The Archivist's visit left a ghost in the room. Kaelen felt the old man's presence long after the door had sealed, a lingering pressure in the air that made it hard to breathe. The inspection had been a declaration of war, a silent acknowledgment that the fragile truce between jailer and prisoner was over.
He was pacing, his mind a frantic animal searching for an escape that didn't exist, when the wall panel chimed. He flinched, expecting another summons, another psychological trap. But the message was different.
[Sector 7-G: Mass Cleansing Preparation. Mnemonic Residue Stabilization Required. Report Immediately.]
A mass cleansing. It was the Archivist's response. He wasn't sending Kaelen to another high-profile target to test him. He was sending him to the grinder. To the most brutal, impersonal, and soul-deadening work in Memory's End—processing a large group of the Condemned before they were fed into the Vats. It was a punishment. A reminder of his place.
Valeria was waiting, her expression, as always, unreadable. She led him not to the private cells, but back to the vast, circular main chamber. The hum of the central machinery was louder here, a hungry, grinding noise. A line of twenty or so new Condemned, their wrists bound by energy cuffs, were being marched towards the cleansing platforms by other Guards. The air was thick with a cocktail of fear, despair, and resignation.
Kaelen's task was simple and monstrous: he was to move down the line, quickly assess the "mnemonic residue" of each person—the lingering emotional energy of their most powerful, recently extracted memories—and use his abilities to "stabilize" it. In practice, this meant calming the violent, panicked outbursts that could sometimes disrupt the efficient flow into the Siphons. He was to be a psychic sedative, ensuring the human fuel burned cleanly.
He moved to the first in line, a woman sobbing uncontrollably. He placed a hand on her shoulder, and a jolt of pure, child-like terror at being separated from her parents lanced into him. He did what was required, gently smoothing the sharp, fresh edges of the trauma into a dull, manageable ache. The woman's sobs quieted to whimpers. She looked at him with vacant gratitude. He felt sick.
He moved to the next, and the next. A man raging against his bonds, filled with the memory of a wrongful accusation. Kaelen pacified his anger. A young man, trembling, his mind screaming with the image of a lost love. Kaelen muted his sorrow. He was an assembly-line worker, dulling the pain of souls on their way to the incinerator.
He was halfway down the line, his own mind growing numb with the relentless torrent of other people's pain, when he saw her.
Lyssa.
She was at the far end of the line, her head bowed, her dyed grey-brown hair falling over her face. But he would know her anywhere. The way she held herself, even in defeat. His best friend. The one who had warned him. The one whose memory of this very moment was scheduled to be purged.
The world narrowed to a single, horrifying point. The numbness shattered, replaced by a cold, sharp terror that was entirely his own.
He almost called out her name, but the sound died in his throat. Valeria was watching. Any sign of recognition would be a death sentence for them both. He forced himself to look away, to continue his work, his hands trembling as he "stabilized" a man babbling about forgotten birthdays.
But his mind was screaming. Lyssa. They have Lyssa.
He inched down the line, each step an agony. He could see the faint tremor in her shoulders. She hadn't seen him yet. What had she done? Had they discovered she knew about him? Had she asked too many questions after he was taken? Had her uncle's fate finally become her own?
He reached the person in front of her, his back to Valeria. As he performed his hollow ministry, he risked a glance. Lyssa's head was still down, but her eyes were open, staring at the floor as if she could burn a hole through it with her will.
Then, her gaze flickered up. It swept past him, then snapped back.
Their eyes met.
For a fraction of a second, her mask of numb resignation shattered. Her eyes widened in stunned, disbelieving recognition. It was there for a heartbeat—a flash of the old, fiery Lyssa—before terror extinguished it. She quickly looked down again, her entire body rigid.
But in that single, fleeting glance, a message had passed between them. A message of shared horror, and a desperate, unspoken question.
Kaelen turned to her. He could feel Valeria's gaze on his back like a crosshair. He had to do this. He had to be the Sculptor now, for real.
He placed his hands on her temples. Her skin was cold.
"Be calm," he whispered, the words a betrayal and a plea.
He delved into her mind. It was a storm of fear and confusion, but at its center, he found the core memory they had targeted. It wasn't of him. It was of their last conversation in the Dusty Tome. Her warning to him about the Siphons. Her fear for him. Her memory of him.
This was her crime. Remembering Kaelen too well. Caring too much.
The Mnemonic Guard had already performed the main extraction. The memory was loose, frayed, ready to be siphoned away. His official duty was to smooth this process.
But he couldn't.
With a precision born of desperation, he did the opposite. He couldn't save the memory—it was too damaged. But he could hide a piece of it. A single, powerful anchor. He took the emotion of that memory—the fierce, protective loyalty she felt for him—and he folded it, compressed it, and buried it deep within a harmless, mundane memory of polishing a counter in the shop.
He finished the "stabilization," forcing her surface thoughts into a placid, docile state. Her body relaxed, the tension draining away. She looked up at him, her eyes empty.
"Thank you," the Hollow that wore his friend's face said.
He nodded, unable to speak, and moved on.
As he finished the line, a cold resolve solidified within him. The Archivist had thrown Lyssa into the pit to break him, to remind him of his powerlessness.
He had failed.
The game was no longer just about preserving the past. It was about saving the future. Lyssa was his first link to the world above, a world he now had to fight for. He had hidden a seed of who she was deep within her mind. It was a fragile, desperate hope.
But it was a start. The Librarian was done being a passive collector. It was time to become a revolutionary.