In my world, truth is currency, and lies rot you from the inside.
At birth, we’re implanted with a Luminite -- a crystal behind the heart that glows when we speak the truth. If it ever dims, society doesn’t ask why. It just shuts you out.
The one unbreakable rule: Never speak to someone whose crystal has gone dark.
We called them the Dimmed. Outcasts. Ghosts that walk under sunlight. Not dead, but never seen. Not alive, but breathing somewhere beyond the rules.
I never questioned it. Until I saw her.
It was late, just after dusk, and I had just exited the library dome. She stood across the glass street, hooded, still, like she’d been waiting. Her eyes met mine—and for a second, the world paused. Her Luminite was black as ink. No flicker, no glow. Dead.
And yet, I saw her.
No one else did. People passed her like she didn’t exist, eyes trained forward by habit or design. I wanted to walk away too, but I couldn’t. Something about her felt wrong in a familiar way.
She spoke, and her voice didn’t echo through the air but settled inside my mind like a forgotten memory.
"I knew you'd wake up."
My hands turned cold. My chest tightened. I should’ve walked away. Reported her. I didn’t.
"I remember you," I said quietly. "I don’t know how, but I do."
She smiled. Everything around us shimmered for just a second, like the world itself had exhaled.
From that night, nothing felt right anymore. The city felt like a hologram. The Luminite in everyone’s chest glowed—but too perfectly. Too predictably. I started noticing the same glint, the same rhythm in the light. It wasn’t real. It was programmed.
We met again by the observatory ruins. She waited where starlight barely reached, her voice gentler this time.
"You’ve been lied to. The Luminite doesn’t measure truth. It measures obedience."
I looked down at mine. Still glowing.
"Why me?" I asked.
"Because your crystal flickered the day you asked your teacher why memory blocks exist. But instead of dimming, it sparked brighter. You’re different. You resist."
She reached out and took my hand. For the first time, her fingers felt warm. Human.
The clouds above us moved too fast. I looked up—and the sky peeled open like layers of fabric. Wires. Machinery. A camera lens blinking in the heavens.
"This world is an illusion," she said. "But you were never meant to stay inside it."
I stared at her dark crystal.
And somehow, I knew the truth. She was the only real light I’d ever seen.
I tightened my grip on her hand and nodded.
"I'm ready."
Her hand gripped mine tighter as if she'd been waiting for that answer longer than I’d been alive.
The world didn’t crumble right away. It just bent a little.
Trees on the boulevard flickered like old film reels. Buildings vibrated slightly, edges blurring like a pencil sketch smudged by water. People around us continued walking, their steps robotic, their faces blank, their eyes glowing with a cold blue glaze.
"We have to leave the radius," she whispered. "Before the system notices your sync rate dropping."
"Sync rate?"
She nodded. "Your crystal is losing calibration. It’s starting to think for itself. If it drops to zero, you’ll be flagged as an anomaly."
"And then?"
"You’ll become like me."
We ran.
Through alleys the city forgot, under blinking tunnels, across collapsed roads that hadn’t existed on any digital map. I asked no questions. I let her lead. The more we ran, the more I felt... awake. Like my senses were mine again.
When we reached the forest border, a place that once was considered “out of bounds” for civilians—she stopped. Her hood fell back. Her face was young but ancient, unmarked by time yet weighed by memories.
She touched my chest where the Luminite pulsed, now barely a glow.
"You’re about to see what they never wanted you to. When it fully dies, you won’t lose yourself. You’ll find the version of you they tried to erase."
A jolt passed through me. My knees buckled. My ears rang. And then, silence.
Complete, overwhelming silence.
When I opened my eyes, the world was new.
Or maybe it had always been this way, and I was only now seeing it clearly.
The forest wasn’t dead. It was alive, breathing in slow rhythms. The trees shimmered with veins of gold. The wind spoke in symbols. I could see things, shapes, hiding in the light. Whispers that weren’t voices but ideas.
She stood beside me, watching.
"This is the Edge. The real world begins here."
"But what was all that… before?"
"A simulation. A control grid. Built centuries ago after the Memory Fracture. Humanity couldn’t bear its past, so it created a new one. Your society has lived in a lie for five generations. They don't know they’re still sleeping."
"And what now?"
"Now… we wake them."
I blinked, still trembling. "Why me? Why not someone stronger, someone smarter?"
"Because you listened. Most people don't."
The forest deepened ahead of us. In the distance, I saw others stepping through the mist. People with dark crystals. Faces half-forgotten. And all of them looking at me like I’d just been born.
She held out her hand again.
"Come. There's more to remember."
And so I stepped forward, into a world that felt unfamiliar yet utterly mine. Into the truth they said would break me. Into the future I was never meant to see.
My name is not important.
But my choice was.
I broke the unbreakable rule.
And I’m finally free.
React
