[3] How to Experience Your Past, Unwillingly

The fluorescent lights died.

In the sudden darkness, Rome's pupils fought to adjust. Then Amelia moved to the corner and he heard wood scraping against concrete. She was dragging something heavy.

When she returned, she carried a chest.

Not the kind from IKEA or a vintage store. This looked museum-worthy, behind bulletproof glass with explanatory plaques. Black lacquered wood polished to a mirror sheen. Mother-of-pearl inlays formed patterns that hurt to look at directly. Rome's eyes kept sliding off them. The geometry was wrong somehow, angles that shouldn't connect did anyway.

The playfulness had vanished from Amelia's face. What replaced it was worse - that serene, focused expression doctors get before cutting you open.

She set the chest on the table beside his chair with the reverence reserved for newborns or explosives.

"You know what separates professionals from amateurs in our world?" Her fingers traced the lid, following those impossible patterns. "Proper tools."

The lock clicked without her touching it. Just a pulse of violet energy from her eyes, and the mechanisms obeyed like trained dogs.

Inside, nestled in blood-red velvet, lay three items.

First, a sheet of parchment. Except calling it parchment was like calling the Mona Lisa 'some paint on canvas.' The material shimmered with an internal light. Iridescent. Alive. It caught reflections that weren't in the room.

"Soul-Etched Vellum," Amelia said, lecturer-like. "Made from the spiritual membrane of an ancient phantom that chose to dissolve its existence into this recording medium."

She lifted it reverently.

"It doesn't just hold demonic energy. It remembers it. Every fluctuation, every nuance. Perfect spiritual fidelity."

Rome's throat went dry.

Next came a crystal vial of swirling liquid silver that moved against gravity, creating impossible patterns.

"Quicksilver Ink. Brewed from the Cocytus Spring, where time pools and stagnates. The spring dried up over a century ago. What exists is it. Once used, there's no more."

The last item was a feather. Nine inches long, pristine white bleeding into gold. The quill was sharpened impossibly fine.

"Phoenix feather," Amelia continued. "The only material pure enough to apply the ink without corruption."

She looked up at him, those twelve-petaled eyes rotating in sync. Rome saw academic hunger in them - the expression scientists get before dissecting something rare.

"Most Great Clans would wage war for this vellum. Kill bloodlines for the ink." She lifted the vial. "And I'm using it all on a stray from a warehouse."

Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Aren't you a lucky boy?"

She turned to him fully. "This is in the way."

Before Rome could ask what, she hooked two fingers into his shirt collar and ripped.

Fabric tore and buttons scattered. His shirt hung open, exposing his chest to cold air. Goosebumps erupted across his skin. His heart hammered visibly against his ribs.

The obsidian pendant lay stark against his skin, its tarnished silver chain suddenly inadequate.

Amelia's eyes locked onto it. The lotus patterns in her irises slowed, focusing clinically.

"There it is," she whispered. "The little stone that's caused so much trouble."

Rome wanted to demand freedom, dignity. But the zip ties held firm and his voice had abandoned him.

She picked up the phoenix feather, dipped it in the Quicksilver Ink. The silver liquid defied gravity, clinging without dripping.

Then she leaned over him, her white hair creating a curtain that blocked everything else. Her hand rested on his collarbone, steadying and possessive.

The first stroke on his skin was agony. Not heat - searing cold, like liquid nitrogen injected into his soul. Rome's back arched involuntarily.

"This isn't just a drawing," she said as she worked. "It's an arcane circuit. A metaphysical motherboard."

The brush moved methodically. Each line brought fresh waves of cold.

"The ink conducts temporal resonance. It will attune your soul to the demonic energy we found. Once complete, I'll place the vellum over it as lens and amplifier."

She continued working lower, following his ribs. "Your consciousness will be dragged along that resonance thread. Back to its creation."

"You won't be remembering. You'll be experiencing it. Present tense. No protection."

The final line connected. The silver ink flared with cold light, pulsing with his heartbeat. The pattern resembled both circuit board and summoning circle.

Amelia straightened, admiring her work. "Beautiful. Now for the amplifier."

She picked up the vellum. "This will hurt."

She placed it over the glowing circuit. It adhered instantly, intensifying the bone-deep cold.

From her jacket, she produced one final item - a sliver of polished obsidian humming with contained power. Unlike his pendant, this looked alive. Hungry.

She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear. "This is the part that will feel like dying."

Her breath was warm against his skin, contrasting with the ice in his chest.

"A necessary pain for rebirth," she said, holding the obsidian between two fingers. "Try not to scream too loud. It's unbecoming."

She pressed the talisman to his forehead like a brand.

Reality fractured into corrupted data. Amelia's face splintered like a broken image. Sound overwhelmed him - a deafening roar, demonic whispers in languages he somehow understood, his heartbeat amplified into a war drum.

His consciousness was being ripped out, compressed through an impossibly small aperture. The cold became heat, then cold again, then paradoxically both.

This is dying, he thought distantly.

He couldn't stop. The ritual had hooks in his soul, dragging him backward along his own demonic energy.

For one perfect moment, the static cleared. Rome saw Java Junction. Colors too vivid. Jake sat across from him, mouth moving, inaudible.

Then the image shattered.

And he fell screaming into his own past.