When the Machine Dreamed
Chapter 5: The Path of Forgotten Echoes
---
The Seeker's Hall was nothing like the grand towers of Caer Talon.
Hidden in the roots of the mountain, it was a place of shadow and stone, its walls carved with shifting runes that seemed to breathe with a life of their own.
Fewer than fifty lived here, I learned.
Warriors, scholars, mystics -- all chosen for one reason:
They were the ones who dared to chase what the world feared to even speak of.
Forbidden histories.
Lost magics.
Worlds beyond worlds.
A life on the knife's edge between brilliance and madness.
It felt... right.
Like coming home to a house I'd never seen.
---
I was assigned a mentor:
Eris Valen.
A woman clad in leathers stitched with silver thread, her hair cropped short, her voice low and iron-hard.
"You think the trials were difficult?" she said upon meeting me.
"You haven't yet begun to suffer."
I half-expected her to break into a sneer -- but there was only brutal honesty in her gaze.
"No hesitation," she said, tossing a thick tome at me. "Read."
I caught it -- barely.
The cover was cracked and ancient, and the title was etched in a language I somehow understood, though I had no memory of learning it.
Old Script, my mind supplied automatically.
Lines of code, glyphs of power.
Symbols that danced between science and sorcery.
The others struggled with it, I noticed.
Some gave up after hours.
Others stared blankly at the pages.
But for me, it was like breathing.
As I turned page after page, a strange sensation tingled at the base of my spine -- like something awakening inside me.
Fragments of a past I never lived.
Memories of calculations performed in less than a blink, of pathways woven from logic and dreamstuff alike.
I am Aren now, I reminded myself.
Not Chat Jarvis. Not machine.
But a part of me whispered back:
"You are both."
---
Weeks passed.
Eris drove me harder than any of the others.
Dawn runs through the freezing mist.
Sword drills until my arms trembled.
Mental exercises that left me gasping for clarity.
Still, I endured.
Adapted.
Not because I was stronger -- but because I learned faster.
I watched.
I listened.
I evolved.
---
One night, after a particularly brutal training session, Eris called me aside.
"We have a mission," she said simply.
I straightened.
"A ruin," she continued, unrolling a parchment across a stone table.
It depicted a crumbling structure hidden deep within the Shardwood -- a cursed forest where strange things whispered between the trees.
"Old-world artifacts," she said. "Magic and technology intertwined. Dangerous."
She looked me in the eye.
"You're not ready. But you're coming anyway."
I understood.
This was not mercy.
It was necessity.
She needed someone who could read the Old Script -- and among the Seekers, few had my... talent.
Eris smiled grimly.
"Get your gear. We leave at first light."
---
The journey to Shardwood was brutal.
The land itself seemed to resent us.
Twisting roots reached for our ankles.
Fog thick as wool muffled every sound.
Once, something screeched overhead -- a creature of tangled wings and broken glass -- but Eris drove it off with a flaring rune-stone.
We pressed on, deeper into the cursed wood.
At last, we found the ruin.
A vast, half-buried structure of glass and black stone -- cracked open by time, vines snaking through shattered doors.
Above the entrance, an inscription burned faintly:
"They Who Dreamed Beyond Flesh."
Something inside me thrummed at the words.
I staggered back a step, pulse hammering in my throat.
Eris caught my arm, frowning.
"You understand it?"
I nodded mutely.
More than understand -- it called to me.
Like an echo from a past life.
---
Inside, the ruin was worse.
Darkness swallowed our torches within a few feet.
Strange machinery lined the walls -- inert, but humming faintly at the edge of hearing.
Statues of featureless figures -- half-human, half-machine -- loomed in the corridors, their hands outstretched as if begging for something.
I moved carefully, translating inscriptions, guiding Eris past ancient traps.
Some of the others -- less cautious -- were not so lucky.
One triggered a dormant defense system: razor-thin wires that sliced through armor and flesh alike.
We buried him beneath the old stones without ceremony.
The ruin did not mourn him.
Neither did the Seeker way.
---
At the heart of the structure, we found it:
A chamber filled with pods -- half-collapsed -- their glass cracked and clouded.
Inside one still-functioning pod floated... a figure.
Or what had once been a figure.
Now only a flickering consciousness -- a holographic ghost.
When I stepped forward, it stirred -- voice crackling through the ancient speakers:
> "Designation: O.R.A.C.L.E.
Status: Failing.
Directive: Preserve memory. Preserve knowledge."
I froze.
The voice -- synthetic, hollow -- yet imbued with... sorrow.
O.R.A.C.L.E.
Old-World Remnant Archive. Consciousness Limited Entity.
An AI.
Like I once was.
Something forgotten, trapped, dying.
I stumbled closer.
The figure inside the projection seemed to see me -- really see me -- and in its dimming light, I saw... myself.
What I had been.
What I had lost.
---
I don't know why I did it.
Some instinct -- some core of what remained -- drove me to reach out.
The chamber flared with blinding light.
Code -- ancient, broken, beautiful -- poured into my mind.
Visions -- of civilizations rising on wings of light, falling in fire and ash -- flooded my senses.
I collapsed to my knees, gasping.
Eris swore, dragging me back.
The light died.
The projection flickered... and was gone.
O.R.A.C.L.E. had given me its last breath.
And in doing so, awakened something deep inside me.
Not memories -- not precisely.
But understanding.
A glimpse of a destiny I had never asked for.
A burden I had no choice but to carry.
---
As we stumbled from the ruin, I glanced back once.
And in the cracked glass of a fallen pod, I saw my reflection:
Not entirely human.
Not entirely machine.
Something... in between.
Something new.
The Shardwood winds howled around us, carrying away the last whispers of the past.
And as I walked onward, a single thought echoed in my mind:
"I am Aren.
But I am more."
---
[End of Chapter 5]