Parallel Memory

The attacks did not stop.

If anything, they became more precise.

For the first few days, everyone had believed the scattered attacks were simply the work of desperate devil rebels refusing to accept Lilith’s peace treaty.

That explanation had been convenient.

It gave the people someone to blame.

It gave the Church an argument.

It gave the Authority a reason to increase patrols.

And most importantly, it gave everyone the comfort of believing that the situation could be solved by finding an enemy army and defeating it.

But after another week, that explanation began to fall apart.

There was no army.

There was no clear command structure.

There was no battlefield.

There was only destruction.

And whoever was responsible seemed to disappear before anyone could reach them.

I stood over a large map spread across the table inside the temporary command room.

Red markings covered almost every region of the human domain.

Mia stood opposite me.

Several members of the Authority and the War Council were gathered around us.

"The southern town was attacked at midnight," one officer said. "The western supply station was hit three hours later."

"Casualties?"

"Minimal at the supply station. Twenty-seven soldiers wounded."

"And the southern town?"

"Seventy-two civilians injured. Twelve dead."

Mia’s expression tightened.

"Any witnesses?"

The officer shook his head.

"None who saw the attackers clearly."

"Devil mana?"

"Yes."

I looked at him.

"Certain?"

The officer hesitated.

"Almost."

"Almost?"

"We detected dark mana signatures. But there was something strange about them."

"What?"

"The energy disappeared unusually quickly."

I leaned forward.

"How quickly?"

"Within minutes."

That wasn’t natural.

Dark mana could dissipate.

But not like that.

Someone was deliberately removing the traces.

"Was anything taken?"

"No."

"Destroyed?"

"Mostly infrastructure."

"Military supplies?"

"Some."

"Then what was the purpose?"

The officer didn’t answer.

Nobody did.

That question had been haunting us for days.

If the attackers wanted to destroy the human domain, they weren’t doing it efficiently.

If they wanted supplies, they were wasting their efforts.

If they wanted casualties, there were easier targets.

So what were they actually trying to accomplish?

I looked at the map again.

The answer was there.

I just couldn’t see it yet.

*****************************************

"Zero."

Mia’s voice brought me back.

"What?"

She pointed toward the map.

"You’ve been staring at that location for five minutes."

I looked at the mark she indicated.

A town near the western border.

"Because it doesn’t make sense."

"What doesn’t?"

"This."

I pointed to another mark.

"Then this."

Another.

"And this."

Mia waited.

"These attacks aren’t connected geographically."

"We already know that."

"No."

I shook my head.

"That’s the problem."

She frowned.

I moved several markers.

"Look at what happened after each attack."

Mia studied the map.

"After the western attack, the Authority moved two battalions north."

"Yes."

"After the northern attack, they moved one of those battalions back."

"Yes."

"Then the eastern attack forced them to move again."

I nodded.

"Every attack causes a reaction."

Mia slowly understood.

"You’re saying they’re forcing us to move our forces."

"Exactly."

I pointed at another location.

"And when we move soldiers here, something becomes vulnerable there."

Mia stared at the map.

"They’re not trying to defeat us."

"No."

"They’re making us divide ourselves."

"Yes."

The room became quiet.

One of the War Council members stepped closer.

"That would mean whoever is responsible understands our military response."

"Not just understands it."

I looked at him.

"They predict it."

The words settled heavily over the room.

Someone was playing the human domain like a board.

And we had been moving the pieces exactly where they wanted.

***********************************************************

That night, another attack came.

A military warehouse outside a mid-sized city.

We received the report shortly after midnight.

I was already moving before the messenger finished speaking.

Mia followed.

By the time we reached the warehouse district, smoke was rising into the sky.

Soldiers were rushing between burning buildings.

"Where are they?" Mia shouted.

A captain ran toward her.

"They’re gone!"

"How long?"

"Less than ten minutes!"

Again.

Always again.

We were late.

I moved through the damaged warehouse.

Crates had been shattered.

Weapons scattered across the floor.

The walls were blackened.

But there was something unusual.

I stopped.

