I'm an Extra, so What?

The Vault Collapses

The air cracked.

Time twisted.

As Luka lunged forward, blades gleaming with burning memory, the world itself tried to stop him.

The First God didn't lift a weapon—he became one.

His arm stretched and split into a lattice of silver fire, trailing symbols that hadn't existed since the First Breath. Each rune burned with the power to erase thought itself.

But Luka did not flinch.

He dove through the storm of vanishing light—slashed once—and carved a wound across divinity.

The god reeled back.

Not in pain.

But in surprise.

"You remember too clearly, Flamebearer."

"They let you burn."

Reality Unhinges

The Vault began to fracture.

Walls bled light. Floor turned to sea. Ceiling became skyless.

Serene pulled Auri back, erecting a holy ward that flickered like a candle in a hurricane.

Snow screamed, "Luka, this place isn't made to hold you both!"

Gregor tried to reach them—but the path collapsed into a floating spiral of stairs, forever folding inward.

Luka gritted his teeth, blades smoking from contact.

"Why now?" he demanded.

"Why wake up now?"

The god stood tall, the wound across his chest sealing slowly.

"Because you remembered me."

"Because the anchors fell."

"Because the girl began to dream."

He pointed at Auri.

"She is the first vessel who might endure me."

"And if I fill her… I become real again."

"Fully. Freely. Forever."

Luka's Choice – Sacrifice, or Fight

The god raised both arms.

A wave of remembrance surged through the chamber—too much, too fast. History, grief, death, creation—it all crashed down. Luka felt his knees buckle.

He saw lifetimes not his own.

He saw himself born and die a thousand times.

He saw Arthur as a boy, alone and unloved, staring at a broken crystal wishing it would speak.

He saw Mourntide weeping over a buried city.

He saw Snow's mother—the last Queen of Flame—sacrifice herself to hide the child who could choose.

Luka screamed and stood again.

"I am not a memory," he growled.

"I'm the man who carries them."

Snow Awakens—Again

Snow flared his wings—

But this time, the fire wasn't silver.

It was white.

Not radiant.

Not holy.

Just truthful.

Snow's body twisted, shimmered, and changed again, not growing—but refining.

He was no longer a baby dragon.

He was the Flame's heir.

And he remembered the god.

"You lied."

"You said you made magic."

"But you stole it from her."

He looked at Auri.

And she opened her eyes.

Auri's Ascension

No longer afraid.

Auri floated upward, the ward melting off her skin.

The light from her hair bled into the air like dawn—gentle, but unstoppable.

The First God stepped back.

"No," he whispered.

"No, no—she's not supposed to wake up yet."

"The flame isn't ready—she isn't ripe—"

Auri looked at him.

And said, in a voice that echoed with every age:

"You're not my creator."

"You're my thief."

She raised her hand.

And the god screamed.

The Flame and the Anchor

Light exploded—not as destruction, but reversal.

The lies collapsed.

The stolen pieces of the First Memory rejoined with Auri, and from her chest bloomed a seed of creation.

It wasn't power.

It was choice.

She turned to Luka.

And offered it to him.

"You've carried the pain."

"Now carry the beginning."

Luka stepped forward, heart pounding.

And as he reached for the seed—

The god lunged in one last desperate strike.

But Snow intercepted him, roaring with flame born from millennia of silence, and drove him back.

"No more gods."

"No more cages."

"No more forgetting."

The World Rewrites Itself

The Vault shattered.

Not violently.

But peacefully.

As if the story had come full circle—and could now finally rest.

The First God fell, not as a villain…

…but as an echo, erased by the choice of those who remembered.

And Auri smiled.

Aboveground – The Morning After

The world had not ended.

It had clarified.

The Obelisks were gone.

The leylines reknit.

Magic… felt calmer. Like a river that no longer screamed to be heard.

In Kellingroot, children played again.

Serene helped rebuild the temple.

Gregor slept leaning against a wall, snoring.

Vaelrith stood like a statue under the moonlight.

And Snow, finally at peace, slept beside Luka's feet.

