Chapter 59 – The Archivist’s End

Part 1: The Hollow Father

Not a chamber in the heart of the Tree but a wound.

It did not bleed light but light that was not light, not memory but memory that was not. Pieces of whole lives drifted in the air like tatters of paper in a hurricane: laughter from unseen lips, a lullaby sung by a dead woman, the outline of a war already lost. All of it glowed, stacked, broken. The closer Yusuf got to the writhing heart, the harder he struggled to hold himself together. Threads lashed from his chest, reaching out towards the maelstrom, and he clutched the Codex with every ounce of strength he had just to stay anchored.

The faceless child was gone—devoured in the battle that had drained the life from Yusuf—but its absence was no comfort. Something much, much worse lay in wait here, something he'd half-hoped and half-feared for in every thread he'd followed.

The bent figure in the middle of the wound was slumped, years Yusuf couldn't count. For a moment, it looked like another ghostly memory, another hollow husk the Tree devoured. But as the drifters touched its face with their lights, Yusuf recognized the visage.

And the world paused.

It was his father.

But not the man Yusuf had known. This was a shadow of him—hair bleached to gray and wispy, skin worn paper-thin, eyes lost so deep in shadow they seemed carved out of stone. His robe was tattered, stitched together from fragments of memory-threads, and his hands shook as they clung to nothing. He muttered to himself, a torrent of broken syllables, like a scholar repeating a lesson over and over even as the words no longer made sense.

"Baba…" Yusuf gasped, his throat raw.

The man didn't look around.

Yusuf took another step closer, fighting the pull of the Tree. Each step cost him something: the taste of honey on warm bread, the smell of books in the museum's archive, the touch of his first notebook in his childish hands. But he kept going, gritting his teeth, until he was on his knees before the old man.

"Baba. It's me. It's Yusuf."

The eyes rose—faded, milky, unfocused. For a moment, recognition nearly blazed. But it slipped away like water through hands.

"You… archive?" his father slurred. His words were cracked parchments. "Always archive. Names and faces and dates. Significant. Significant. No… not enough. Never enough." His hand trembled, reaching in the air, not for Yusuf. "Must keep it all. Must never forget…"

Yusuf's heart broke. This was the man he had followed across shattered worlds—the man whose shadow he had carried in anger and longing. And here he was, a whispered fixation, a prisoner of the same obligation he had once boastingly celebrated.

"No, Baba." Yusuf clutched his hand, holding it fast, anchoring it to flesh. "I'm here. Your son. Recall?

For a moment, the old man stood still. His wrinkled fingers closed weakly around Yusuf's. His lips moved to make something that was not sound. Yusuf edged forward, hurting.

"…Yusuf?"

The name was scarcely there. A whisper on the edge of collapsing air. But it existed.

Yusuf's whole chest had shrunken in. He gritted his teeth against a cry. "Yes. Yes, it's me."

But the light died from his father's eyes as quickly as it had shown. The hand unclenched, went limp. His eyes drifted away to the side, following fragments of lives that weren't his. "Not enough. Never enough. Too much to bear. Too much…"

Yusuf shook him. "Don't leave me! Baba, don't!"

But the man's voice grew to a chant, cracked and wooden. "Names, names, names. A list. A list of stone. Cold. Empty. No love in it. Just names…

Yusuf gasped. The phrases hurt, for they were the same that had been shouted by his father when they'd clashed for the last time—decades before Yusuf had ever been pulled into this labyrinth of memory. You believe recalling will suffice. Memory, however, without love is no more than a list of names.

And behold, the proof: a father broken by the same faith he had dedicated himself to.

Yusuf buried his head against the man's hard, dry knuckles, and his tears wet into the parched skin. He wished he could be angry, bellow at the Tree for having done this. Wished he could hate his father for abandoning him, for leaving him to bear this curse. But all he could feel was sadness.

When he looked up, the man was staring at him again. Something faintly smoldered, weak but there. His lips shook, and a whisper escaped them.

"I… always wished…" His voice cracked. "Always wished I had a son like you."

The knife went deep.

Yusuf's muscles locked, each nerve singing with flame. He opened his lips, but there was no sound. His father's dreamy-eyed look held no recognition, no understanding. He'd not understood what he'd said. He hadn't realized he was speaking to his son.

The cruelest kindness had been that fleeting glimpse beforehand—the single word, the single gasp of actual consciousness. It had been real. But that was lost now, leaving nothing.

And Yusuf was alone to bear the weight.

He held his father's frail hand between both of his own, muttering in a furious whisper as if the sound of his voice could stitch the broken man whole. "You had me, Baba. You had me all along. And I—" His throat closed, the words shattering. "I was enough."

But his father refused to listen. The chanting rose again, softer this time, melting into the hum of the Tree. "Names, names, names…"

The Codex within Yusuf's heart burst forth, its pages trembling wildly. World-threads creaked with pain around them, and Yusuf recognized the cost of what was about to happen. To preserve even this flicker of his father—to keep the last resonance of him intact—would be costly. His sacrifice.

He looked down at the thin man leaning against him, eyes already lost to desolate distances. There was to be no reunion. No forgiveness, in welcome. Only this ruin, and Yusuf's choice what to do with it.

The silence stretched out, broken only by the endless susurrus of ripping memory. Yusuf leaned his head down, planting a last kiss on the crown of his father's gray hair.

Then he let go.

Not out of malice, but because now he understood: the Tree's thirst would never be slaked by names. What mattered was what he carried forward. And if it was to carry the pain of this moment into his dying act, then so be it.

Yusuf stood up slowly, his father's hand falling from his own like sand slipping through fingers. His whole body shook but he did not fall. The Codex glowed faintly at his waist, its ink black, its weight pressing.

He stood before the aching wound at the Tree's center—the location of all memory converging, the location of where he would stand.

But as he stepped inside, he looked back once more. His father lay there, half-in the darkness, half-man, staring blankly into a world of broken recollections. A husk. A warning. And, still, the very faintest whisper of a man Yusuf had loved.

"Goodbye, Baba," Yusuf whispered.

The Tree groaned, the world creased, and Yusuf moved forward.