Aiden seized it.
"He found others—like him. Lost ones. Forgotten names. Shadows of shadows. And together they rewrote the world. Not because they could... but because they refused not to."
The presence did not flee.
It pressed closer.
Its non-being wrapped like cold breath around his chest, tightening. Words turned to ash in his mouth. The Book threatened to vanish from his grip entirely.
But he held on.
Not to power.
To purpose.
And then—softly, impossibly—he felt it.
A ripple.
A question.
Not in language.
Not in thought.
But in absence.
Like something asking, "What are you?"
He answered:
"I am the memory of the thing you never knew."
"And I will teach you what you were never allowed to be."
A spark lit the void.
Small.
Brief.
But it was a start.
And Aiden stepped forward again.
Because now, he knew—
The Hunger Without Memory wasn't just a threat.
It was a blank slate.
A child that had never known story.
And the only way to stop it from erasing everything—