Luka sat on a hillside with Auri beside him, the last fragments of the seed still glowing faintly in his palm.

She asked:

"Was it worth remembering all of it?"

He smiled softly.

"Yes."

Then—

A flare in the distance.

A signal fire.

Trouble brewing in a land untouched by the Obelisks.

Luka stood.

Because though the gods were gone…

The world still needed remembering.

Three Weeks Later – The Borderlands

The group had grown quiet in the past few days.

Too quiet.

Even Snow—still radiant in his new draconic form—had kept mostly to himself. Luka watched him glide ahead at dusk, silhouetted against a blood-orange sky, wings outstretched like living scripture.

Auri sat in front of Luka on the horse, arms around his waist, humming faintly. She no longer glowed. But the seed still lived in her heart.

And people could feel it.

They'd already been chased from one village.In another, a lord offered them gold for "the little glowing one."

And now…

Ahead lay the fortified border city of Velshar's Gate—last stronghold of the nation of Vernhar, a kingdom that once warred with dragons and claimed to have never forgotten anything.

Which, as Snow muttered, was exactly the kind of place that would try to steal Auri.

Velshar's Gate – Arrival

The city walls were jagged and high, built with darksteel and memorystone. Soldiers wore bronze helms shaped like masks, and their banners bore a silver hourglass dripping flame.

Serene grimaced as they approached the outer checkpoint.

"I've been here once," she whispered to Luka. "They don't ask questions. They ask what you remember."

Gregor snorted. "Hope they're ready for a short story, then."

At the gates, a pair of masked guards raised their hands.

"You travel with a known anomaly," one said in a monotone voice.

"She is not catalogued."

"Submit her for remembering."

Snow stepped forward, voice low and dangerous. "Touch her, and I'll remind you how your kingdom lost to hatchlings."

The guards drew blades.

A tense breath.

Then Luka spoke.

"We came to see your Magister of Memory."

That stopped them.

One looked to the other.

Then nodded.

The Magister's Hall

They were led through polished halls full of echoing whispers and artificial quiet. Murals showed distorted versions of the dragon wars—each one subtly wrong. In one, Luka saw himself kneeling to a king who had never existed.

Serene noticed too. "They rewrote it."

"Not just rewritten," Snow growled. "Pre-written."

At last, they entered a circular chamber of crystal and steam, where a tall woman sat with a scroll unrolling endlessly before her. Her eyes glowed silver. Her voice was like chalk being brushed from stone.

"You brought me the Seed."

Auri stepped back.

The Magister's smile never reached her eyes.

"For centuries, we preserved the truth."

"And now you offer me the power to rewrite everything."

"You are either very bold…"

"Or very foolish."

Luka stepped between her and Auri.

"We're not offering you anything."

An Offer of Control

The Magister raised a hand.

Dozens of guards appeared from mirrored alcoves.

Gregor swore. Snow snarled.

Then—

The scroll stopped.

Time in the room froze—just for a moment.

The Magister's face twitched.

"Do you feel that?" she hissed.

Auri blinked, confused. "I didn't do anything."

"No," said Snow.

"…She's doing it on her own now."

Auri's heartbeat had synchronized with the leyline below the city.

The Seed had grown.

And it had decided that Velshar's Gate did not deserve to remember.

Seedquake

The earth groaned.

The scroll ignited.

From Auri's chest, threads of golden memory lanced outward—not in violence, but in unwriting.

The guards screamed as their minds were rewritten—memories of who gave them orders, what they believed, even why they guarded—all erased.

The Magister shrieked, trying to invoke ancient bindings—but her voice forgot the syllables.

Auri stepped forward.

And whispered:

"You remember wrong things."

"So I will take them."

.

.

.

The city didn't burn.

It simply… reset.

Walls lost color. Statues cracked and fell. People wandered, confused but not harmed, asking who they were supposed to be.

Velshar's Gate became a quiet place.

A forgotten one.

Outside its gates, Luka, Auri, Snow, Serene, and Gregor rode on, the path ahead now eerily still.

Auri looked back once.

Then said:

"That wasn't me."

Luka raised a brow. "Then who was it?"

