The brooch was a cold, dead weight in Kaelan's palm. The whisper—…my Alisander… always…—had faded, but its echo lingered in the newly awakened part of his mind that was now a library of one. Proof. The word was a fragile raft on a sea of despair. He could find memories here. The thought was a spark, and he clung to it, fanning it against the hollow chill in his chest.
His archivist's mind, desperate for order, began to build a framework. The brooch's echo was weak, tied to a simple object. The guardian's strike had been powerful, tied to a place of intense action and emotion. Hypothesis: Significance matters. He needed a landmark.
His eyes found it: a crumbling archway of smooth, white stone, utterly alien amidst the jagged crystal and obsidian. It looked like a fragment of a palace, a place of intention and craft. And intention housed memory.
As he approached, the air grew thick, carrying the phantom scent of ozone and dried roses. The archway wasn't just crumbling; it was scarred. Blackened streaks marred its surface, and one pillar was sheared clean through. This was a place of violence. A place of significance.
He could feel it—a faint, psychic pressure, a buzz of potential. A node.
He had to know.
He pressed his fingertips against the cool, white stone.
The rush was less violent than the statue's memory but far more complex. It wasn't a single moment; it was a cascade.
A dizzying whirl of dancers, the specific, graceful turn of a woman in a flowing gown.
Not combat, but artistry. The precise footwork of a courtly dance, the subtle shift of weight to maintain perfect poise.
A whirlwind of conflicting sensation. The giddy excitement of a grand ball—the press of bodies, the swell of music—shattered by the stomach-dropping terror of an explosion. Laughter curdling into screams.
It was a corrupted file. A moment shattered by catastrophe. Useless as a weapon. But as a record? It was priceless. He had just documented the last moments of a celebration.
A sharp crack sounded behind him, like ice breaking over a deep lake.
Kaelan spun. Twenty feet away, the air twisted in on itself. Light and shadow knitted together, forming a creature of nightmare. It was vaguely canine, but its form was a seething, unstable vortex of agitated energy. Where its head should be was a shifting mosaic of broken mirror shards, each reflecting a different, frantic memory: a child being chased, a rabbit fleeing a hawk, a ship torn in a storm.
A Shard-Hound. Its entire being was a singular, primal memory given form: the act of pursuit.
It lowered its head. A sound emerged, not from a throat, but from the air between them—a low, guttural frequency that was less a noise and more a direct injection of fear into his synapses. It was hunting. He was the prey.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. He had nothing. The dance was useless. The guardian's strike was spent. He was utterly defenseless.
The Hound charged. It didn't run; it flowed, a predator of liquid shadow and light, closing the distance with terrifying, silent speed.
Instinct screamed. There was no time for thought. He didn't think of Recording; he thought of the memory he'd just lived. The dancer's footwork. The shift of weight. The elegant, evasive turn.
He Played the corrupted, jumbled Recording.
It wasn't about using the memory as a weapon. It was about borrowing the skill within it.
His body moved, executing the precise, twisting turn of the courtly dance. It was absurd—a ballroom maneuver in a fight for survival. The Shard-Hound's lunge passed through the space where he had been, its claws scoring deep, smoking grooves into the white stone.
The Tax was demanded.
The vault inside him swung open. This demand was significant. The skill was complex, the emotions behind it strong. It required a real memory.
It took the memory of his first day as a Senior Archivist. The pride that had warmed his chest. The weight of the ceremonial key in his hand. The respectful, proud nods from his colleagues. The memory didn't fade; it was surgically removed, leaving behind only the cold, empty fact of the promotion.
The loss was a second hollowing. He gasped, stumbling back from the Hound, his vision swimming.
The creature recovered with unnatural speed, turning its mosaic head toward him. It was preparing to lunge again. He had bought a single second. Nothing more.
Desperation, a wild and feral thing, took hold. He had to find a weapon. His eyes darted, landing on the sheared-off pillar lying nearby—a chunk of white stone the size of his torso.
The Hound charged.
There was no time. Kaelan dove, his hands slapping against the stone's rough-hewn edge as the Hound's jaws snapped shut on empty air where his legs had been.
He Recorded.
He didn't have time to sense what he was taking. He just took. His power latched onto the last, violent memory stored in the stone—the moment of the cataclysm that had sheared it in two.
A single, devastating, horizontal impact. Pure, annihilating force.
This was chaos given direction.
A flash of blinding light and a soundless, world-ending force.
The Shard-Hound gathered itself and pounced.
Kaelan Played the Recording.
He didn't direct it. He just unleashed it back into the stone he was touching.
The chunk of pillar detonated.
It didn't just break; it vaporized into a hyper-kinetic storm of white shrapnel. A cone of destructive force ripped through the air, tearing through the construct of light and memory. The Shard-Hound didn't scream. It came apart into a thousand glittering motes, each one blinking out like a dying star.
Silence.
Kaelan lay on the ground, chest heaving, ears ringing. Fine white dust settled over him like snow. The cost of the Tax hit.
The internal vault didn't just open; it yawned, vast and hungry. It demanded a memory of immense, equivalent weight to pay for that raw, destructive power.
It took the memory of his father's face.
He knew he'd had a father. He knew the man had taught him to read, had a soft, measured baritone, had loved history. But the image of his face, the sound of his voice, the feeling of his hand on his small shoulder—it was all gone. Erased. Replaced by a void as absolute and silent as the one where Elara's laughter had been.
Two voids now. A second chamber in the museum of his mind was permanently closed, its exhibits gone, its lights off forever.
He curled on his side, a dry, heaving sob wrenching itself from his throat. He had survived. He had won.
And with each victory, he was losing the very things that made victory worth having.
He was becoming a weapon of forgotten moments, firing himself into oblivion.
After a long time, he pushed himself up. His body was whole. His spirit was in tatters. He looked at the dust of the pillar on his hands, then at the two aching voids within him.
This was the path. It was not paved with loss. It was paved with himself.
He had taken his first step. He had turned a page in his own history, only to watch it immediately turn to ash in his hands.
The quest was no longer a theory. It was a desperate, bloody grind. And he had only just begun.