Chiaki found herself back along one of Lyvoria Crest's narrower midsection streets, its marble-bricked path dappled with filtered light and whispers of history clinging to the stone. She had expected quiet, perhaps space to think—but instead, her gaze locked on the figure standing just ahead.
Wearing the white-trimmed marine uniform, now flecked with dust, stood a man she recognized instantly.
Desmond.
He looked up from brushing his sleeves, casually adjusting his collar. "Ah. Forgive me—I didn't see you there."
The smile he wore was civil, even charming to a stranger's eyes, but Chiaki caught what lingered behind it: calculation, veiled amusement. He wasn't surprised to see her. Not in the slightest.
She remained still, shoulders square and eyes guarded, the folded letter resting at her side.
"Desmond," she said calmly. "Of course it would be you. Following us again, are you? What do you want?"
He gave a quiet, theatrical sigh, as if her tone wounded him. "Now that's a cold way to greet someone who went out of their way to offer a proper invitation."
He took a small step forward, brushing nonexistent dust from his lapel. "Still, I'm flattered. You remembered my name after only one brief meeting. That must count for something."
Chiaki's grip on the letter tightened slightly. "You sent this," she stated, lifting it faintly. "That invitation to Lyvoria Crest—it came from you."
Desmond's grin widened, this time with open honesty, as if pleased she'd put it together. "Correct. I thought the signature would give it away. Or did I forget to include one?" His tone was mocking, subtle. "Ah well, the important thing is that you came."
"I didn't come because of you," Chiaki replied flatly. "I came because I needed answers. I came for the truth."
"Truth," Desmond repeated, as if tasting the word. "A noble pursuit. And Lyvoria Crest is full of it—if you know where to look." He tilted his head slightly. "But that's the problem with truth, Chiaki. It tends to upset people."
She narrowed her eyes. "If this was a trap, you're wasting your time. I'm not the same girl from before."
"I certainly hope not," he replied smoothly. "The girl from before was… reactive. Emotional. Clouded by loyalty." His eyes flicked to the letter. "Now, I think you're starting to see how fragile those things can be."
Chiaki didn't respond right away. Her body remained still, but her mind raced—calculating what this meeting meant, what Desmond might know, and how far he was willing to push her.
"…You sent this letter to pull me here," she said. "Why? What are you planning?"
Desmond gave a soft laugh and looked around at the surrounding street, arms briefly outstretched as if showing off the scenery.
"I didn't plan anything. I simply extended an invitation to the stage. The performance... well, that's up to you. But let's not pretend you came all this way for some old graves and coincidence."
He stepped closer, voice lower now. "You want to understand why you were marked. Why they tried to silence you. Why even your allies hesitated to tell you the full story."
Chiaki's expression tightened.
"And I'm willing to give you that," Desmond continued, gesturing casually to a side road veering deeper into the city. "But it comes with a condition. You listen. Fully. Without storming off or throwing accusations like everyone else who thinks they know justice."
"Why would I believe a single word you say?" she asked.
His smile didn't fade. If anything, it grew quieter. Sharper.
"Because I'm the only one left who'll tell you the parts no one else dares to speak aloud."
He turned halfway toward the side road, pausing as if waiting for her decision.
"Well then," he said lightly. "Shall we walk?"
Chiaki's voice rang clear and sharp across the narrow street, steady despite the storm coiling in her chest.
"You're telling me… you know what really happened during the Deadly Rain? The truth about those people buried at Lyvoria Crest?"
Desmond turned back to her slowly, the white of his uniform catching faint light as he adjusted the cuffs with surgical precision. The smile on his face was faint but calculating—measured, like someone preparing to remove the last mask in a room full of them.
"I do," he said simply. "Though I suspect you already know the version they wanted you to believe."
Her jaw clenched. "The purge," she said. "The Marines marked every Resonator in the crimson zones as a threat. Branded them unstable. Dangerous. Then they sent in strike teams under the banner of justice and slaughtered everyone."
Desmond gave a slight nod, unbothered. "Yes. That's the story passed around behind closed doors—the story those with clearance whisper when the reports stop making sense. The one that turns stomachs but still makes tactical sense. It frames the event as brutal… but necessary."
He stepped forward, just one slow pace.
"But what you were never told… is why it happened. And what the purge was really for."
Chiaki's brow furrowed, her fingers tightening around the letter at her side. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Desmond continued, voice calm but grave, "that the Deadly Rain wasn't just an execution. It was a rehearsal. A trial run for something larger. The Resonators in those zones weren't simply targeted because they were dangerous—they were selected. Chosen based on specific resonance patterns. You think it was chaos, but every name on those lists was filtered through something deeper than any public threat assessment."
Chiaki's stomach turned. "Selected... for what?"
Desmond's tone grew colder.
"For study. The way you'd isolate a disease. Someone within the upper echelon—far above field admirals—had discovered that resonance could be manipulated, amplified under pressure. They wanted to see how it behaved in collapse. How the soul breaks. How it fights. And what's left after."
