Chapter 15:
The Archivist of Lost Eras
The river boiled.
Hands clawed their way up from the water—white, bloated, flaking with ash. Not living hands. Drowned hands. Hands belonging to men who only existed now in memory. Their eyes glimmered faintly, small lanterns burning out too fast.
The boat lurched. Yusuf staggered, grabbing at the side to keep from falling. The ferryman didn’t flinch. He drove his long pole into the river with a crack like iron striking bronze.
“Stay in the boat. The drowned don’t forget.”
The faceless boy clung to Yusuf’s arm, the Codex trembling in his grip. Its pages tore open on their own, words spinning loose and rising like fireflies into the night air.
The Drowned Ones. Fragments of broken memories. They seek anchors, or they fade.
One of them lunged, seizing Yusuf’s wrist. Its grip was ice. In the hollow glow of its eyes, Yusuf saw flashes—faces, voices, lives. A farmer wiping sweat from his brow. A mother cradling a newborn. A child laughing in the sunlight. Lives that had once belonged, now adrift.
“Yusuf!” the boy shouted, voice cracking. “Don’t look at them!”
But he already had. And the more he saw, the more something inside him frayed. A favorite taste vanished from his tongue. The echo of his father’s laugh—no, wait, had his father ever laughed? He couldn’t hold the truth still. Everything was slipping.
The ferryman slammed his pole into the creature’s wrist. The drowned hand recoiled, leaving Yusuf gasping.
“Rowers are meant to pay their toll,” the ferryman rasped, eyes like pits of ink. “But you—” He paused, staring deep into Yusuf. “You bring your own debt.”
Before Yusuf could speak, a new voice rose from the drowned. Not quite a whisper. Not quite a scream. Something jagged in between.
“Yusuf.”
He froze. The sound carved him open.
His father’s voice.
The drowned parted, and a figure dragged itself up from the depths—a shape of water and shadow, half-formed, half-erased. It was his father, and yet not. One eye gone. The other burning with a recognition too sharp to bear.
“You left me here.”
“No.” The word tore out of Yusuf’s chest. His throat locked. “That’s not—you’re not—”
The child yanked at his sleeve, frantic now. “It isn’t him. It’s what the river made of him. Don’t listen.”
But the drowned father reached out, water spilling from skeletal fingers.
“Come closer, Yusuf. Bring me the Codex. Bring the shard.”
The shard in Yusuf’s pocket pulsed hard enough to hurt, thrumming with the drowned voice.
The ferryman slammed his pole into the riverbed, shoving the boat forward.
“Choose, mortal! The drowned won’t let you through unless they take their due.”
Yusuf’s hand hovered over the shard. It burned against his palm even before he touched it.
The drowned pressed closer, their ruined mouths moving in unison, chanting names—endless names.
The child’s faceless head turned toward him. “Give them the shard, and they’ll let us pass. But Rae’s gift will be gone.”
Yusuf swallowed hard. “And if I don’t?”
“Then they’ll take something else. Something you can’t decide.”
The drowned surged. Cold water spilled into the boat. Hands wrapped around Yusuf’s throat. His father’s broken shadow loomed above them all, voice shattering across the river.
“Remember me, Yusuf. Or lose yourself.”
The boat tipped, wood screaming, drowned bodies climbing.
Yusuf clutched the shard so hard it cut into his skin.
And then—
The chapter breaks.
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