear.

"Unknown. We’ll confirm the location once we’re inside." Her eyes found Seraphina briefly. "Stay with the team. Don’t engage anything above your limit without support."

She nodded.

Aria ran through the rest, entry formation, expected monster types, comms procedure, extraction conditions and everyone listened closely, Felix included, forcing himself to focus through the hangover.

Once the briefing wrapped, the team loaded onto the Association transport for the ride out to the gate site.

Seraphina took the seat beside Felix. He glanced over. "Ready?"

"Yes."

The transport pulled up near the containment zone a while later, the gate already visible in the distance.

The team disembarked, formed up, and stepped through together into the S-rank rift.