Toxic white smoke billowed thickly from the melting roots of the giant tree, which had transformed into pitch-black ink. The muffled screams of the shadow overseer, who had lost his footing, handed Davin a golden opportunity. Without wasting a single second, Davin pivoted and sprinted hard through the darkness of the night, putting distance between himself and the hillside slope that was now slowly collapsing into nothingness.

His footsteps thundered across the village ground, which had begun to shake violently. The wooden houses around the main street creaked loudly, their walls beginning to crack and peel, revealing red digital particles drifting in the air. Oakhaven was dying. The system supporting this simulation was experiencing a total system crash due to the clash of information anomalies between Davin and the Archivist.

Amidst the chaos, Davin’s eyes caught an irregularity behind the ruins of the town hall. A heavy iron door embedded in the stone floor was half-exposed due to the sunken earth. From the crack of the door, a weak blue-golden light pulsed, calling out to his instincts.

The source of the anomaly... Davin thought.

He accelerated his run, leaping over the wreckage of a collapsed wooden fence, and slammed his body against the iron door. With the aid of his momentum and the remainder of his adrenaline-fueled strength, the heavy door swung open with a loud, ear-piercing screech of metal.

Beyond it, a steep, dark stone staircase led downward into the subterranean earth. Without a second thought, Davin leaped down, letting himself slide into the darkness of the earth's belly.

The atmosphere inside the underground corridor shifted drastically. If on the surface he had felt the fresh pine forest air, here the atmosphere felt dense, stuffy, and chest-tightening. The space was narrow and claustrophobic, its stone walls slick with dripping water, and the scent of ozone and rusted iron stabbed sharply into his nasal passages. The roaring sound of destruction above sounded muffled, resembling distant ocean waves at the bottom of the sea.

Davin brushed against the cold stone wall to keep his balance as he descended step by steep step. The deeper he went, the stronger the rhythmic pulse on the back of his hand became. The hourglass eye symbol flickered brightly, casting a silver light that illuminated a small fraction of the path ahead.

"Damn... what on earth is this place?" Davin muttered, his breath growing ragged as the oxygen levels thinned.

After descending dozens of steps, the end of the corridor finally opened into a vast underground cave. In the center of the cave floated a majestic giant artifact shaped like an octagonal crystal pulsing slowly. The crystal emitted a dim blue light, and deep within its core, billions of data strands flickered like a mini galaxy spinning in fragile harmony.

Davin halted a few meters from the crystal. Goosebumps broke out across his skin. He could feel massive waves of informational energy radiating from the artifact, striking his consciousness slowly but surely.

This is the heart of the entire Oakhaven world, Davin thought.

Driven by curiosity mixed with the instincts of a Memory Architect, Davin stepped closer. He knew the risks. His Echo ability would absorb all memories from any object he touched. If a wooden table had nearly cracked his head open, what would happen if he touched a dimension-controlling crystal of this magnitude?

Yet, he had no choice. If he wanted to know why he was pulled to this place and what connection The Ledger had to him, he had to touch it.

Davin took a deep breath, extended his right hand, and stretched his palm forward. His fingertips brushed the cold surface of the crystal.

Boom!

Instantly, the outside world vanished. Davin felt as though his consciousness had been struck by a high-speed train.

Flashes of foreign memories instantly assaulted his mind like millions of sharp glass shards tearing through his skull. Within his spinning mind, Davin saw fragments of shattered history: a sterile, bloody laboratory, the panic-stricken faces of foreign scientists, the destruction of a futuristic metropolitan city due to a cosmic energy explosion, and a middle-aged man in a white lab coat dying on the cold floor, trying to save the last fragments of his consciousness into a digital system.

Incredible pain struck the nerves of his head. Fresh blood dripped from Davin's nose, flowing past his lips. He wanted to scream, but his throat felt choked by the pile of foreign data forced into his brain.

"Core memory identified... Subject: Out-of-Bound Explorer - Echo Gen-0... Status: Total failure..." the mechanical voice of The Ledger echoed loudly inside his skull.

Amidst the assaulting information storm, the blue light inside the giant crystal suddenly shifted into a warm golden hue. The data strands inside the crystal spun faster, projecting a beam of holographic light into the air right before Davin.

The light formed the silhouette of a human.

Davin gasped for breath, dropping to one knee on the cave floor while clutching his heavily throbbing head. He raised his gaze with great difficulty, staring at the projection of light before him.

The figure beamed from the crystal projector was a young boy with messy hair, around ten years old, wearing an oversized lab uniform. The boy's face... looked eerily similar to Davin's own face when he was a child in his original world.

The holographic young boy turned toward Davin. His lips moved, producing a clear yet faint voice carrying an overwhelming weight of despair:

"If you are reading this message... it means this cycle has shattered once more," the young boy's projection said, staring straight into Davin's eyes. "Do not trust the system guiding you. The Ledger is not a savior; it is a coffin locking our souls in a circle of lies."

Davin held his breath, his eyes widening in disbelief.

The projector flickered, weakening as cracks appeared on the surface of the giant crystal. Right before the young boy's image dissolved into shards of light, he delivered the final sentence that instantly froze Davin's blood:

"This system is a prison, and the key lies within your blood. Wake up, Architect... before your true memories are erased forever."