The scent of ozone and antiseptic fluid clung to every breath Davin Ronan took for twenty-six years of his life. The room he currently occupied lacked corners; its walls curved, glowing a sterile white that reflected the cold hum of the overhead LED lights. The place was called The Sanctum, a high-security isolation laboratory where the ruling faction concealed their most dangerous asset: a Memory Architect.

Davin sat on a backless metal chair. His breathing was short and ragged. Cold sweat mixed with fresh blood streamed from his nose, dripping onto the white ceramic floor below and leaving dark red spots. At his temples, dozens of micro-nerve cables—made of liquid fiber optics—embedded directly into his scalp, linking to a refrigerator-sized memory-processing machine in the corner of the room.

The machine vibrated violently, emitting a high-pitched whine that pierced his eardrums.

"Architect Ronan, category-A trauma memory extraction is reaching its final stage. Please do not offer voluntary resistance," the synthetic voice of the central computer echoed, flat and emotionless, through the ceiling speaker.

Davin smirked. His lips were cracked and bleeding. Resistance? He had long passed the point where he could fight back physically. Today, he was not being extracted. He was attempting to do the one thing strictly forbidden by the laws of this world: erase his own memory.

As a Memory Architect, Davin’s lifelong duty was to assemble, modify, or discard the memories of high-ranking faction officials who suffered severe psychological trauma from cosmic experiments. Yet, no one knew that for years, Davin had secretly hidden a cache of forbidden memories in the deepest corner of his mind—memories of the cruel experiments that took his family, the agony of thousands of foreign minds forced into his head, and the grand secret of who created the world he lived in.

If I have to die today, Davin thought, staring blankly at his own reflection in the glass wall, then these secrets will die with me. They must not have my memories.

"The system detects an anomaly in temporal lobe activity," the computer's voice shifted to a sharp warning tone. The sterile white lights in the room suddenly flickered, turning blood red. "Warning: Information entropy surge detected. Cranial nerves experiencing total collapse."

"Good..." Davin whispered, his voice raspy, barely audible amidst the roaring din of the accelerating machine.

The pain did not arrive as a physical blow, but as an explosion inside his head. It felt as though thousands of hot glass shards were being slowly ground inside his skull. His vision flashed brilliantly, shattering into a million colorful fragments before finally plunging into total darkness. The cables at his temples popped, sparking small blue flames, and Davin’s body slumped off the chair, falling helplessly onto the cold floor.

The world stopped. His heart stopped beating.

Yet, death turned out not to be the end of everything.

When Davin’s consciousness slowly crept back, he no longer felt a headache. He didn't feel the chill of the laboratory floor, the scent of antiseptic, or the hum of machinery. Surrounding him now was absolute silence. An infinite vacuum where a cosmic gray stretched as far as the eye could see. There was no up, no down. Only himself and the expanse of emptiness.

Am I dead? Davin thought, staring at his own hands, which appeared translucent, as though made of faint particles of light.

"You are indeed dead, Davin Ronan," a voice echoed from every direction, heavy, rolling like suppressed thunder in the depths of an abyss.

Davin spun around instantly. Before him, the darkness began to writhe. The silhouette of a giant humanoid shadow entity stood towering. Its cloak expanded into the void, composed of thousands of starlight dots flickering slowly and dying. In the entity's hand hovered a massive book bound in pitch-black leather, inscribed with ancient silver carvings that emitted a dim, bluish glow.

The book was tightly shut, but the ancient aura and absolute power radiating from it made the air in the vacuum vibrate.

The Ledger—the name suddenly surfaced inside Davin's head, as if planted directly by cosmic consciousness.

Davin straightened his body, though the lingering trauma of his past still left a dull ache in his chest. He looked up, gazing at the shadow entity without fear. He had seen too many insane things during his life in the lab, so death and a shadow god no longer surprised him.

"So, you're the one who took my soul before it could perish in the underworld down there?" Davin asked, his voice calm, albeit slightly trembling. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Or are you part of the faction's security system that catches me even in the afterlife?"

The shadow entity did not reply immediately. It lowered its faceless head toward the book in its hand. A low, raspy chuckle escaped the figure, resembling the friction of old paper turned by the wind.

"Security system?" The voice sneered lightly. "The world you lived in is merely a dying speck of dust, Davin. The rulers in that lab don't even know the true meaning of the memories you hold. They are prisoners within their own cage. But you... you carry something extremely precious within your soul."

Davin narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You are a Memory Architect. Your soul has been forged by pain, manipulation, and a desperate search for truth," the shadow entity stepped closer. Every step created ripples of light across the floor of the void. "And The Ledger—the grand record book tracking every fragment of existence in the multiverse—needs a new bearer. A vessel unafraid of destruction."

Davin snorted softly, then smiled faintly—a cynical smile he often flashed his superiors back in the lab. "Ah, I see. I died only to be turned into a slave or a new tool for another cosmic entity? I don't think I'm interested. Given the choice, I'd rather just fade away completely."

"That choice vanished the moment you decided to defy fate in your world," the shadow entity retorted sharply.

Before Davin could reply, the giant book before the entity suddenly shook violently. Its silver clasps unlocked with a sharp metallic chime.

Whoosh!

Page after page of The Ledger flew open with incredible speed, emitting a blinding white light that tore through the darkness of the void. A fierce wind blew from within the book, pulling Davin's body forward as if sucked by the gravity of a black hole.

Davin stretched out his arms, trying to fight the pull, but his particle body was too weak. He stared at the shadow entity, who now raised its right hand into the air.

"Welcome to the beginning of your true journey, Architect," the entity's voice echoed further away as Davin's body continued to be pulled closer to the glowing book pages. "Let's see what story you will write upon the canvas of a new cosmos."

"Damn it..." Davin grumbled amidst the blinding gale of light.

Right before his consciousness was fully sucked into the cosmic parchment, The Ledger's cover slammed shut. At the same exact moment, a flash of silver light darted out from the book's pages, piercing the void and striking the back of Davin's right hand dead center.

Incredible heat burned his skin. A complex geometric symbol, resembling an hourglass eye surrounded by chains of ancient scripts, was permanently etched onto the back of his hand, glowing brightly with a golden-blue hue.

Davin hissed in pain as the symbol seeped into his bones. Instantly, the world around him exploded into a fast-spinning vortex of white light, erasing all his consciousness and hurling him through an endless veil of dimensions.