The taxi navigated the familiar streets, finally stopping before an ancient building tucked away in the city's heart. Its black, gothic façade, built from stone that seemed to drink the daylight, was choked with centuries of dark green ivy. It felt like a tear in the fabric of the modern world. There was no sign, only a single, heavy oak door, its intricate carvings worn smooth by time and secrets.
This was the Alchemist's Archive.
Chloe had to half-drag, half-carry Elara from the car. Elara's body felt like dead weight, her muscles refusing to obey as she sagged against her friend's slender shoulders.
"We're almost there, Elara, just hold on," Chloe panted, her own breath misting in the cool air. She gritted her teeth, using all her strength to support Elara as they shuffled, step by agonizing step, toward the door.
Elara wanted to scream, to warn her, but she lacked the strength to even open her mouth. The instant before Chloe's fingers could brush against the iron door knocker, an impact a thousand times more powerful than the brooch struck her.
If the brooch's sorrow was a deep sea, this was a cosmic maelstrom. It was a cacophony of phantom lives—wails of loss, manic shrieks of ecstasy, the gnawing hunger of greed, the bottomless pit of despair. Countless emotional signals, raw and undiluted, crashed over her fragile defenses like a tsunami of feeling.
Elara's vision dissolved into a field of black static. Her legs gave out. Before she could even draw the breath to scream, she was falling, lost to the world as her full weight collapsed onto Chloe.
"Elara!" Chloe cried out, her own legs buckling under the sudden burden.
At that critical moment, the oak door swung silently and smoothly inward.
And then, the world went silent.
It wasn't a gradual quiet. It was an instantaneous, jarring snap, as if someone had hit the universe's mute button. The emotional migraine that had tormented her for her entire life, the suffocating grief from the garnet brooch, the psychic chorus at the door powerful enough to drive anyone mad… all of it, in a thousandth of a second, was utterly and completely erased.
It was a perfect, sterile void.
Crumpled in Chloe's arms, Elara's eyelids fluttered. An unconscious sigh of pure, unadulterated contentment escaped her lips. The boulder crushing her soul had vanished. For the first time in her memory, she felt an unprecedented lightness, a profound and absolute peace.
Chloe was stunned speechless by the sudden turn of events. She could feel it with startling clarity—the friend in her arms had gone from a searing hot iron, trembling with agony, to a piece of cool, still jade in an instant. The violent shudders had simply… stopped.
Baffled and terrified, she lifted her head and looked inside the doorway.
A man stood in the shadows. He was tall, dressed in an impeccably tailored black wool coat, his posture as straight and unyielding as a sheathed sword. The light from the street shone from behind him, casting his face in a deep, indecipherable silhouette.
An aura of profound stillness emanated from him, a cold, restrained energy that didn't just feel calm, but actively suppressed the chaos around it.
The man finally took a deliberate step forward, allowing the daylight to carve out the severe lines of his face—the deep-set eyes, the high bridge of his nose, the sharp angle of his jaw. His gaze was as cold as the aura around him, holding the impersonal focus of a surgeon or a watchmaker. It was cool, one might even say cruel, without a single ripple of discernible emotion. He looked down on the two disheveled women, his eyes sweeping past the terrified Chloe before finally landing, and staying, on Elara.
"Marcus," he spoke. His voice was a low baritone that carried no warmth, only weight, melting into the silence he commanded. He seemed to be addressing the very air behind him.
A powerfully built man in a similar black uniform appeared silently at his side, his presence immediate and solid.
"Bring them both inside."
His cold gaze flickered between Elara and Chloe, two specimens to be processed. He delivered his final judgment, the words sharp and clean as sheared ice.
"One for isolation, one for questioning."