Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 13: Ghost eating Ghosts
I step out of the mist and my boots sink into something soft.
I flinch, muscles tensing for a trap, but nothing snaps. No vines descend.
I look down. It’s not mud. It’s stone, covered in a thick, sponge-like grey moss.
I stumble forward a few more feet, putting the wall of fog behind me, and then I just let gravity win. I collapse onto the mossy ground.
It’s cold. Wet. And absolutely wonderful.
I roll onto my back, staring up at a weeping grey sky. The temperature is cool, hovering near freezing—a blessing for my lungs after the suffocating heat of the forest. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, tasting the fresh, damp air.
And what I notice is... Silence.
No screams. No vibrating roots. Just the whisper of a light breeze brushing against the rocks.
I summon the HUD for a location tag.
[Current Zone: Grey Moss Tundra]
[Zone Rank: E (Shell)]
[Danger Level: Low]
Tundra, I think, watching a cloud drift sluggishly above. That explains the chill.
I don’t know this specific zone. I can’t remember the tens of thousands of maps that exist in Thirstfall. The maps in the Archives were always shifting for the outer rings anyway. But "Low Danger" is the most beautiful thing I’ve read all day.
I close my eyes again, letting the adrenaline crash. My hands are shaking, not from fear, but from the sheer exhaustion of piloting a Rank F body through hell. The wound on my back starts to sting—a sharp, cold burn reminding me that I’m mortal.
I’m alive. Wounded, exhausted, and lost. But alive.
A notification chime rings in my head, breaking the silence. A golden prompt that I’ve been waiting for.
[Quest Complete: The Head Start]
[Welcome to Thirstfall.]
"Nice damn welcome I received," I mutter. "Damn system..."
I force myself to sit up, wincing as the movement stretches my torn skin.
"Show me," I whisper. "Show me what I bought with my life."
I focus on the cold weight in my chest, and the Status Window expands in my vision. It’s not the standard blue interface of the Alliance. It’s gold, ancient, and jagged.
[STATUS]
Name: Dryden Sands
Rank: F (Shell) — ★☆☆☆☆
Class: Drifter - Order [SSS]
Class Type: Unique
OXI: 780 / 1200 (Draining)
[ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: E (1★)
Agility: E (1★)
Vitality: E (1★)
Spirit: E (1★)
Wisdom: B (3★) [Retained from Memory]
[LEGACY]
Aion Codex (Seal 1/7 Unlocked)
[CLASS SKILLS]
> Memory of Lightwaves (Active/Passive)
Trace (Passive): Allows the user to see the "Echoes" of recent events or paths left by the deceased.
Rescue (Active): Extract the fading memory and remaining Essence from an Echo’s Fragments.
Link (Passive): Detects and recognizes the true soul of an item, revealing hidden statuses. Requires assimilation.
Consume (Locked): Requires Rank D (Coral).
Overmemory (Locked): Requires Rank C (Reef).
I stare at the screen.
Drifter... Unique... Rank SSS? What in the hell is this?
As far as I remember, an SSS class is a one-in-fifty-thousand occurrence, and mine is Unique on top of that? Is that even possible? I can’t remember any Unique class surpassing S Rank in the records.
Well, to compensate, the attributes are pathetic—standard One-Star Shallow garbage—except for Wisdom. My mind is sharp, even if my body is made of glass.
But it’s the skill that catches my eye.
Memory of Lightwaves.
Extract memory and Essence from a deceased Echo’s Fragments.
It’s not a combat skill. It’s not a fireball or a shield. It’s a scavenger’s tool.
"Fitting," I mutter, closing the window. "I’m a ghost eating ghosts."
I look around the silent tundra. The moss stretches for miles, grey and empty.
But now, looking closer with my new eyes, I notice something.
A hundred and sixty feet away, near a jagged rock formation, the air is shimmering slightly. A faint, pale distortion that wasn’t there before.
A heat haze in this freezing temperature?
My mind screams at me to check it.
I approach cautiously. With this fragile body, a sudden gust of wind could kill me. Maybe getting close enough just to look is safe.
I focus on it, and my HUD chimes.
[Trace Found.]
Deciding to follow it, I search the ground and grab a sharp rock—I need something resembling a weapon—and push myself up. My legs protest, but curiosity is a powerful painkiller.
I walk toward the shimmer. As I get closer, the distortion resolves into a shape.
It’s a black cloak. Or what’s left of one.
A skeleton, half-buried in the moss, picked clean by time and wind. It’s been there for years. Long before I arrived.
But hovering over the bones is a flickering, white light. An Echo waiting to be heard.
I kneel beside the bones. They are wearing tattered leather armor—old style, maybe from the Second Expansion.
I reach out my hand.
"Sorry, friend," I whisper. "I need your memories more than you do."