He paused, then added, "But it didn't stop there. Some Resonators weren't killed outright. They were captured. Transported to sealed facilities beneath key Marine installations and tested—broken down and reassembled through an experimental process. One they called Soul Severance."
Chiaki took an instinctive step back, her breath catching as if the words had struck her in the chest. "Soul Severance...?"
"It's real," he said, quieter now. "Very real. Machines were built for it. Cold, clinical instruments—designed not to kill, but to extract. To sever the soul from the host while keeping the body alive. Not for healing. Not for understanding. For control."
She blinked rapidly. "No... that can't... that's not... I don't remember any of that."
"You're not supposed to," Desmond replied softly. "The memories were shattered. Deliberately. Your mind was fragmented to prevent recall. Not to protect you—but to prevent what remembering might awaken."
Chiaki's throat tightened as the fragmented images in her head—flashes of white rooms, mechanical humming, screaming that didn't feel like hers—suddenly took on a horrifying clarity.
"You're saying… I was one of them?" Her voice trembled. "They tested on me?"
He didn't answer at first. His silence was enough.
Chiaki staggered back another step, her legs heavy, as if the weight of those words dragged her into the ground. "No. No, that's not… I wasn't part of that. I couldn't have been. I was just— I remember a home. A life. A mother—!"
"They gave you those," Desmond said gently, his voice no longer cruel or mocking. "Memories restructured. Identities rewritten. You weren't meant to question it. You were meant to carry on without ever realizing what they did."
Her hands trembled now, the letter crumpled at her side, her other arm instinctively rising to her chest as if shielding her heart.
"I didn't ask for this," she whispered.
"No," Desmond said. "You didn't. But that's what makes it all the more cruel, doesn't it?"
He let the quiet fill the space between them before continuing.
"You didn't just survive the purge, Chiaki. You endured what no one else could. You weren't broken. You absorbed it. You became something they couldn't predict. That's why they buried the rest here, and buried you in someone else's life."
Her eyes glistened now, her voice fraying. "Then what am I...?"
Desmond looked at her and spoke without hesitation. "You're the last proof of what they did—and the only one who might still be able to undo it. But the question is, now that you know… what will you do with it?"
Chiaki didn't answer. She couldn't.
She turned her face slightly away, her breath shaky, her thoughts spiraling like glass shattering inward. The truth was too much—too vast. And yet, it had already taken root.
Desmond, watching her silently, took a step back—not pressing further. The damage was done. The veil had been lifted.
Chiaki didn't speak.
She turned slightly away, unable to meet his gaze. Her breathing was shallow now, each inhale unsteady. The truth—if it could even be called that—gnawed at the edges of her sanity, pressing in with relentless weight. Her fingers clenched the crumpled letter against her side like an anchor, but it no longer grounded her.
"…Then who am I?" she whispered at last, barely audible.
Desmond said nothing.
Her voice came again, cracking under the pressure. "If everything I remember was altered—if the person I believed I was was stitched together from someone else's pieces—then what does that make me? A shell? A lie dressed up as a girl?"
She turned to him then, her eyes not angry but deeply wounded, glassy and distant.
"Were any of my memories real? My mother's face... my childhood… the people I thought I lost…" Her voice hitched. "Did any of that even happen?"
Desmond's posture didn't waver. "Some of it likely did. Enough to keep you stable. Enough to anchor your identity. But the rest was... adjusted. Muted. Rewritten."
Chiaki stepped backward, her mind spiraling. "So I've been living a life someone else decided for me. Breathing with someone else's lungs. Mourning someone else's pain…"
She gritted her teeth and looked down at her hands as if seeing them for the first time.
"I trusted them," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "All those years. I trusted the silence. The gaps. I thought it was trauma. I thought forgetting was my own fault."
Then, suddenly, her voice sharpened.
"But if I didn't forget—if they made me forget—then what right do I have to even call myself me anymore?"
Desmond, for once, softened his expression. Not with sympathy, but a rare kind of gravity.
"That," he said quietly, "is exactly what they wanted you to ask."
Chiaki stood still, her chest rising and falling in short, uneven rhythms. Her thoughts were no longer racing—they were collapsing. Crashing down around her like pillars breaking in sequence.
"I don't know what I am," she whispered. "A test? A survivor? A weapon that never went off?"
She took a step back, voice barely holding.
"Or maybe I died in that lab, and this… this is what's left of me."
Silence. It hung between them like a chasm. And though Desmond remained composed, the air around Chiaki felt heavier now—charged with a grief she hadn't yet allowed herself to feel until this very moment.
Then, after a long pause, Desmond said, almost gently:
"Or maybe… you're the only one who gets to decide who you are now."
But Chiaki didn't answer.
She simply turned her back to him, eyes fixed on the stone path ahead, and began to walk away—slowly, without purpose, like someone trying to remember what her legs were made for.
To be continued...