"There are cities that sleep, and others that remember.
Edelstadt never sleeps. And don't forget anything. "
When the nurse overlapped the mental channels, it was neither a snap nor a shock.
Just a discreet breath, as if the world held its breathing.
Ashen went out.
The hospital door closed behind.
He was free. Theoretically.
But barely his worn boots hit the stone of the street, he understood one thing:
He had entered a larger cage.
The capital extended before him as a living monster.
A mechanical beast made of stone, cogs, cries, and laws.
The main avenues were vast, bodybuilding, bordered by amber and lead stained glass buildings.
Black water fountains spat faces of ancient kings.
People were not walking: they slipped, stretched, precise, taken in a rhythm that AShen no longer shared.
Each step of a bourgeois sounded like an insult.
Each noble laugh recalled a bloody memory.
Ashen marches towards the market district, named La Fournaise.
There, the city shouted.
Hundreds of stalls. Colorful tents. Crees of auction and scrap dealers.
Odors mixed with spices, burned leather, sweat and dried blood.
• Alchemists selling stolen memory vials.
• Orfères fixing fragments of blessed bone in necklaces to keep echoes away.
• Tattooed beggars, selling their skin as a living parchment for illegal grimoires.
A masked girl tended to Ashen a card:
- "Reverse destiny, only a bronze. Perhaps you will die better. »»
He fixed it without answering.
Then we walk further, the fists in the pockets.
North of the square, the large temple of the threshold rose like a kill frozen in the stone.
A black dome, pierced with stained glass in the shape of a eyes.
A circular staircase that had to be climbed on his knees.
And on the walls: engravings of the seven virtues ... all inverted.
- "Here, piety is a transaction. Charity is an admission. And justice ... a comedy. »»
Ashen heard the priests recite in a loop:
- "Nothing is sacred. Except for the king's gaze. »»
He looked away.
Further on, the Haut-Sceau Palace dominated the city from its golden platform.
The imperial flag - an eye sewn on one hand - floated lazily.
The white armor guards made round, mechanical, perfect.
And in a balcony, behind a window ... Ashen thought he saw a silhouette.
A purple silk veil.
A look.
But no. Now was the time. Not yet.
He gave his teeth.
He went down a quieter alley.
The cobblestones were irregular. Older buildings. Less monitored.
And that's where he saw it.
She.
Elaira.
She held a notebook and spoke to a man in uniform.
His voice had not changed. Nor his head port.
She laughed slightly. As before.
She spent a meter from him.
And don't live it.
Ashen remained frozen.
His hands were shaking.
No anger.
No hatred.
A vertigo.
"She ... she is here. It exists.
And she doesn't recognize me. »»
He took a step towards her.
Then stopped.
The soil shirks briefly under it. He inspired slowly.
" Not now. Not yet. »»
The sun was gently descended.
Edelstadt, more and more golden, became more beautiful ... and more false.
Ashen sat on a low wall.
A child played with a engraved stone. Mechanical birds passed between the roofs.
He looked at his palms.
No chains.
But scars.
So many scars.
"I came back.
I am alive.
But ... what am I going to do with this world? »»
His gaze derived to the south.
A black carriage approached. Slowly.
The black carriage stopped in front of Ashen.
Without checking. Without a coat of arms. Without noise.
She seemed to slide on the cobblestones, carried by a foreign will to the world.
The door opened. Slowly. Like a breath.
Ashen didn't need to think.
He went up.
It was not a carriage.
It was a room hanging in nothingness, without ceiling or ground.
Fragments of mirrors floated around him, forming a crown of bursts. Everyone reflected for a moment that ASHEN had not yet lived. Others, which he had already forgotten.
In the center, a man was waiting.
Or not. Something human. Only partly.
His fingers were of dried ink. His eyes: two wrapped parchments. Her smile ... A word that we never dare to say.
He wrote. Slowly. Each letter was consumed as soon as it touched the page.
Ashen remained standing.
The madman's mask crogged under his breath.
- You expected me.
The light nodded, without looking at it.
