Chapter 40 — The Scholar of Glass

The marble square seemed to go on forever.

Yusuf couldn't make up his mind whether the glassy citizens were present or simply products of his own imagination. They didn't breathe, didn't blink, yet the way their heads followed each movement he made gave him shivers.

The scholar-woman came to him, her keys rattling softly against her robes. Her footsteps were like bells in the stillness.

“You’re the one they sent,” she said, her voice flat, certain. “The Archivist.”

“I’m not—” Yusuf began, but the child’s hand tightened on his sleeve.

“Don’t deny it,” the faceless child murmured. Their voice trembled, almost fearful.

The woman stopped only a few paces away. Up close, Yusuf noticed the cracks spiderwebbing across her skin, faint but visible, as though she too were made of the same glass as the silent citizens.

You've come to set us free," she said to him. "Or kill us."

Yusuf swallowed. "I don't know what this is."

She smiled, a creaked smile, a crack in her face. "The City That Waited. We are shards of those who would not let go, who wrapped ourselves in time so tightly that it snapped around us. We have waited for the one who comes with the Codex.".

As he heard the Codex, the boy folded it against his chest.

Yusuf's words were short, acidic. "And if I don't help?"

The woman's expression turned icy and tense, and for the first time her composure cracked. "As I told you: then the waiting never ceases."

The glass citizens shifted. Sound coursed through them like reeds in air, but not wind. Whispering—countless voices repeating the same fractured prayer:

Remember us. Remember us. Remember us.

The Codex shuddered, its pages whispering even though a breath of air was not moved. The glyphs seared on its parchment, too vivid to look at.

The faceless child gasped in lungsful. "They're trying to write themselves into existence."

Yusuf flinched back, but the scholar kept him pinned in a hand that glowed dully.

"Archivist," she said to him, voice even once more. "Choose. To remember us is to bear the weight of everything we were lost. To forget us…" She gazed out at the snowy crowds.

".is to obliterate what remains."

The dais vibrated beneath the thrum of the concealed clock. Louder. Faster.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Yusuf's mouth grew dry. He sensed a choice hovering over him, one that could unravel this thread—or himself.

The faceless boy leaned forward to whisper to him, voice close to the ticking.

"Don't listen too long. If you do… you'll forget who you are."

The whispers grew louder. The crowd closed in closer. The scholar's creased face bent down, eyes aglow and urgent.

"Archivist. Will you remember us?"