Starborn silence

The air inside Kanah Village had changed.

Not with storms or screams—but with silence.

A silence that wrapped itself around Sunny like a second skin.

He stood at the edge of a weathered well, ancient runes etched along its rim. The ground pulsed beneath him, faint... almost like a heartbeat.

> "Something's here," he muttered.

His fingers grazed the stone. It was cold, but it throbbed with a strange warmth—an emotion, a presence.

Then his vision shattered.

Darkness. Fire. A child crying.

A flicker—just for a second—but it wasn't his memory.

He staggered back, heart racing.

> "What the hell was that…?"

He had seen someone else's pain.

Not a dream. Not a vision. A memory.

---

Later, in a half-collapsed shrine near the village edge, he tested it.

He touched an old mask left behind by a villager.

Instantly—

> —a woman knelt before an altar, sobbing.

"Forgive me… I gave him away to survive…"

Her hands bloody. Her shadow trembling.

Sunny ripped his hand back.

He fell to the floor, panting. The image burned into his mind, sharp and brutal.

> "I can see them," he whispered. "Their pasts…"

But it wasn't just the memory. It was the weight of it—the crushing fatigue that settled into his bones, the dizziness that pulled at his mind like a dark whirlpool.

His head throbbed. His vision blurred. His knees buckled beneath him.

> "Damn it…"

---

The power came at a cost.

The more memories he saw, the more it drained him.

He wasn't just exhausted—he was broken.

Every glimpse into another's past felt like it carved a piece out of him. Every whisper of their emotions, every pain they had endured, became his to bear.

It was as though their ghosts followed him, clawing at his chest.

Sunny gasped for air, barely able to stand. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His heart raced.

> "I can't keep doing this…"

But the power called to him. Tempting him.

The information. The knowledge of their pasts. It was too much to resist.

Yet every time he used it, he felt himself slipping—losing more than he gained.

His past, too, was now laid bare for anyone to glimpse.

> "Every time…" he gasped. "I see theirs, they see mine."

It wasn't just memories he was sharing—it was weakness. And every moment he spent peering into the past of others drained him of his own.

---

As night fell, Sunny looked up at the red eclipse slowly crawling across the sky.

He clenched his fist.

> "If I can see their pasts…" he muttered. "Maybe I can learn what even they have forgotten."

> "Even German Sparow."

But the price was steep. And with each use, he felt a little further from himself.