- You are always the last to arrive, Ashen. Even in the fragments.
Ashen advanced two steps. The ground was not there. And yet he was walking.
- You know my name. You know my mask. You showed me ... something. So I want to know.
He planted his gaze in that of the seer.
-Who are you to know so many things?
A long silence.
The mirrors around simmered. The air vibra gently. Like a too strong rope.
The indicator did not answer right away.
Then, in a breath:
- I am the one who observes the pages that have never been written.
Whoever bleeds when a choice is killed.
I am the poet that the universe has forgotten, but of which each verse resonates in the broken skulls.
Ashen frowned.
- You talk to me in puzzles. You talk to me like ... like him.
The light smiles.
- Because I'm one of the 44, Ashen. The oldest. The weakest. The only one who did not live.
- And why help me?
A whisper, almost tender:
- Because you are the most broken. And the broken sees further than the sage.
Without warning, the world will capsize.
The mirrors exploded in light.
Images:
• The overturned throne, King Maelrath Empaled.
• Elaira, old, judging a people on fire.
• A masked young boy, putting a dagger on his own throat, in a deserted classroom.
• An older Ashen, sitting on a throne of bones, repeating in a loop: "I liked this world. He didn't like me. »»
Ashen yelled.
The pain was brief, but total.
He fell on his knees.
The indicator observed it.
- These are not predictions. These are possible injuries.
What your path will cross ... if you continue to walk blind.
Ashen straightened up.
- What if I refuse? What if I just want to disappear?
The light shrugged.
- So someone else will wear your mask.
Another crazy. Less lucid. More cruel.
Ashen looked away.
- Do you really give me the choice?
The indicator put his pen.
- No. You have never had a choice.
But you can choose how you howl.
With a snap of the fingers, the carriage closed.
The noise of the world returned. The steps. The cries. Edstadt's sticky heat.
Ashen was sitting again on the edge of the street.
The black carriage was no longer there.
But on the ground ... a word engraved on the pavement:
"Remember what you have never forgotten."
Ashen looked up.
The sun was going to the west.
And in his shadow ... a silhouette in armor, barely visible, observed it from a roof.
"It's not the burning vision, Ashen. It's understanding. » - The indicator
Edelstadt had closed on him.
But he was no longer the same.
Ashen was walking, like a man wearing a dream that cannot be posted.
The madman's mask in the pocket, his steps slipped between the shadows, aimlessly.
And yet ... he felt.
Something was clicking behind the walls.
Something whispered in stained glass.
"You are seen. You are knownYou are already judged. "
Ashen wandered to the Gravists district, where imperial architects engraved the laws in the stones themselves.
Children were playing illegal runes.
Old men painted memory glyphs on public benches, so as not to forget their own name.
Ashen stopped in front of an old fresco.
She represented a man on her knees, in front of an empty throne.
The title:
"The one who knew and said nothing."
He stayed there a long time.
A guard in white armor passed, looked at him briefly, then continued his round.
But Ashen had recognized it.
Not the man. Armor.
That of visions.
An armed man. King's guardian. Standing against him.
He gave his teeth.
He looked up at the palace, far away. The flag still floated.
Since the carriage, since the indicator ... something had changed.
Lights.
Foreign sensations that shot like shots in his memory.
- He saw hands full of blood which he had not shed.
- Speeches, yelled in front of dead crowds.
- Nightmares where he held a crown on fire.
"Is it me? Or one of the forty-three others? »»
He no longer knew.
Sometimes he saw his own eyes ... from the outside.
Sometimes he spoke a language he had never learned.
His head threw him.
His neck burned him.
And somewhere, behind his skull ... A voice laughed. Slowly. As if she was waiting.
At dusk, he entered an empty building - an old opera hall converted into a beggar squat.
He wanted silence.
He wanted to find himself.
But he was not alone.
In a corner, leaning against a broken column ... A silhouette in armor was waiting for it.
Low helmet. Cape blacie. Blunt blade on the hip.
"Who are you?" Ashen asked, his throat dry.
