"We have come to a conclusion. The memories used to forge the homunculus are corrupt. We must obtain pure memories.

The Barian Protocol is going into effect tomorrow."

- ln 18, pg 21, Astral Project Journal 3. Author lost.

Kaito dreamed of stars.

He floated in the abyss of space, his eyes only half open, seeing the glimmer of stars through his eyelashes, so incredibly close to him but far out of his reach. The darkness wrapped around him, whispering, gentle, a mother's arms that enfolded him inside.

On the backs of his eyelids, he saw galaxies. They were a pair: one pale blue, one deep red.

They swirled in opposite directions—their paths crashed together at the edges. There was a cracking and a groaning between them that he shouldn't have been able to hear in the depths of space, and he shuddered. His brain conjured up the sound of faint screams—from which world? From both? He didn't think he wanted to know.

The screams faded as the darkness wrapped tighter around him.

No. That is not for you to hear.

Kaito wanted to ask the voice what they meant. What wasn't for him to hear? The screams? The groaning of the worlds fighting for dominance with each other? If it wasn't for him to hear, then who was supposed to hear it?

He opened his mouth, but no words escaped his lips, despite how hard he tried. The darkness seemed to pull the sound away from him before it could even be born. He felt something...sad in the dark. Something mournful in the way it curled around him like leathery wings, pulling him away from the vision of the two worlds and bringing him into the cradle of the stars instead.

I am sorry.

I didn't mean to put this burden on you.

I promised that I wouldn't fail you.

But we all promised that, didn't we?

We weren't strong enough.

None of us were, in the end.

Who was speaking? The voice was familiar, but the place it came from danced just out of reach of Kaito's mind. He strained to remember. His head was starting to hurt as he tried.

Please look.

I am what remains.

I will leave you with what I can.

And then the dragon was there.

Kaito sucked in a breath but there was no sound to go with the motion. The dragon cradled him to its chest, its talons gently curled around his small body. Its wings glowed to rival the stars, the pulsing of warm, pale green that encircled him with a comforting heat.

And the head curled down to look at him, one eye staring right at him. Galaxies swirled in the depths.

Look.

You have to look.

I'm sorry.

But you have to see.

He looked. His eyes searched deep into the eyes of the dragon, watching the stars circle and swirl inside. Kaito gasped.

He didn't see her eyes anymore.

First, he stared down at a pale, gray, rocky landscape, cold and harsh and pockmarked with craters—the moon? There was something there, a scar on the ground that didn't look to be made by celestial attacks, but by something—human. Or…human-like, at the very least. A scarring, like runes, carved into the ground—they meant something but he didn't know what. He could feel the meaning vibrating in his chest but his brain could not translate it.

Then he was shooting through the stars, watching them flash past him, shining with colors that didn't make sense and that he would never be able to describe, and he was staring then at a hill that overlooked a small, warmly colored town that glowed with the smell of mud bricks and the bustle of people calling out to each other.

There was a tree at the top of that hill, as thick as the pillar of a mighty temple with roots arching delicately up and back into the ground so that it was a web at the bottom. The branches rose high into the sky, clothed thickly with bright pink flowers. A breeze caught the petals, sending them scattering into the air.

An unmarked stone sat at the base of the tree. Or rather, not unmarked, but worn away by time, the remains of the words barely etched into the stone, covered with moss so that the inscription could no longer be read.

And against that stone sat a boy, not much older than Kaito himself. Fifteen, at most.

He sat with his back against the stone, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms loosely hugging his legs. He gazed up into the sky with a faraway, lost look. As though he weren't truly there.

He wore clothes that reminded Kaito of his history books, a loose fitting tunic and wrapped sandals. Fair skinned, with dark hair—except for the crimson of his bangs that fluttered in the breeze.

These last memories.

They must be forged.

Yours, and his.

There are still memories to be welded into the circuit.

You mustn't forget.

The last Numbers are upon us.

The map must be completed.

Time and light must be forged together to lead him to the last path.

The scene ripped away, as though sucked into a vacuum tube.

"Wait!"

His voice finally broke through.

"What—what do you mean? What does this mean?"

The darkness hummed around him, rattling his bones and up through his brain. He had to clap his hands to his ears, but the voice still broke through him as though it were piercing into his very bones.

I am what remains.

This is all I can give you.

I'm sorry.

Forgive me, Kaito, my love.

We should not have left this burden to our children.

But I am all that's left of her.

And this is all she left for you.

Then the dragon released him and then Kaito was falling, falling, falling, crying out, trying to reach for that remnant of dream that had vanished between the stars, grabbing at tendrils of nothing—

Kaito snapped awake, throat choked and gasping. He couldn't see—oh, damn, he couldn't move, why did his face feel like something was being driven through it—

The paralysis of sleep released him, and he found that the pain in his cheek was from the gear he had fallen asleep on. Wincing, he lifted himself off of the offending part. At least he hadn't broken it. When…had he fallen asleep?

In the chair beside him, Haruto was curled up under his jacket. Kaito remembered getting up to put the jacket on the sleeping ball of his brother, but he didn't remember sitting back down to this work. Well…at least Haruto was still sleeping soundly.

The pieces lay neatly out before him, his tools still resting under his hands, as though he had fallen asleep in the middle of putting something on to his robot project. He curled his hand around the wrench—cold, metal, solid. It brought him fully back into reality—although the remnants of the dream remained a strange, sickly pit in his stomach.

Got to stop staying up so late, maybe, he thought uneasily.

At the back of his mind, he heard the lullaby that his mother used to sing for him and Haruto. The dragonsong. It came so clearly, now…was it getting stronger? Or was he just more tired than he had thought?

He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm. Not important. It wasn't important. What was important was finishing this project. For Haruto. Nothing else was important but making sure that Haruto was safe.

Upstairs, he heard the slamming of doors—the faint muffled shouting. He tried to restrain his wince again, to stop the tremble that started unbidden in his hands, a traitorous shudder that started whenever his father's voice took that tone. Haruto shifted in his sleep, his tiny face screwed up and his fists curled into Kaito's jacket.

Kaito's tremble stilled. He swallowed thickly at the sounds of stomping and shouting still echoing upstairs. But he reached for Haruto, and stroked his mussed hair down gently.

He didn't have the time to be afraid, or confused, or falling asleep.

Haruto needed him.