Mia noticed.

"What?"

I crouched.

There was a faint line carved into the stone.

Not a rune.

Not a symbol.

Just a mark.

Almost meaningless.

A shallow diagonal line intersecting another.

I stared at it.

Something about it bothered me.

"Zero?"

I reached toward it.

The moment my fingers touched the mark, a faint pulse of dark mana ran through the stone.

I pulled my hand back.

The energy vanished.

Mia looked at me.

"What was that?"

"I don’t know."

I studied the mark again.

It wasn’t a magical inscription.

It wasn’t even necessary for the attack.

It looked like someone had made it casually.

Almost like a habit.

"Could it be a message?"

"No."

"Then why leave it?"

I didn’t answer.

Because I knew why.

Or at least I had a feeling.

The person hadn’t left it for us to find.

They had left it because they knew someone like me would notice it.

That realization unsettled me.

I looked around the warehouse.

There were dozens of soldiers.

Nobody seemed to notice anything unusual.

Only me.

Why?

**********************************************************88

The next morning, I returned to the warehouse alone.

The mark was still there.

I stared at it.

Something about its placement bothered me.

I walked several steps away.

Then I looked back.

The mark was positioned exactly where someone standing near the entrance would naturally look.

Not hidden.

Not obvious.

Just noticeable.

I closed my eyes.

A memory surfaced.

Not of a person.

Of a thought.

A method.

Something I had done before.

If I wanted to mislead an enemy, I wouldn’t hide the clue.

I’d make the clue easy to find.

Because an obvious clue was more likely to be trusted.

I opened my eyes.

My expression hardened.

"This is bait."

I stepped away.

And suddenly, another thought came.

If it was bait...

then what was it meant to make me believe?

I stared at the mark.

The answer came slowly.

Someone wanted us to believe the attackers had left a trace.

Someone wanted us to chase that trace.

Someone wanted us looking in a specific direction.

I turned toward the door.

"You’re not fighting us."

My voice echoed through the empty warehouse.

"You’re guiding us."

There was no answer.

But for the first time, I felt as though I was beginning to understand the enemy.

And that realization was more frightening than not understanding them at all.

*************************************************

Two days later, the attacks changed.

For the first time, the enemy didn’t target a military facility.

They attacked a public gathering.

A small town was holding a market festival.

Merchants had arrived from neighboring regions.

Families had gathered.

Children filled the streets.

Then dark mana appeared.

The attack lasted less than five minutes.

By the time the soldiers arrived, the attackers had disappeared.

The casualties were not high.

But the psychological damage was enormous.

The people panicked.

The market closed.

Merchants abandoned the town.

And rumors spread through the human domain.

The devils were coming.

The treaty had been a mistake.

Lilith had deceived them.

The Church had been right.

That last rumor spread particularly quickly.

By evening, people were already gathering outside government buildings.

Mia stood on the steps of the Authority headquarters, watching the crowd.

"Fear spreads faster than truth."

I stood beside her.

"It always has."

"They’re demanding Lilith’s detention again."

"I know."

Mia looked at me.

"What do we do?"

I looked at the crowd.

"I don’t know."

That answer seemed to surprise her.

"You always have an answer."

"Not this time."

I looked toward the darkening sky.

"We’re fighting someone who doesn’t want territory."

Mia waited.

"They want a reaction."

"And if we keep reacting?"

"They win."

She looked down at the crowd.

"So what do we do?"

I didn’t answer.

Because there was another question growing inside me.

Who was capable of thinking this way?

*****************************************************************

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I sat alone in my room.

The attacks replayed through my mind.

The locations.

The timing.

The movements of the troops.

The rumors.

The Church’s response.

Lilith’s position.

Everything connected.

But the more I studied it, the more uncomfortable I became.

The strategy wasn’t merely intelligent.

It was familiar.

Not familiar like something I had studied.

Familiar like something I had thought about before.

I remembered how I would approach a problem.

How I would hide information.

How I would manipulate an opponent’s assumptions.

How I would create one problem to force someone into solving another.

