Vol3 Chapter 43 Set

Amos paused for a moment, the strange feeling lingering. It was as if he’d overlooked something important—something he should have caught. His gaze slowly shifted back toward the dark passage.

The middle.

There was something about it, something that felt off. Yet Amos just couldn’t put his finger on it.

Not yet.

"...Forget it for now."

Harold glanced at him.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Amos turned away from the passage.

"If it's important, I'll remember it later."

That was what he told himself.

Amos looked at Harold and the rest of the A-rank team.

"Let's go over what happened again."

Harold frowned.

"Again?"

"Yes."

Amos sat down and rested his elbows on his knees.

"I want to know what everyone remembers from the first time we went through the middle."

Harold exchanged a glance with the others.

"The middle?"

"Yes."

Amos kept his voice casual.

"What happened?"

Harold thought for a moment.

"We went through it."

"Obviously."

Amos smiled faintly.

"I'm asking what happened while you were there."

Harold began describing what he remembered.

Amos listened.

He didn't interrupt.

He asked questions.

What did they see?

Which direction did they take?

Who was with them?

Did they encounter anything?

Did they stop anywhere?

Did anyone leave the group?

One by one, Amos reconstructed Harold's memory.

He repeated the process with the others. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Their stories lined up well enough. But the longer Amos listened, the more uneasy he felt. Something wasn’t right.

And nobody else seemed to notice it.

Amos remained silent.

He didn't tell them.

He couldn't.

If he was right, telling them too early would only contaminate the memories they were trying to reconstruct.

Instead, he continued asking.

"And after that?"

Harold answered.

"We eventually reached the resting chamber."

"Together?"

"Yes."

Amos paused.

"Everyone?"

"Everyone."

Amos nodded.

He looked down.

That was the part that really bothered him. He remembered coming in from the left, with Harold and the others right there beside him. That memory was crystal clear.

But Harold and the others remembered something else too. They recalled passing through the middle, and somehow, they had all ended up together in the resting chamber at the exact same time. Amos leaned back.

How?

That was the question. He’d been acting like the problem was simply that their memories didn’t line up. But that wasn’t quite it. There was something more. A missing link.

He picked up a piece of charcoal, found a flat stone, and began to write—not for anyone else, but for himself.

At the top, he wrote:

Two sets.

Below it, he wrote:

Set 1

Then:

Amos + Harold + the rest

He paused.

Then added:

Left

He circled a word, Amos.

Then he stopped.

His charcoal hovered over the stone.

"...And Set 2."

He wrote beneath it.

Another Amos + Harold + the rest

Then:

Middle

Amos stared at his writing, his expression growing more serious by the moment. There were two versions of the same event—one was the way he remembered it.

He and the team went left. That was the memory he held onto, the he trusted.

Then there was the other version.

It was him and the team, moving straight through the middle. That’s what Harold and the others remembered.

Amos drew a line separating the two.

Then he circled Amos under the left.

And circled Harold + the rest under the middle.

"This is them..."

His eyes moved between the two.

"This is me..."

He tapped the left side.

"And this is... apparently another me."

His charcoal moved once more, sketching an arrow from the left side toward the resting chamber. Then he drew another from the middle, both arrows meeting at the same spot.

The resting chamber.

Amos stared at it.

"That's the problem."

Both groups reached the same destination, though there should have been two. In the end, only one was left. His charcoal came to a halt.

"...When did they become one?"

That was it.

That was the question he had been missing.

He wasn't trying to determine why their memories were different anymore.

He was trying to determine when the two versions became a single group.

He looked at the left side again.

Amos + Harold + the rest.

That was them.

Then the middle.

Amos + Harold + the rest.

That was also them.

Where did Amos's memory of going through the middle go?

His eyes moved to the next line.

Where did the team's memory of going left go?

He stopped writing, and the room instantly felt quieter. If the two memories had only been contradictory, that would have been one thing.

They weren’t just contradictory; they were oddly complementary.

Amos remembered taking the left path, while the others recalled going through the middle. Strangely, it seemed they had all been with the same people. Eventually, their memories aligned at the resting chamber. Amos set the charcoal down slowly, unnoticed by anyone as they remained oblivious to what he had written.Good.

He didn't want them to.

Not yet.

He looked at Harold.

"So..."

Harold looked back.

"What?"

Amos gave him a small, ordinary smile.

"Nothing."

He brushed some charcoal dust from his fingers.

"Just trying to organize what we remember."

Harold shrugged.

"Anything useful?"

"Not yet."

Amos looked down at the stone one last time.

Two sets, two versions, two routes, all leading to one resting chamber.

Somewhere between those points, something happened. Something Amos couldn’t remember. Something the others didn’t quite remember correctly either. Something that had merged two versions of the same group into one.

Amos quietly picked up the stone and wiped part of the writing away before anyone could get a good look.

He kept only the questions.

Where is my memory of the middle?

Where is their memory of the left?

And most importantly—

When did we become one?

Amos stared at the last question.