Fragments Of The Past Novels & Stories

E-2's voice was barely coherent: "Can't escape. Need to connect. Need to be part of collective. Alone is... alone is breaking me. Everything is fragments without connection." "I know. I feel it too. The pull. The desire to merge. But E-2, you've been manipulated so much you can't tell authentic connection from enforced merger. Let me get you somewhere safe. Somewhere you can heal enough to choose whether you want collective consciousness from stable foundation rather than desperate fragmentation." "Can't... can't be stable. Geneva broke that part. Just fragments trying to hold together. Collective would hold me together. Except it won't accept me. Too broken even for collective consciousness

Inside was the cross necklace Dante had left her years ago. “You’re just a distant memory from the past. A mistake of mine. She turned around and saw her alarm clock on the bedside. “Oh, crap, I need to meet the exhibition manager in two hours. I have to get ready!” She placed the necklace on her bedside table and went to the bathroom to get ready for the day. When she was done dressing up, she noticed that there was an empty plate on the dining table. “Liam must have eaten first. But why did he only make one portion?” She asked herself. In the past, he used to make breakfast for the two of them. However, recently, she noticed he became less attentive.

She continued, "You're brilliant and powerful, the golden boy of Elmstead… and I'm just an ordinary woman with a painful past. I'm not good enough for you, so maybe… we should call off the wedding." Caden slowly looked up, and his heart immediately ached when he noticed the unease on her face. He set down the report and asked, "Can you tell me about what happened to you these past few years?" Aurora didn't expect that response, and it took her a few seconds to process it. Eventually, she gave a small nod. "Okay. Seven years ago, my birth parents took me home from the orphanage…" she began recounting her past, her voice soft and growing quieter as she couldn't help but sob softly.

“No.” Her eyes sharpen. “You don’t understand the cycle. You were never meant to exist alone. The halves were created to be reabsorbed. Balance restored. Order restored.” Heat rises under my skin moonfire trying to flare. My voice shakes with anger. Or maybe fear. “I’m not a fragment.” “You are exactly a fragment,” she says simply. “And all fragments return.” A force wraps around my chest gentle but unbreakable like invisible hands trying to pull me forward.

We had to outthink it. Outmove it. Or it would keep getting stronger. “We need to destroy these fragments,” Cassian said. “Not just push them back.” “I tried,” I said. That got his attention. “And?” I shook my head. “It’s not that simple.” Because if it were this would already be over. “The fragments aren’t separate the way we thought,” I explained. “They’re connected. Pieces of the same whole.” Kael’s gaze sharpened. “So destroying one could” “affect the others,” I finished. “Or make them stronger. I don’t know yet.”

With my fingers, I slowly gathered every shard of the broken opal into a velvet pouch, not even leaving the tiniest speck of powder behind. Once they were all collected, I clutched the pouch tightly against my chest. "Andiamo, Mamma. We're never coming back to this place again."

But every time he thought of those indecent photos, and every time he looked at his home that was missing its mistress, the pain in his chest became too much to bear. He was afraid he would break if he stepped inside. But after a week, intense and endless longing filled his every thought. He had no choice but to seek comfort in the remnants of past happiness. When they stepped into the chamber and saw the mutilated tapestries inside, Liam's face went deathly pale. He frantically grabbed the tapestries and turned them over one by one. In a panicked voice, he muttered, "No… No, this can't be. It's impossible! Where's Mom?"

Marcus took a slow breath. “I think someone rebuilt part of the system.” The words landed harder than anything else. Liora’s voice lowered. “That system was destroyed.” Marcus nodded. “Yes.” “But not erased.” Everlyn closed her eyes for a brief second. Because she already knew where this was going. “Fragments,” she said quietly. Marcus looked at her. “Yes.” Jesse frowned. “What fragments?” Everlyn opened her eyes. “Richard’s system.” Silence filled the room again. Because they had all believed it was over. Destroyed and gone.

The relics had never lied to me. People had. History had. Even the archive itself, if in the wrong hands, could be sanitized into something more palatable, something less resistant. But the fragments? The fragments remembered everything. Days had passed since I’d seen him, the shadow-scarred aberration with a history of war etched into his skin and a catalog of too many silences to be coincidental. He still hadn’t told me his name. I still hadn’t told him mine. But he’d remained. In the stacks. In the quiet. In the gaps in my attention when I was trying to focus on something else.

Now, all at once, it hit me that everything I had given over the years had been nothing more than a one-sided effort. I was just about to book a flight when I realized I had forgotten my ID and passport, so I had no choice but to return home. The moment I opened the door, I was greeted by a mess all over the floor. Leftover snacks were scattered everywhere, along with half-finished dishes left behind. Right by the bedroom door lay something impossible to miss—a box of levonorgestrel pills and a piece of wine-red lingerie. Willow had never liked being physically intimate with me. Even Naomi's existence had come from a drunken incident.