Chapter 58 – The Last Memory

Part 2 – The Memory Storm

Step one towards the center of the coil nearly undid him.

The earth groaned, not like stone breaking, but like the concept of solidity itself failing. His foot landed upon something that, a heartbeat hence, was gone, and his balance was perilously upset. He lurched forward, grabbing hold of the Codex, although its heaviness risked dragging him down. The vacuum that surrounded him waveringed in response, as if delighted to see him falter.

The base coil in the front pulsed again. With each pressure, visions seeped from it like mist, welling up in columns that curled in the air. They solidified and grew heavy, so Yusuf was no longer in a void but on the marble floor of a museum gallery.

He gasped. Lamplight overhead transformed into its warm golden light. The walls extended to high, tapestry-draped arches. Glass display cases glimmered with objects he had once systematically documented: urns, sections of mosaics, twisted coils of unbroken jewelry. Nostalgia pressed in his chest like a palpable weight. It was home—or it was supposed to be.

But this quiet was the wrong kind. Too complete. He turned around, willing the creak of a custodian's cart, the quiet muttering of tourists. None. The cases fogged over from within. Mouths pressed against the glass across from him—faces he knew, smudged with breath, trailing behind as they stretched their mouths open soundlessly. Their eyes followed him everywhere he went.

No, Yusuf panted, clutching the Codex closer. "You're not real. You're not—"

A boy walked into the aisle. His face shifted, flashing—alternately Rae's stark set of features, the child's blank-faced nothing. His voice was both theirs and neither: "If memory is all you are, Yusuf, then who are you when we are gone?

Yusuf's knees buckled. The Codex burst into flame, threads flashing out, destroying the illusion. The museum shattered into shards of glass, plummeting around him in silence. He was standing once more in the void.

The attack didn't stop, though. Another vision attacked him before he could catch his breath.

He was in his father's study once more. Stale tobacco and parchment on the air. Books wobbly high stacked, volumes so high they bent under their own weight. His father crouched over the desk, his ink-stained hands. He did not look up at Yusuf.

"You think you're saving them," his father spat, his voice lifeless, the words chiseled in Yusuf's bones. "But you only enumerate their decline. You piece them together. You don't save."

Yusuf's breathing cramped. He'd heard this monologue a thousand times growing up, but now it stung sharper, was sharpened by the Tree's wrath. "You're wrong," Yusuf managed. "If I remember them, they still exist."

His father finally lifted his head. His eyes were empty sockets, darker than the void outside. His lips sneered. "Memory without love is ash. You never understood."

The words struck like a blow. Yusuf staggered backward. The study twisted, the shelves collapsing inward, books pouring out like sand, burying his feet. He thrashed, trying to escape, but the sand climbed higher, pulling him down. His father’s hollow eyes gleamed above the tide.

“Stop,” Yusuf gasped, his chest crushed by the weight. “You’re not him. You’re not—”

The Codex responded, banging against his chest. Strands lashed out, severing the disintegrating study in two. The illusion dissolved, blowing on the wind like torn pages. Yusuf fell to his knees, panting, sweat marking his brow.

The nothingness would not leave him alone.

This time the memory came softly, but more devastating. The sound of a woman's laughter, warm and tired, filled the room. Yusuf's head snapped up. His mother stood in front of him, her hair bound beneath a scarf, flour-dusted hands as though she had just entered from their kitchen. Her eyes, so gentle.

"Yusuf," she said. That was all. Nothing more.

Tears stung at his eyes. He eased his grip on the Codex. "Mother."

She drew nearer, her smile trembling on the edges. "It pains me to see you this way. Always grasping. Always bleeding for people who will never recall you. Why can't you let go?"

Her voice so close, so warm, that for a moment he yearned to. To crumple into her arms, to let fall the Codex, and to allow all to collapse.

But even as the urge blazed, her shape dissolved. Her eyes flickered into someone else's—Rae's cold-eyed gaze, then the child's blank faceless one. The Tree was seizing her voice, her warmth, twisting it into an instrument.

"Not her," Yusuf panted. "Not her!

He screamed, waving the Codex above him. Light washed out, consuming the illusion to dust. His mother's shape vanished, leaving nothing behind but a voice that lingered far too long in his head: I only wanted you to rest.

Yusuf fell forward, bracing himself on trembling arms. The void roiled stormily, the spin of roots thudding harder, as though the Tree itself had been wounded by his rebellion. Pockets of alien memories explode—images he did not recognize. A battle under two suns. A wedding in a silver-leaved tree. A first step on a frozen pond by a child. They foamed around him in a whirlpool, jarring with his own memories until he could no longer distinguish which belonged to him.

"Why am I?" he fought to say. The words tore themselves free before he could stop them. His voice was a stranger's.

The storm responded.

All the faces he'd ever known—friends, allies, passing acquaintances—swirled through the air around him. Each of them charging him in their own words. Rae again, whispering: "You let me fade." The faceless child, cold: "You never kept your promise." His father: "Ash." His mother: "Rest."

Their voices blended together until they were one cacophony: Forget. Forget. Forget.

Yusuf's body convulsed with the weight of it. His grip on the Codex slipped again, the threads unraveling. For an instant, the book was about to jump from his hands and surrender to the storm.

"No!" He hugged it harder, his arms shaking. "I am the Archivist. I am not finished."

The tempest boomed louder. The coil distant pulsed fiercely, sending out another wave. This time the delusion coalesced into shape not as a place, nor a person, but as Yusuf himself.

He saw his own shape standing before him, holding an exact copy of the Codex. The double's eyes were weary, spent. Its voice was Yusuf's, but lacking substance.

You do not need to fight," it said to him. "If you release it, it is done. No more pain. No more loneliness. You have done your part."

Yusuf seethed at himself. His legs trembled. His chest ached from the temptation. What if this is real? What if this is mercy?

The double moved nearer. Its smile was kind. "Let me take it from you. Rest."

Its hand extended, fingers touching the Codex.

Rage ignited in Yusuf’s chest. He shoved the hand away. “You are not me!”

The double’s expression twisted instantly into a sneer. It lunged. Yusuf raised the Codex like a shield. Light and shadow collided, throwing sparks across the void. He staggered backward under the impact, his arms burning, but he held.

The double snarled, pressing harder. “You can’t win. You’re already broken.”

Yusuf spat. "Maybe. But broken pieces still cut."

He shoved the Codex away. Light exploded, blinding, tearing the double's form asunder. It screamed—his own scream screaming in his head—before disintegrating to ash.

The whirlwind screamed. The coil writhed. Roots lashed out like whips, snapping through the vacancy. Yusuf rolled away, a crash coming at him where he had been. The ground shattered into fragments, pouring away into endless darkness.

He struggled up, gasping. His muscles trembled, his veins burning with exhaustion. But the coil was approaching now. He saw it now, a cluster of roots so entwined that they pulsed like one organ. In its center glowed something feeble, a splinter of light, fragile and desperate.

Yusuf's chest tightened. That's it. The final memory. The final shard to be saved.

The storm raged more violently, memories cutting through his brain, but he gritted his teeth and stumbled forward. Each step was a step into blades. Each thump of his heart was war. But he would not stop.

He had gone too far.

He had only one memory left to save.

And he would not let the Tree take it.