Chapter 48 – The Father Who Forgot

The air vibrated with the weight of uncoiling. The hallways Yusuf had stumbled down—the bottomless stacks of books, jagged pieces of memory hanging like lanterns, string wrapping into impossible loops—opening up into one great, cavernous space.

There was a man in the middle of it.

Not a ghost, not a shadow, not a man who borrowed another's face. A man. His back bent, hands roughened by years, his robe frayed and worn. His hair, jet black once, now was grayed to white silver, unbrushed. His eyes—Yusuf stood rooted.

Those eyes he knew.

".Father?"

The name grated from him before he could say it, like it had been cooped up in his chest all along just waiting to be let out.

The man slowly swung around, like he'd been listening the whole time, like he'd been expecting someone but not this someone. His face unwound in surprise.

“You—” He blinked, frowning, studying Yusuf the way a historian would study a cracked inscription. “You’ve come far to reach me. Too far.”

The words sting because they were uttered without recognition, without love. Only the practiced tones of a lecturer, of an academic. The tones Yusuf was used to hearing beyond half-open doors as his father dictated onto the darkness.

"You don't… know me?"

The man's brow furrowed. "Should I?"

Yusuf stepped back, hand on his chest. He had to yell yes, had to shake the man until his memories shook loose like dust. A tide of battles and silences engulfed him instead. The nights he waited for permission. The day he'd left the house after the last fight.

You're my father," Yusuf said, his voice shaking. "You taught me to hold a book before I even learned how to hold a pen. You taught me that the world recollects through us. You—" His throat closed up. "You led me into all this madness, didn't you?

The man looked at him a long time. His eyes filled with kindness but did not flicker with memory. "I always wanted a son," he whispered. "A son to walk beside me in this business. You remind me maybe of what I dreamed of."

The words shattered something in Yusuf. Not cruelty—worse. Kindness without memory. Affection without anchor. His father welcomed him as a stranger.

Dad, it's me," stated Yusuf more firmly now. His fingers shook. "I'm Yusuf. I'm the kid who debated you about history, about whether memory that wasn't that full of love was enough. You said it was enough for you. Do you remember? Do you—

His father cocked his head. His lips stirred as if sampling the name, but nothing emerged. Then his eyes glazed, drifting. "Names… so many names have slipped my mind. They scatter like ash in the breeze."

Yusuf's chest collapsed.

The faceless child materialized then, wordlessly, as if he had waited for this breakdown. His empty head swiveled between them, his small hands spiking with agitated energy.

He's fading away," the boy said in his small, tremulous voice. "The longer he stays, the more he forgets. Soon he'll just be string.".

"Silence!" Yusuf snarled, his grief turning to anger. He stepped closer to his father, begging. "I went so far. I bled for it. I bore whole universes in my arms just so I could find you—do not have the decency to remember me now.".

His father stumbled, blinking slowly, as if words approached him on veils of mist. "You. gave birth to worlds?" His lips curled so indistinctly, so close to a smile. "Then you have done more than I ever did."

That killed Yusuf.

He fell to his knees, punching the stone with his fists. His tears splattered the ground like small fragments of shattered glass.

The faceless boy's voice crept across the silence. "You see now why you can't win. Even those you rescue will forget. Even those you love will disappear. The tree devours everything."

Yusuf's head jerked up. His grief burned into a bared, furious fire. "No."

The boy cocked his blank face. "No?"

"I won't lose him. I won't let you take him."

The floor trembled. Shadows peeled off the walls, threads whipping like hurricane-winds. Whispers filled the room—memories unraveling, pulling Yusuf's father back as ethereal hands. His father reeled, his palms covering his temples.

And the faceless child moved.

His thin frame elongated, fibers breaking apart and re-spinning. His arms lengthened, his belly twisting, his hollow face warping in a nightmare. The cries once beside Yusuf now burst forth from the child's body as a cacophony. He was more than just a child now—he was the Harvester incarnate, the compilation of all memories which longed to be consumed.

Yusuf stood up, massaging his face with the back of his hand, jaw set.

He glanced at his father once more, who was now gazing at him with tears he did not understand. "I always hoped…," his father started, voice cracking,

".to have a son like you."

The words hurt. Yusuf's throat was shut.

He couldn't breathe. Couldn't talk. His father didn't recognize him, not anymore—but he loved the ghost of him, the shadow of possibility.

And Yusuf saw then that the price was real: not just losing himself, but even the chance at being remembered.

The Harvester-child loomed over them, empty face creaking with a sound like the shattering of stone.

And then it spat. "You choose. Save him—and break. Or fight me—and lose him forever."

Yusuf's heart pounded. His legs shook. He looked at his dad, already being sucked in, and at the faceless boy, who had been his friend, his teacher, his shadow—and now his nemesis.

He shut his eyes. His mother's voice, tiny, years past recalled, breathed through remembrance: You can't hold the whole world, Yusuf. But you can hold love.

When he opened his eyes, he tore a shard of remembrance from his chest, flame licking in his palm.

"I will not be dictated to by either of you," said Yusuf, whose voice was now unbreakable. "If I die, it will be on my terms."

The faceless boy cried out. His father staggered around in the dark for him. And Yusuf entered the storm.