[Activate Skill: Rescue?]
"Yes."
The next moment, my body tingles. A strong wind blows upward, not just against my skin, but against my soul. My eyes shine like prisms, and I feel the landscape accelerating in reverse.
A time spell cast upon my vision.
Like a movie rewinding, I see the fallen man. First, I feel his last breath, his pain, his crushing loneliness. And then, life snapping back into the body.
In this moment, I am him, and he is me.
I feel trapped in his flesh, at the mercy of fate, watching his final moments as a suffering spectator. I realize that nothing I do can change the script.
The sun streaks backward across the sky, west to east, and the night returns with unnatural speed.
I feel the pain in his chest—excruciating. A hole, an inch wide, deep enough to lose my fingers in. A fatal bleed.
The man clutches his wound. I feel his agony, his frantic thoughts. He misses home. He misses the daughter he will never meet, who is yet to be born.
He stands up from where he fell and walks backward.
He stumbles after a few feet, and then a fight unfolds in reverse. A massive bird screeches, un-flying from the sky. I feel the beak tearing into his shoulder just before he "defeats" it, pulling his katana out of its throat.
Everything accelerates. The details bombard my mind like an explosion. His life flashes before my eyes in seconds, and then—snap.
I am slammed back into the present.
A splitting headache in my temporal lobe sends me to my knees.
"Argh... Shit... What the hell was that?"
Slowly, the throbbing subsides, and I can process what just happened.
I didn’t just see his memories. I felt them.
This sucks, I think, wiping sweat from my forehead. I have to be careful with this. Dying twice in one day is a drag.
Thinking about the side effects... how many more times will I have to go through this?
I force myself to focus. I list the useful intel in my mind:
One. The man came from the northern trail, just past those shrubs. There is likely civilization or a shelter in that direction.
Two. He carried a katana. I need to check if it’s still here and usable.
Three. And most importantly... the night is not as calm as the day.
During the night in his memory, the cold was bone-cracking, and monsters were stalking him the entire time.
This skill is useful, but the kickback is brutal.
For a second, I miss a daughter that isn’t mine—and the feeling is indistinguishable from missing Lili.
People are made of memories. By acquiring his, something inside me aches for a family that isn’t mine. Feelings that aren’t mine. A personality that doesn’t belong to me.
This will be a problem, I realize, looking at my trembling hands. How long can I keep my own essence before I drown in theirs?
I shake off the phantom emotions, burying them deep. I can deal with the identity crisis later. Right now, I need the hardware.
I turn back to the skeleton and start digging through the thick moss where his right hand used to be. The leather glove disintegrates at my touch, turning to dust.
Come on... be there. Don’t tell me you rusted away.
My fingers brush against something cold and hard. Metal.
I grip the handle—the wrapping is rotted, leaving only the rough shark skin underneath—and pull.
With a wet sucking sound, the moss releases its prize.
It’s a katana. Or what’s left of one. The blade is pitted with dark spots of oxidation, and the edge looks duller than a butter knife. But the core steel is intact. Compared to a sharp rock, this is Excalibur.
[Item Acquired: Weathered Steel Katana]
[Rank: F (Shell)]
[Durability: 12/50]
"Better than nothing," I grunt, testing the weight. It’s heavy for my weak arms, but balanced.
Another chime rings.
[Skill ’Rescue’ Successful.]
[Absorbed Fragment of Echo.]
[Reward: +2% to Rank Advancement.]
[Spirit Attribute increased slightly due to soul resonance.]
I feel a faint warmth spreading through my chest, chasing away some of the chill. My fatigue doesn’t vanish, but the edge dulls. So, this is how a Drifter grows. Not just by fighting, but by witnessing the dead.
I use the sword as a cane to stand up fully. The wind picks up again, but this time, it doesn’t whisper. It howls.
The temperature drops instantly. I can see my breath misting in the air.
I look at the sky. The weeping grey clouds are darkening, turning a bruised purple. The sun is dipping below the jagged horizon of the Tundra.
I remember the dead man’s memory. The night wasn’t just cold. It was alive.
In his memories, the moss didn’t just cushion his feet; it hid things. Things with too many legs and a hunger for warm blood.
I check my OXI gauge.
[OXI: 765 / 1200]
If I stay here, the cold will burn through my OXI to keep me warm. If the cold doesn’t kill me, the things waking up beneath the rocks will.
I look North, toward the trail the dead man came from.
Suddenly, a terrifying howl screams from the depths of the Tundra.
It’s not the wind. It’s guttural, hungry, and far too close.
I stare into the gloom, seeing nothing but shadows, but the hair on my arms stands up. My veteran instincts scream.
Something is hunting me.
The "sanctuary" of the day is over.
I tighten my grip on the rusted hilt and start walking. I’m not exploring anymore.
I’m racing the dark.
