🌌 The Masked Memory: New Mask, Same Task

 

A side-story from the Chronicles of Eshwik Universe

Written by Rajesh Nalakukala

🕯️ Prologue: The Hollow Without Time

There exists a realm where time isn’t measured by ticking clocks, but by forgotten sighs. No sun rises, no moon fades. This is Mythra Hollow—a wasteland beyond paradoxes, where the rules of reality are discarded like used parchment.

And in its center stands a tower of unwritten memories.
It is guarded by a masked figure who walks its winding halls—alone, relentless, silent.

His name?
Veyren.

Not that anyone remembers him. He was made to forget.

But his task was never to feel or to question—only to contain what the GOP rejected. Mythra Hollow is the drain of time. And Veyren is the mop.

🌀 Chapter One: A Child Without an Echo

On the seventh duskless shift, something changed.

Veyren felt a ripple in the silence—not like wind or sound, but a presence that shouldn’t exist. Something new in a place where only the forgotten dwell.

In the Labyrinth of Unwritten Fates, beneath the skeletal tree that never bloomed, sat a boy. Ten years old at most. Barefoot. Blank-eyed. Silent.

He had no aura, no recorded past, no echo in the timeline.

“Who are you?” Veyren asked, breaking the vow of silence.

The boy stared ahead. He didn’t blink.

“This place is poison for the remembered,” Veyren continued. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Still, no response.

Then a voice—silent but undeniable—whispered in the back of Veyren’s mind:

"Kyven."

A name. But one Veyren wasn’t supposed to know.

And yet… he remembered it. Not from books. Not from memories.

From himself.

🔥 Chapter Two: Broken Books and Shattered Names

The presence of Kyven unraveled the library.

Sealed timelines cracked open. Books chained shut for centuries began to bleed ink. Scrolls burst into flames—not with fire, but with forgotten truths.

On a wall of living parchment, three names inked themselves in burning red:

• Eshwik

• Saanvi

• Zyro

Each a ghost from GOP. Each a thread Veyren once severed.

And in the reflection of the cracked time mirror, Kyven took different forms:

• A child version of Eshwik, smiling shyly.

• A younger R, with scars still fresh.

• And one where Kyven was nothing—just eyes, watching.

“You’re not real,” Veyren whispered.

But Kyven finally spoke:

“Neither are you.”

⚔️ Chapter Three: The Mask and the Mirror

That night, Mythra Hollow opened its wounds.

A gateway tore through the sky—bleeding light from GOP, where Revn, Present E, and Zyro battled amid collapsing timelines. The consequences spilled across dimensions.

And Kyven began absorbing them.

Each touch of a memory well, each gaze into a forbidden scroll… changed him.

His body grew older. His voice, deeper. His aura now mirrored Veyren’s.
He was becoming… the next.

“You rewrite yourself,” Veyren warned. “You’re shaping a self from discarded versions.”

“Because you forgot to.”

Veyren stumbled back. His mask cracked.

🪶 Chapter Four: The Memory You Tried to Bury

In the black heart of Mythra, Veyren did what he swore never to do.

He opened the Scroll of Eternal Loops—a text bound in soul-ink and locked by thirteen paradoxes.

It revealed what he had hidden from even himself:

Veyren was the first Recorder.
The one who first saw too much.
Who first chose the mask to forget the unbearable truths.
Who once erased the child Kyven… in a future that never existed.
But somehow—Kyven had returned.

“You were supposed to be a ripple,” Veyren said. “Not a tide.”

Kyven stepped forward, his voice ancient now:

“I am the memory you buried. The piece of you that refused to vanish.”

🌌 Chapter Five: New Mask, Same Task

Veyren lifted the final page of the loop scroll.

It was blank.

For the first time in eons, he knelt.

                           

“You were right to return,” he whispered. “I was wrong to erase you.”

Kyven held his hand. In that moment—silent and still—something greater than time passed between them.

Veyren took off his broken mask and held out half of it.

“If you must rewrite this world,” he said, “do it with remembrance, not vengeance.”

Kyven nodded. His eyes glowed softly.

“New mask,” he whispered. “Same task.”

✨ Epilogue: To Be Continued In…

As the Library hummed once more and Mythra Hollow calmed, a whisper slithered through the veils of reality:

“The Library That Hums With Ghosts…”

In GOP, Saanvi and Revn felt it.
In the shadows, Zyro stirred again.
And somewhere deeper, "R" paused… and smiled.

🪶 Author’s Note:

This story is part of the Chronicles of Eshwik Universe and connects directly to The Testament of Forgotten Fire and The Ashes of Rewrite. Kyven and Veyren are new characters forged from forgotten timelines. More fragments of this mythic tale will unfold.