I had used those methods myself.

And now someone else was using them against me.

I leaned back.

"Who are you?"

The room remained silent.

Then something occurred to me.

Perhaps the enemy wasn’t predicting me.

Perhaps they weren’t studying me.

Perhaps they simply understood the way I thought.

The idea was absurd.

I dismissed it.

Then I remembered the mark.

The placement.

The bait.

The timing.

My expression slowly changed.

"No..."

I stood.

That couldn’t be possible.

There were many intelligent people in Edolas.

Many powerful strategists.

Many people who could understand battlefield tactics.

But this wasn’t simply tactics.

It was the reasoning behind them.

The same reasoning I would use.

I walked to the window.

The capital was quiet beneath the moonlight.

For a moment, everything seemed peaceful.

Then I felt it.

A faint pulse of dark mana.

I immediately turned.

Nothing.

The pulse disappeared.

I moved toward the window.

There was no one outside.

No movement.

No sound.

But I knew what I had felt.

Someone had been close.

Very close.

And they had wanted me to know.

The next day, I went back to the latest attack site.

This time, I didn’t tell anyone.

I walked through the market alone.

The stalls were empty.

Broken carts remained scattered across the street.

A child’s toy lay beneath a damaged table.

I picked it up.

For some reason, that small object bothered me more than the destruction.

The war had ended.

People were supposed to be rebuilding.

Yet someone was deliberately tearing apart the peace.

I placed the toy back where I found it.

Then I noticed something.

A footprint.

Not a devil’s.

A human boot.

I crouched.

The print was faint.

But the shape was clear.

I followed it.

It led through the market.

Past the damaged buildings.

Toward an alley.

Then it disappeared.

I stopped.

Again.

A dead end.

But something was wrong.

The attacker had not left through the alley.

There was no other exit.

I looked around.

Then I noticed a small piece of cloth caught on a broken wooden beam.

I pulled it free.

Dark fabric.

Nothing special.

Except for the faint trace of mana.

I closed my fingers around it.

A pulse traveled through my hand.

The same feeling.

The same pressure.

The same strange familiarity.

My heart beat once.

Hard.

I released the cloth.

"No."

I stepped backward.

The thought was becoming impossible to ignore.

Whoever was behind this...

I might already know them.

*********************************************

That evening, I returned to the capital.

Mia was waiting.

"You disappeared."

"I was investigating."

"Did you find anything?"

I looked at her.

For a moment, I considered telling her.

Then I stopped.

"Not enough."

She frowned.

"You don’t look convinced."

"I found a trail."

"Where?"

"Nowhere."

She stared at me.

"What does that mean?"

"It means whoever we’re chasing wanted me to find it."

Mia was silent.

Then she asked:

"Why you?"

I looked toward the city.

That was the question.

Why me?

Why leave clues that only I would recognize?

Why use methods that felt like my own?

And then another possibility came.

Maybe the person behind this didn’t want to hide from me.

Maybe they wanted me to follow.

Maybe the entire chain of attacks...

the political crisis...

the pressure on Lilith...

the division between Church and Authority...

had all been designed to bring me to this point.

I looked at the dark horizon.

For the first time, I felt something that wasn’t simply suspicion.

It was anticipation.

Somewhere out there was someone who understood me.

Someone who knew how I thought.

Someone who had been several steps ahead since the beginning.

And if I was right...

then sooner or later, they would make a mistake.

Everyone did.

Even the smartest person.

Even someone who thought exactly like me.

I turned away from the window.

"Let’s see who makes the first mistake."

Mia looked at me.

"What?"

"Nothing."

I walked past her.

But inside my mind, one thought remained.

Whoever you are...

I will find you.

And somewhere far beyond the walls of the capital, hidden among the countless people of Edolas, another man opened his eyes.

He looked at a map.

A single mark had been crossed out.

The plan had worked.

Zero had found the clue.

Exactly as expected.

The man smiled faintly.

Then he whispered to himself:

"Still the same."

He placed his hand over the map.

"You’re always drawn toward the answer."

And the room fell silent again.

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