Chapter 26 — The Weight of Names

The shard burned Yusuf's palm, but he refused to release it. The whisps in his mind were now a storm, a thousand uncounted whisps in his mind, all of them wailing: Remember me.

The Codex blazed in the faceless child's hand, its pages whipping back and forth. The book bucked, struggling against Yusuf's insistence. "You are not to have what is broken," the child cautioned, its voice shaking for the first time.

Rae seized Yusuf’s wrist. “Then drop it!” Her eyes were wild, desperate. “You’ll destroy yourself!”

The shard pulsed again—then suddenly quieted. The voices shrank into a single whisper, faint but clear:

We will not be destroyed.

Light burst out, ripping through the collapse of the chamber. The ghostly memories shrieked as the light ripped through them, their blank faces ripped away like sparks. Concrete ground supported beneath Yusuf's feet. There was quiet.

Then—

A tear in the ceiling, and between it Yusuf looked not at sky but at an infinite rotating plane of filaments—ten thousands and ten thousands of worlds of memory, curled like a root of tree. At their heart, shattered glints shone like pieces of shivered glass, suspended there forever.

The featureless child stared up at it. "The Shardstream." it said. "You have opened it."

Rae's fingers tightened around Yusuf's wrist. "What does it mean?"

It means," the child told him, its blank face tilted up at both of them, "he is bound now. Every shard will summon him. "

Yusuf lurched backward, stunned. Already, he could feel it: hundreds of faraway voices calling out to him, shards of memory calling out to him, summoning him home to rebuild them. A weight so overwhelming it might kill him.

Rae gazed at him, eyes closed but shaking. "Yusuf. what did you do?

He didn't get a chance to respond before the empty air above them tore open again. Strands snapped, thrumming like strings of beads, and out of the Shardstream something began to stir—an enormous form, regarding.

Not the Harvester.

Something else.

The combat child uttered one word, close to wonder:

"Binder."

The room collapsed entirely, and the three of them were swept away by the wave of threads.