The healers bound his burns in linen and smeared cooling unguents that smelled of char and herbs. He welcomed the sting. Pain was memory: proof written in the body's script.
When the other marchers slept in fevered exhaustion, Archimedes took a torch and went below the hive, down where Helios' heat could not reach. Down to the dead.
The Hall of Ashes yawned in honeycombed stone: a thousand alcoves, each holding a shrouded form. Some were husks burned to parchment; others were withered but whole, their faces set in the last grammar of agony. Incense clung to the air like dust that had learned to pray.
To most, it was a place of mourning. To Archimedes, it was a library.
He drew back a half-rotted shroud. Fingers—careful despite the raw cracks in his skin—traced pale ridges over ribs. "Furnace storm," he murmured. "He lived through one… not two."
At another niche, he pried a jaw and ran a finger across broken teeth. "Fractures—here, here. Fall from a height. The sun finished what the drop began."
He moved from alcove to alcove, reading scars and bones as parchment and ink. Scripture carved by suffering. Where others saw silence, he heard verses.
"Archimedes."
His father's voice filled the archway like a judgment that loved the judged. The man was tall and corded, hands scarred from years of knife and fire—a sun-surgeon who believed the Light burned away all falsehood. The torch he held set gold fire to the lines of his worn face.
"You shame them with your curiosity," his father said, stepping down among the alcoves. "The dead are to be remembered, not handled."
Archimedes didn't look away from the ribcage beneath his hand. "Remembered by who? We seal them in stone and speak their names once a year. Their bodies hold the truth of how they lived and died. That truth goes untold."
"Bones do not speak," his father said softly. "Flesh does not remember. The soul is carried by the Light. The rest is husk."
"They speak," Archimedes said. "You taught me to look. Look." He ran a finger across a scorched seam puckered over old muscle. "Fire—once. Healed. Endured. This fracture—violence or fall. Here, callus formed. He learned to live with pain. These are records. If I read them, I can keep others from joining them."
His father's jaw tightened, then eased. Weariness bent his voice into something almost tender. "Tradition protects us. Curiosity—" He gestured to the rows of dead. "Curiosity is a hunger. If you feed it without measure, it will devour you."
"What if it devours ignorance instead?" Archimedes asked. "What if what I learn here saves a life? Is that not worthy of the Light you serve?"
Silence settled, not hostile but hard. The torch hissed; ash whispered over stone.
At last, the older man sighed. "You have your mother's mind," he said. "Always cutting. Always seeking what lies beneath. Sharpness reveals, yes—but it also wounds." His gaze flicked to the raw lattice across Archimedes' shoulders. "You think your marks are scrolls. Perhaps they are. But know this: the Light burns, and it burns clean. Do not make a shrine of the husk."
He turned to go, then paused at the threshold. "If you must come here, come as a son of Veythra—wash your hands, speak the names. Do not let skill devour reverence."
"I will wash. I will speak," Archimedes said. "And I will learn."
His father's mouth ghosted toward a smile and stopped halfway. "One day you will need a blade that cuts only what you intend," he said, almost to himself. "And a hand steady enough to refuse the rest."
When he had gone, Archimedes remained among the dead. He pressed his burned palm to the ribcage before him, not to claim, but to listen.
"I will not waste your stories," he whispered. "Not you. Not anyone."
The Hall kept its silence, but the vow settled—clean and cold—as if etched with a very sharp edge.