Air thickened as Yusuf and Rae approached the city's center.
No longer ruins only—this part of the world had developed wrong. Streets reordered themselves when they weren't looking. Buildings flipped upside down. Names carved into walls hemorrhaged like ink in water.
A location folded in on itself in grief.
The Codex thudded against Yusuf's hip like a second heart. The red thread blazed brighter with every step.
They used to call this 'Elarra,'" Rae whispered, her tone wary. "I recall that much."
"Was that home?"
"It was home to everyone. The final refuge after the fires. Until. the vote."
Yusuf's brow furrowed. "What vote?"
But Rae didn't respond.
They came to the cathedral in the middle of the city—its doors open like a mouth too weary to scream. Inside, shattered stained glass cast the floor in dwindling color. Memory threads hung from the rafters like veins torn from some monstrous beast.
The child without a face waited just inside the doorway, still and enigmatic.
And on the altar—something in suspension.
A single memory shard, pulsing.
Yusuf stepped forward, but Rae held his arm.
This is it. This is what the Codex was pulling you towards. This is the one memory that made Elarra choose forgetting."
Yusuf's hand wavered over the shard.
"Do you want to know?" Rae asked. "You don't have to. We could leave now, seal it off. Let it rot."
But Yusuf already knew he couldn't.
He touched the shard.
The world froze.
A wave of memory crashed over him.
A vision:
Elarra, alive and well.
Children playing in stone courtyards. Artists brush-painting skies onto library ceilings. Musicians capturing sound within glowing orbs.
And then—the sky turned red.
Smoke. Screams. Ash snowed down.
Elarra was besieged—not from without, but from its own memories. The Codex had been used by another previously, one who had tried to preserve everything. Every love. Every regret. Every sin.
And it crushed the city.
Memories stacked until they fell.
People couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't sleep for the voices whispering all the things they wished they'd forgotten.
So the leaders made a pact.
To erase it all.
They bound the Codex. Buried the city's past. Left behind names, faces, guilt.
Elarra would live—but only as an empty shell.
Back in the cathedral, Yusuf gasped.
The shard slipped from his hand.
"That's why this world fights back," he whispered. "They chose oblivion."
Rae nodded grimly. "And you just remembered what they couldn't bear to."
The cathedral began to shudder.
People moved out of the shadows—not echoes this time, but real people. Fractured, flickering. Elarrans, still trapped in the borders of memory. Their eyes were hollow, voices strained.
"You shouldn't have remembered," one spat.
"You'll bring it all back," another sobbed.
The walls cracked. The stained glass shattered.
Rae drew her sword. Yusuf raised the Codex. The faceless child stepped to Yusuf's side, fists clenched but not interfering—only watching.
They fought—not to destruction, but to prevent collapse. Rae's sword burned through shadow-forms of sorrow. Yusuf rebuilt shattering recollections in mid-air, every glowing thread forcing fragments into place.
The cathedral rent in twain—
And Yusuf stood in the middle.
He drove the Codex into the earth.
Light. Threads. Memory.
A tide of raw truth washed over the city. Not to restore, but to balance—not all was restored. Just enough.
Names returned to walls. Some faces to the crowds. Enough pain to mourn. Enough joy to remember why it had been worth it.
The city exhaled.
Then, silence.
Outside, dawn kissed the skyline.
Yusuf sat against the stairs. Rae sat beside him, exhausted, sword laid across her knees. Her archivist's bracer glowed softly—no longer fading, but pulsing again with gentle light.
"Think it worked?" he asked.
Rae nodded. "I think they remember enough now."
"But not you?" Yusuf asked softly.
She smiled, mournful. "Maybe for a little while."
He looked to the horizon. The red thread tugged faintly toward the next world.
Yusuf stood up, opened the Codex.
The next thread had appeared.
Rae looked up. "You're going?"
He nodded. "The work doesn't end here."
She hesitated. "Yusuf… if I forget you, again…"
He stopped. Then gently touched her arm. "Then remember this: not all memories are meant to last. Some are meant to spark something, even after they're gone."
A shimmer of light enveloped him.
And then he was gone.
Rae blinked.
She stood alone.
A sword in her hand.
A warmth in her chest she didn’t understand.
And a city behind her, breathing again.
The faceless child remained at the edge of the cathedral, staring at the place Yusuf had vanished. His featureless face tilted upward, as if listening to something only he could hear.
He turned to Rae.
“You’ll remember longer than most,” he said.
Then he, too, vanished—thread and shadow into ash and silence.
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