Chapter 58 – The Last Memory

Part 3 – The Heart of the Tree

The storm hit him like a tide.

Yusuf staggered, shoulders slumped beneath the weight of shadow and remembrance. The Codex pulsed in his arms, its filaments blazing, working to hold form against the ceaseless onslaught. But the Tree had gone mad. The coil in front of him writhed, roots flying outward like the arms of some titanic beast. They hammered the nothingness itself into waves of distortion.

Every step forward was like trudging through tar. The air clung to his lungs, weighed down by whispers. Names blew through his head, some of them familiar, others completely unknown: Rae, Kahlis, Elarra, Andorin, Selas, Maerin. Every name was accompanied by silence, as if a page had been torn from a book.

The names were a mantra: forgotten, forgotten, forgotten.

Yusuf clenched his teeth. "Not if I write them into the Codex. Not if I animate them." His voice was weak, even to himself. But the Codex answered with a soft light.

The coil convulsed, unwinding like a cord. And Yusuf glimpsed its heart for the first time.

It was no seed, no root, no thing that belonged to the natural universe. It was a sphere of light and shadow, strands spliced and snapped back again, their loose ends oozing into the void. The presence pulsed, and with each beat, Yusuf's memories flashed. He saw his mother's countenance, then it vanished. Saw his father's hand writing, then lost it. Saw Rae laughing once, tired but alive—and then lost, as if she had never lived at all.

"No!" Yusuf yelled. He held the Codex tightly in both fists and pulled. Threads burst forth like spears, piercing the earth, dragging him in.

The Tree retaliated. Roots snapped free, slamming into him like crashing mountains. Yusuf clutched the Codex high, deflecting one, then the other. Each impact vibrated his skeleton. Pain rang through his ribs, arms, legs. He stumbled but would not fall.

One of the roots whipped from the side and hooked his thigh. Flesh tore open in a blaze of pain. He stumbled. The Codex flared again, sealing the cut with raw light, though a burning remained, a burning reminder of how close he'd come to stumbling.

The emptiness distorted. Hallucinations burst in waves. Ascending not individual visions, but dozens stacked upon dozens, clogging his senses until he could no longer differentiate reality.

He was at the museum, and in the kitchen, and on the battlefield, and suffocating in the river, and standing next to Rae, and kneeling in front of his father. All at once. All screaming in his ears.

"You failed me."

"You failed us all."

“You’re already gone.”

He clawed through the voices, his mind splintering. The Codex shook violently in his hands, light sputtering, nearly extinguished under the barrage.

And then—through the storm—one faint echo. Rae’s voice. Not an accusation this time, but a plea. Don’t stop.

His knees buckled. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. “I won’t!”

He tossed the Codex aside. Strands extended, knotting into a wall, slicing through deceptions. Sheets of hallucinations shattered, exploding into wisps of smoke. Yusuf moved in from the opening, drawing himself toward the thudding knot of light.

He was almost there. So close.

The heart pounded again, harder this time, a shockwave ripping out. It struck him like a hammer. His chest exploded with pain. Blood filled his mouth. He collapsed to the ground, the Codex slipping from his grasp, scratching against the shattered surface.

"No…" His hand reached toward it, quivering. The void warped. Distance distorted. The Codex was a hundred leagues distant, even though it had fallen only a few paces in front.

The Tree forced the advantage. Roots whipped downward, driving into the earth around him. Each of them struck with a blinding crash, shattering existence itself. A root looped around his waist, lifting him off the ground. Another caught his leg, another his arm. He was bound, suspended, drawn to the pounding knot like an offering.

The whispers grew to shouts, clawing his mind. Rae's voice recurred, then turned harshly: You let me get away. You let them all get away.

He screamed, struggling against the roots. His struggles only held them more securely. His ribs cracked with pressure. His breathing was a shallow moan.

The heart beat again. And this time, instead of stealing a memory, it gave one.

Yusuf gazed down at his own body, broken and dead, floating into nothingness. The Codex lay by itself beside him, pages folding into smoke. The Tree burned more intensely, more powerfully, as if it were famished by his loss. The vision showed a world without an Archivist, without rebellion, only stillness.

It was true, he considered.

His arms dropped. His hold released. His eyesight faded.

Then, hardly a whisper, another voice cut through. Not Rae's this time. Not his father's. His own. His own voice, years ago, to a frightened villager in a decaying landscape of memory: If we forget you, you die twice. But if we remember you, even for an instant, you still live.

The recollection sparked something in him. A coal, a small one but a defiant one.

No. His voice cracked. Blood trickled from his lips. He forced the word out once more, strained. "NO!"

The Codex shook where it lay. Threads snapped out, as though they heard him fighting. They lashed at the roots that bound him, slashing through them in spades of white. One by one, the bindings snapped. Yusuf fell, his knees thudding on the ground, gasping, free.

The Codex flew back into his grasp. He clutched it in a tight hold, blood and tears mingling on his face. His body ached with pain, but his will burned stronger than ever.

The heart loomed before him, its fibers writhing with fury. It thrashed once again, sending out a dying convulsion of madness. Yusuf staggered as visions of all of those faces that had been taken from him arose to greet him: Rae, the child, his mother, his father, even faceless villagers that he had seen but once. They swarmed in, their eyes blank, reaching to drag him down.

Yusuf raised the Codex aloft. "I carry you all. Not as chains. As memory."

Light streamed from the pages, blinding, brilliant. The illusions shrieked, tearing apart. The Tree's heart trembled, its threads unraveling.

Yusuf staggered forward, every step agony, until he stood before it. He could feel its pulse against his skin, warmth and chill at once.

"This ends with me," he whispered.

He hurled the Codex before him. Threads wrapped the heart, piercing deep inside. The Tree screamed. The void twisted. Light and darkness tore each other apart, the power so great it nearly unmade him.

Yusuf fell to his knees, holding between him and the heart the tether. His body seared, his eyes blurried, but he would not let go.

The last memory shone in the knot, faint and fleeting. Yusuf grappled for it with what remained of himself.

And when his hand reached out to grasp the light, the world shattered.