The man looked up. But his face was masked.
Half a mask. white. Incomplete.
- I am the one who will follow you ... until the last world.
- You are in the visions.
- No. You are in mine.
Ashen took a step forward. The man disappeared. Dissolved in the air.
Ashen looked down.
His left hand was shaking.
He opened it slowly.
A word formed there, in black, burning letters:
"TREASON"
He fell on his knees.
He heard a voice - his? That of the indicator? - Burm:
"Someone you think dead is still alive. Someone you think is faithful ... Wait for his time. »»
Edelstadt shone under the twin moons.
The madman had returned.
But he no longer knew if he walked in his own memories ... or in the dream of another.
And under his mask, laughter returned.
No joy.
No victory.
But as a warning.
"Everything starts again. But nothing will be the same."
"A mask can hide a wound. But in a circus ... he becomes a spectacle.
Ashen was no longer sleeping.
Not since the visions had started again.
Not since the armor silhouette had appeared.
Not since the word "betrayal" had printed in his palm as a silent pact.
He had been walking since dawn. looking for work.
Not to survive.
But to… slow down.
He tried the workshops of the engravers:
- "Too fragile. »»
Mechanical stalls:
- "We do not engage the madmen. »»
Port warehouses:
- "You would be afraid of the coffers. »»
Everywhere, we hunted him.
He felt the eyes slide on him, as if he gave off something other than a man.
A discomfort. An invisible weight.
Even when he smiled, people turned away.
"I came back. But I still have no room."
At the end of the morning, he arrived in a great clay courtyard.
colorful tents. Strings, cries, feathers and fire.
A circus.
A sign engraved with a knife:
"Cirque de l'Épine Rousse - guaranteed laughter or applied whip"
He stopped. Plot.
In the distance, a trainer was screaming on a make -up monkey.
A contortionist painted tears on his cheeks, while repeating an impossible dance.
An illusionist tried to convince a passer -by that his shadow could speak.
And there ... in the center ... a sign:
Research: clown / mime / madness - welcome laughs. Food included.
Ashen approached. A man with a high-browd hat, twisted mustache and stained fingers of the intercepta.
- Do you want to laugh or make people laugh?
- I can ... do both.
- Name ?
-… Ashen.
- It's already funny. Come.
It was driven into a dusty arena, with a few wooden stands.
Three judges: an obese dwarf, a woman with a broken monocle, and a tattooed acrobat to the tongue.
- You have five minutes, said the woman. No more. No less.
Ashen remained frozen.
Then ... he slowly raised his hands.
He took out the mask of the madman, the one he once wore at the court.
He placed him on his face.
And he began to speak.
Or rather: to make fun.
- "What is the common point between a king, a rope and a fall?" »»
- Silence.
- "All three hang you. »»
The dwarf burst out laughing.
Ashen continued.
He spoke of the naked king, the priest without belief, the executioner who no longer knew who he killed.
He sang. He was screaming. He was ramp.
And at the end ... he laughs. A true, terrible, hollow laugh.
The monocle fell.
The acrobat applauds.
The Circus Director returned.
- You are committed. You will be our midnight clown.
-… Why this name?
- Because you don't make people laugh. You make you forget the void.
Ashen nodded.
- Food, reads, a one -month contract. You dress yourself. You come with your own mask, obviously.
He signed. Without reading.
He fell asleep in a caravan with creaky wooden walls, among the muffled laughter of other artists.
In a corner, placed on a box, the mask looked at him.
And behind his eyes ... the seer, somewhere, laughed too.
"Are you fleeing your mission, crazy?" Or do you learn to play better? »»
Ashen closed his eyes.
And for the first time for a long time ...
… He didn't dream.
"Each scene is a court. Each spectator, a judge. And the madman ... an offering.
The marquee was full.
Amber lanterns hanging from the ceiling cast a glowing light on the crowd.
Masked children laughed, nobles pleated their eyes, and people of the people ate black bread in silence.
In the center, the circular track. Dusty. Sacred.
Where the clowns fell and the monsters danced.
