Parallel Memory

Chapter 606: The Weight of Fate

Zero sat in silence, his hands trembling slightly as he held the weathered chronicle open before him. The flickering torchlight made the ink shimmer faintly, the ancient words seeming to shift with every breath he took. He had read the same passage three times now, his eyes tracing the fortune teller’s dire warning:

"Two humans carrying the blood and spirit of the heroes... the Devil King will fall by their hands."

He shut his eyes. The words wouldn’t leave him, echoing louder than the silence of the chamber.

Xalvar’s voice rose from the depths of memory, cruel and unyielding. "You were the reason they died, Zero. Because of you, their blood stained the cave floor."

For years, he had buried that voice, shoving it deep into the corner of his mind, convincing himself that Xalvar’s words were nothing but poison meant to break him. But now—here, staring at the fate written in the chronicle—he couldn’t escape the cruel truth that perhaps the devil hadn’t been lying entirely.

His chest tightened. If it’s true... then maybe I was never just a bystander. Maybe I was marked from the very beginning.

He pressed a hand to his forehead, forcing himself to breathe. Slowly, he turned the brittle pages, searching for clarity. Each passage bled with cryptic phrases about cycles of bloodlines, echoes of spirits, and destinies reborn. Nothing directly named him or Hiro Ernest. But the outline... the hints... they were enough to chill him.

Zero’s thoughts tangled. On Earth, in that other life he still half-remembered, the novel had never spoken of this. There was no prophecy, no fortune teller’s warning tying him or Hiro into some ancient cycle of heroes. Their story had been about struggle, growth, and rising to face overwhelming odds—not about being chosen.

And yet here it was. A record older than memory. A prophecy etched long before his second chance.

"Destiny," he muttered bitterly under his breath, the word tasting like ash. "So no matter what I did... no matter how hard I tried to change things..."

He clenched the edge of the book until the paper threatened to tear.

Gaining the SS-rank skill, climbing the Tower, surviving the ordeals—he had believed, even if only for a fleeting moment, that he had defied the path written for him. That the strength he seized was his rebellion, his proof that he wasn’t shackled to fate. But the fortune teller’s words pressed like chains around his throat.

Bloodline. Spirit.

If those were the keys... then perhaps it had never been about choices at all. Perhaps it had always been about who he was, not what he did.

And Hiro—carefree, reckless, always standing at the center of light—was he, too, shackled to this cycle? Did the prophecy bind both of them, dragging them toward the same inevitable end?

Zero flipped back a page, re-reading the fortune teller’s dialogue. His lips formed the words silently: "To see the future is to bind oneself to it, to cut off every other road but one. What I reveal cannot be undone."

The words struck deeper this time. Aamon had demanded clarity and received a gem that would seek out the chosen bloodlines. But what if the warning had not been for Aamon alone? What if, in some twisted way, it extended to him?

Had his very act of being here—of remembering Earth, of seeking strength—already sealed the path he was walking?

The thought sickened him.

Xalvar’s laughter thundered again in his head, overlapping with the memory of torn flesh, of blood-soaked soil, of his friends’ lifeless eyes. They had died, and he had lived. And now, reading this chronicle, it felt as though that tragedy had been nothing more than the first move in a game whose rules were written before he was even born.

His hands shook harder.

If this is destiny... then what was the point of fighting?

The question hollowed him. For a moment, he could almost feel the Tower’s cold air against his skin again, could see the endless staircases spiraling upward into darkness. He had bled there. He had suffered, clawing his way floor by floor, never certain if he would survive the next battle. The monsters he had faced hadn’t cared about destiny. They had cared only to kill. And each time, he had risen—not because he was chosen, but because he refused to break.

He remembered the fire-immune lizard on the thirty-first floor, its scales impervious to everything he threw at it. Days stretched into weeks as he fought, rested, tried again. His body had been covered in burns, his mana drained until even breathing hurt. He hadn’t beaten it—he had escaped with a teleport scroll, beaten by the Tower. Yet even then, the act of surviving had felt like defiance.

Was that defiance meaningless if fate had decided the outcome from the start?

His thoughts twisted, dark and unrelenting. The SS-rank skill he had grasped—it hadn’t existed in the novel. It wasn’t part of the script he thought he remembered. He had believed it to be proof that the "story" was no longer certain, that he had already broken free from Earth’s written pages. But now he wondered: was that, too, destiny’s trick? Had fate planted even his greatest triumph as nothing more than another stepping stone toward the prophecy?

He exhaled slowly, the torchlight flickering against his pale face. His reflection glimmered faintly in the gloss of the ink, a shadowed, weary man staring back at him.

Maybe the prophecy was true. Maybe he and Hiro would stand as the Devil King’s undoing—or its sacrifices. But prophecy alone did not guarantee how the tale would end.

That thought—fragile and stubborn—burned like an ember in the pit of his chest.

Fate might dictate who would stand. But it could not dictate how.

And that mattered.

He thought of Hiro’s laughter, reckless but sincere, the kind of light that had always drawn others in. He thought of Lilith’s eyes, once dulled by despair but slowly regaining their fire. He thought of his fallen friends, their last moments etched into his soul.

If fate had marked him from birth, then perhaps it had demanded their deaths too. But even so, he could still choose one thing: to make sure their sacrifice was not wasted. To carve meaning where fate offered only cruelty.

The chronicle lay heavy in his lap, its words unchanging yet suffocating. Zero’s breathing steadied, though his eyes still burned. The weight of the prophecy pressed down on him, cold and merciless—but his grip on the book grew firmer.

"Maybe I am cursed," he whispered to the silent chamber. "Maybe Xalvar was right, and I was meant to carry this from the start. But if destiny expects me to walk its road blindly—" His lips twisted into something between a grimace and a bitter smile. "—then it’s in for a fight."

He closed the chronicle gently, the torchlight dimming as if in agreement with his words.

The silence around him thickened, but this time, it did not feel entirely suffocating. Somewhere in the oppressive dark, there was still breath, still room to resist.

If prophecy was a chain, then he would drag it with him until it shattered.

For the first time since reading the words, his thoughts did not spiral entirely into despair. They remained heavy, uncertain, but a quiet resolve pulsed beneath them.

Zero leaned back, staring up at the vaulted ceiling above. The cracks in the stone seemed to stretch like veins of shadow, as though the entire chamber shared in the weight he carried.

He knew now that he couldn’t simply ignore the prophecy. He couldn’t dismiss it as a lie or a story written for someone else. It was his, whether he accepted it or not. But that did not mean he would let it own him.

And in the quiet, one truth anchored him: destiny may have chosen him, but choice would define him.