She touched her chest softly.

"The Seed is dreaming now."

"And it wants to wake more things."

Snow went still.

"Then we need to move."

"Because not everything it wakes will be gentle."

Heat shimmered off golden dunes. The sky was too still. No clouds. No wind. Just the endless whisper of sand shifting like breath.

Auri shielded her eyes. "It's close," she said. "The place that forgot itself."

Luka scanned the horizon. "We're still leagues from any marked city."

Serene murmured, "That's the point. It was erased."

Snow narrowed his eyes, nose twitching. "Someone—or something—has started to remember it back. And not all the memories are… right."

Gregor shaded his eyes with a gauntlet. "What the hell's that?"

At first it looked like a mirage.

Then it moved.

A single black spire rising from the sand—carved in the style of dragonbone, but worn and melted, like it had survived a fire that never stopped burning.

They approached cautiously.

The sand hardened beneath their boots.

Glass beneath every step.

And then they heard it.

Music.

Faint, like a lullaby hummed underwater.

What they found wasn't ruins.

It was a living city—gates half-formed, towers mid-rise, bazaars echoing with voices that weren't there.

Ghosts of shopkeepers called prices. Echoes of sandals clicked on stone. Children laughed—then faded into smoke.

Serene breathed, "This city… it's remembering itself into existence."

Snow hovered near a crumbling statue, sniffing. "No—someone is remembering it."

Auri stood perfectly still.

Her eyes glowed.

"…I can hear them."

"The Dead."

The Memory-Priests of Miraz

They emerged as the sun dipped low—robed figures with bandaged eyes and runes stitched across their arms. Voices like dry paper.

The Memory-Priests.

Once exiled sorcerers who tried to preserve a city struck from the leyline's record. Now, empowered by Auri's awakening, they had pulled Miraz back from oblivion—and with it, the souls who had died believing it never would.

One of them stepped forward.

"You brought the Flamebearer," he rasped, bowing low to Luka.

"And the Seed of Recall."

Luka's hand went to his hilt. "What do you want with her?"

The priest raised his head slowly.

"We want only what she already gives."

"She remembers the truth."

"And through her, we shall remember the dead."

Then the plaza lit up with thousands of flickering blue flames.

Each one—

A memory soul.

The Return of the Dead

They came not as zombies.

Not as puppets.

But as echoes of their former selves—people plucked from history's dust, remade from collective belief.

They looked real.

They felt real.

One stepped toward Luka—a woman in soldier's garb, bearing the crest of a kingdom Luka knew had fallen centuries ago.

"You left me," she whispered, tears in her eyes.

Luka staggered.

"I don't know you."

"You will," she said. "We all remember you."

The Memory-Priest raised his hands.

"You do not understand your importance, Flamebearer."

"You were the last one we forgot."

"And now we've remembered you into every age."

Auri's Fracture

Auri clutched her chest.

The seed pulsed wildly.

"I didn't mean for this," she whispered. "They're not supposed to come back."

Snow leapt beside her. "It's not your fault. They're using your signal like a beacon."

Serene looked at Luka. "We need to go. Now."

But it was too late.

Because from the shadows of the half-formed city, a new figure emerged.

Not a priest.

Not a ghost.

But a child.

Wrapped in chains made of glimmering memory. Eyes too old. A presence that felt outside time.

The Memory-Priests fell to their knees.

"Behold… the Reborn Prince."

Luka froze.

Because he recognized the chains.

Arthur's chains.

But Arthur was still locked in a prison hundreds of miles away…

Wasn't he?

The Echo Prince

The child stepped forward.

Smiling.

And spoke in Arthur's voice—distorted, dreamlike.

"You didn't bury me deep enough."

"The world remembers what I was supposed to be."

"And now, thanks to her—"

He pointed at Auri.

"I don't have to be real to take the throne."

The blue flames around the city surged.

The dead knelt.

Luka drew his blades, trembling.

"This is wrong," Auri whispered. "They're building an empire from false memory."

Snow looked at the sky.

"It gets worse."

"The real Arthur's transport just got intercepted."