The darkness beyond the wall wasn't empty.
It was waiting.
The moment Alric crossed the threshold, the air thickened. Not with heat—but with intention. As though memory itself had weight, and he had just stepped into something long buried beneath thought.
The door slammed shut behind him.
No torches. No glyph-lights. Only the soft glow of his recall tag—a tiny rune at his collar—barely enough to see a hand's length ahead.
> "Where are we?" he whispered.
> "Where they don't look," Noxa answered from inside his mind. "Where they forgot they forgot."
His fingers brushed the wall—rough, unfinished stone. Not part of the original archive design. These were pre-Order tunnels, perhaps older than the Obscurati itself. He moved carefully, hand trailing the side.
> One wrong step in a sealed corridor could mean falling into an echo trap or worse.
Then, above him: the faintest vibration. Not sound. A rhythm.
Click. Step. Click. Step.
Alric froze.
A Custodian.
They weren't human anymore—if they ever had been. They didn't speak. They didn't forget. Their minds were sealed into mechanical contracts—enforced by ritual law, immune to erasure.
And they hunted archive violations.
> "Turn left," said Noxa. "There is a door. You'll need a key that doesn't exist."
> "That's not helpful."
> "You're not asking the right question."
The steps above drew closer—slow and deliberate. The Custodian was tracking by heat or aura. Alric had minutes, maybe less.
He reached a fork in the stone corridor.
Left: total black. Right: the faint sound of water.
> "Left."
> "I need a key," Alric said through gritted teeth.
> "You've already held it."
And then he understood.
The mark on his forearm—the glyph. It wasn't just a bond. It was a key. But not physical.
Cognitive.
He took a breath and closed his eyes. Focused.
The glyph on his skin pulsed once. Then again. His mind reached toward the wall—not with hands, but with intention.
> Recall it, Noxa whispered.
> Not the door. The memory of the door.
His mind strained.
He imagined this hallway before the collapse. Before it was sealed. He visualized the shape of the handle, the cold metal. He believed it had once been here.
And the wall responded.
With a low hiss, stone split.
A door appeared. A real one.
Wood. Iron-bound. No dust.
> "It was never gone," Noxa whispered. "Only forgotten."
Alric lunged through it and pulled it shut just as—
Clang.
Something heavy landed in the hall behind him. No footfalls now. Just breathing. Mechanical. Wet.
A voice—not from the machine, but from a ritual echo surrounding it—drifted through the stone:
> "Violation… located…"
> "Infection… known…"
> "Subject: Alric Velas."
Alric backed away. He turned—and stopped.
This room was not stone. Not part of the natural tunnels.
This was a ritual vault.
A secret place.
The walls were lined with broken memory jars, each containing flickers of thoughts—faces, words, unfinished dreams. One of them still glowed. A whisper played on a loop:
> "Do not look at the mirror. Do not look at the mirror. Do not look—"
Alric turned.
There was a mirror.
Of course there was.
And it was already showing his reflection—but not now. A version of himself walking calmly with Sevrin through the archive. Smiling. Obedient.
Alric blinked. The image didn't stop.
> "That's not real," he muttered.
> "No," Noxa said quietly. "That's memory. A version you could've been. One they wanted you to become."
Behind him, the Custodian's chant grew louder. The room began to shake.
Alric gritted his teeth.
> "How do I stop it?"
> "Let me in."
> "You're already in."
> "Not fully. Not deeply. Not yet."
The mirror cracked.
The memory jar beside it burst.
And the door behind him—split in half.
---