Red raised her hand casually and gave a small shake of her head.
"You poor, innocent woman," she said, almost sounding sad. "I actually feel a little sorry for you."
Then she shrugged.
"But a job is a job."
In that instant, my mother's body locked in place. Her muscles froze, her feet rooted to the ground.
And I was pulled from her arms.
Lifted by an invisible force, I floated toward Miss Red, helpless.
She caught me gently, cradling me like a mother would.
I stared at my real mother.
Her eyes were wide with terror. She trembled as she struggled against the invisible force binding her, trying with everything she had to move, just to take one step closer to me.
But she couldn't.
Red kept talking, her voice calm and casual, like we were just having a conversation.
"You know, Billion," she said, glancing down at me, "I didn't expect this to be the memory you'd get pulled into. You being a baby isn't exactly useful to me. But we've got the whole day ahead of us. We can do so much more than this."
I didn't even look at her.
My eyes stayed locked on my mother.
She stood frozen, still unable to move, and her eyes had filled with tears. They streamed down her cheeks as she watched helplessly.
I squirmed in Red's arms, fighting to get free. I kicked, pushed, and twisted, but my tiny baby body was too weak.
Still, I tried.
I looked at my mother's tearful face and told myself over and over:
This is an illusion.
This isn't real.
Just a distorted memory.
But no matter how many times I repeated it, it didn't help.
Something sharp and heavy tore through my chest. It hurt to breathe. I had already watched my father die right in front of me. And now… I had to watch my mother suffer too?
Even in an illusion?
Even here, I was powerless?
I wanted to scream—to roar loud enough to shatter the sky—but the sound stayed trapped in my throat.
I felt like I was choking.
In desperation, I reached out with my mind, searching for the Essence in the air. For the familiar energy I'd relied on so many times before.
But there was nothing.
In this illusion, I wasn't awakened.
No Essence.
My thoughts spiraled out of control as I struggled to find a way out.
She was in my head.
She had taken my memory, something deeply personal and twisted it. She had forced herself into it, like an unwanted guest rewriting the past, using my confusion to bend everything to her will.
She was playing with me.
And I couldn't stop her not physically, not with power.
I realized then that this wasn't just about strength. This wasn't a battle I could win with Essence or fists.
This was happening inside my mind.
And if that's where the fight was, then that's where I had to resist.
I didn't need Essence for that. I just needed will.I closed my eyes.
Everything around me, the blood, the sky, my mother's frozen body, Red's breath against my cheek—faded into silence. I sank deeper, past the fear, past the helplessness, past the weakness of my baby form.
I dove inward.
Searching for something solid. Something real.
My mind.
The place where my will had always lived. The place that once shaped rivers of Essence, where my Psynapse pulsed like a second heart.
Even if I couldn't feel those powers now… even if the illusion stripped them from me… the part of me that commanded them still had to be here.
I just had to find it.
I drifted through memory, through instinct, through pain.
It was messy at first. Thoughts collided. Emotions screamed. Panic clawed at my chest.
But slowly, I pushed past it all.
I found the version of myself that stood tall in the battlefield.
The me that stood alone against monsters.
The me who could break stone with his fists, who trained until his bones cracked, who carved power into his very skeleton.
That version of me stared back from the depths of my mind, not a baby, not a victim.
Me.
And he was still here.
I breathed in sharply.
Red thought she had control. She thought I was just floating helpless in a cradle of my own memory. But she forgot one thing—
This memory was mine and my Psynapse was insane.
I didn't need Essence to fight.
What I needed was control.
I could feel Red's will creeping into my mind, slowly taking hold of my thoughts and memories. In my vision, it appeared as a dark, viscous sludge, consuming everything that was mine. It slithered through the edges of my consciousness, swallowing my clarity, twisting what was once mine into something alien and distorted.
So I started reclaiming it.
One thought at a time.
I focused on the garden where my father died. I remembered the cracks in the stone path. The breeze before the sky turned red. The way my mother's fingers trembled when she held me.
I rebuilt them, my way.
I sharpened the details. Took ownership of them. As if I were painting the world with my own hands instead of watching it from a cage.
My will flared and directly collided with the dark sludge.
And with every piece I remembered clearly, the illusion weakened.
Red's voice broke through again, amused and curious. "What are you doing, little one? Are you meditating? Oh, that's cute."
But her tone faltered.
The sky above her began to ripple.
The color bled out of it, fading from deep red to a soft gray. The clouds flickered, like they weren't sure they belonged anymore.
I opened my eyes, still in my baby body but something had changed.
The world shifted slightly under my control. Not with power, not with energy. Just with clarity. With intention. With my will.
I willed my body to drift away from Red's grasp. She reached for me, but I forced my will over her, freezing her hand in place, locking it in an invisible grip that even she couldn't escape.
I floated away and stared at her.
Red's eyes narrowed as she stared at me.
"What did you just do?" she asked.
I didn't answer.
Instead, I looked at my mother again—this time, not just to feel sadness or guilt, but to anchor myself.
She mattered. Her memory mattered.
And this woman didn't belong here.
"You're not real," I whispered.
My voice was tiny, high-pitched, still that of an infant but it rang with certainty.
Red frowned.
"Oh, I'm real enough," she said. "Real enough to make you feel pain. Real enough to make you break."
I shook my head slowly.
"This is my mind. My memory. You don't get to make the rules."
For a moment, everything froze.
Then, the world around us shuddered.
The trees in the path twisted back into place. The broken path reformed. The skies cleared just a little more.
I focused harder. Released my mother from Red's grip. Erased the scent of thunder from the air.
Each thought was like a hammer blow against the illusion.
Red's eyes widened as she shouted.
"You're not supposed to be able to do this," she said through clenched teeth. "You're not awake."
"No," I whispered. "But I remember who I am."
In this world of thoughts and memories, that was enough to start turning the tide and I heard multiple notifications.