Tonight, Ashen entered the scene.
- "Ladies, gentlemen, twisted souls and sharp languages ... Tonight, we offer you a miracle: a laugh born of pain. »»
The director's voice echoed like a whip.
Ashen entered.
Slowly. Right.
His mask screwed in the face, black and red, the smile engraved in steel.
A faded rose with the buttonhole. A painted wood rod. Dead bells with ankles.
The public applauds.
Some sought. Others observed, suspicious.
Ashen turned on himself, his arms open.
- "I'm the midnight clown. Whoever laughs when there is nothing left to burn. »»
He stumbled. Voluntarily. Fell. Got up with a grotesque hiccups.
A child laughed. An old lady sighed.
He told a story.
That of a child locked in an attic, nourished by lies, beaten with words.
Then he brandished a toy.
A small wooden puppet. Awkwardly carved.
- "This puppet ... It was me.
But I became much worse. I became ... you. »»
Laughter. Strange. Nervous.
And that's where he saw them.
In the front row, in the seats of honor:
Elaira.
Right seat, beautiful as a forgotten slap.
To his right: Kael, living arrogance, dressed in white and gold.
To his left: Duke Veyron, as freezing as in his memories, the empty eye, a tense mouth.
The Valemyr family. Entirely.
Ashen froze. Just a second.
Enough for silence to fall.
Enough for the mask to slide a little.
But he resumed. He danced, Tourna, pretended to fall.
And then, slowly ... he approached the first row.
He held out the puppet.
In Elaira.
- "For you, a lady ... an unnamed memory. »»
Elaira took him, without understanding.
The wood was lukewarm, rough. In his furrows slept an almost erased initial: "A."
She leaned her head, curious.
- "It's strange ... This face seems familiar to me. »»
She looked up at Ashen.
- " Who are you ? »»
The mask remained frozen, but under the surface ... Ashen's jaws crumbled.
He slowly inspired the broken voice of too well learned loneliness.
- "I ... I don't know. »»
An icy silence went on the stage.
-"Forgive me, a lady ... but I think I was stolen my name. »»
He laughs. Weakly. Gently. Almost tenderly.
- "By dint of being called beast, rebuilding, junk ... I ended up believing that these words were my first name. »»
Kael Ricana, breaking the moment:
- " Pathetic. Even his toys feel misery. »»
Ashen turned his eyes to him briefly, without hatred.
- "The shadow laughs always stronger when she believes that the light does not look. »»
But it was Elaira who fixed it.
A frowning of eyebrows. A hesitation.
She was holding the puppet with more sweetness now, as if he were fragile.
- "You looked at me as if you knew me. But I have never seen you. »»
- " Maybe. Or maybe you just have me ... forgotten. »»
He took a step aside.
-"Maybe I am like an erased dream in the morning. The genre that makes you cry without understanding why. »»
She straightened up, slightly troubled.
- "Why give me this?" »»
Ashen slowly lowered his head.
- "Because you sometimes have to give someone what you can no longer wear. »»
- "What if I don't want it?" »»
-"Then burn it. As they burned me. »»
New silence.
The spectators held their breath, taken in a scene that was no longer theater.
Ashen raised a finger trembling towards his own mask.
- "This face is not mine. Neither did this laugh.
I'm just a reflection. A fragment. A cry that was silent. »»
He took a step back, flickering.
- "What I am ... no longer matters.
What I'm going to become, however ... will change everything. »»
He bowed. Long.
Then in a barely audible breath:
-"And if one day, you remember me ... Call me Ashen.
Maybe that's what I was.
Or what I would have liked to be. »»
And he went away.
Rampa. Rolled.
Disappeared behind the curtain in a thunderous applause.
But his hands ... trembled like dead leaves.
In the stands, Elaira still held the puppet.
His fingers stroked the initial.
And in his gaze ... a shadow of memory, something almost painful.
Duke Veyron said nothing.
But his gaze followed the slide, cold, precise.
And in the shade, behind the curtains, a golden eye shone.
The indicator was there.
And he had just chosen his moment