The forge hadn't gone out, but its flame was wrong.
It burned low, not for lack of fuel—but as if withholding itself. Each ember pulsed with a color he couldn't name. Not orange. Not red. Something between rust and sorrow.
He stood watching it long after the girl with no shadow had vanished. The mirror she left remained in the garden, unassuming and cold. And yet the Emporium… was changing.
Again.
He didn't know what time was anymore. The sky never shifted here, and the light inside moved only when the shop decided it should. But tonight—if tonight was the right word—the Emporium felt tight. Like a breath being held too long.
The red book on the counter flipped a page without wind.
A word appeared on the open parchment:
> Rootbound.
He frowned. "What does that mean?"
The fox, perched silently above the curtained garden threshold, didn't answer right away.
Instead, it blinked. Once. Twice.
Then said, "Something beneath has remembered you."
---
It began with a stone.
A single flagstone near the forge shifted with a slow grinding sound—like it resented being moved. He knelt and brushed the soot away.
There was a symbol carved into the stone's face. Not a letter. Not even a rune.
A root. Twisted. Cracked. Like it had once connected to something deep, and then been severed.
The moment his fingers grazed it, the forge hissed.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
And the floor responded.
Stone unknit itself. Heat rose upward from a seam that hadn't been there before. The scent of scorched soil and cooled iron bled into the air.
A hatch emerged.
Beneath the forge.
The garden's vines rustled beyond the curtain. The mirror made no sound—but when he glanced toward it, its surface was no longer still.
It showed not his reflection, but the forge behind him… opening.
As if the mirror remembered what the world had tried to forget.
---
He opened the hatch.
Below, there were no stairs—only a slope of root-wrapped stone leading down into shadow. As he descended, the temperature shifted. Not cold. Not hot. Just strange.
The walls were earthen, veined with memoryroots—pale things that pulsed faintly in the dark. As he passed, a few curled in his direction, scenting him the way a garden might.
And at the bottom—an alcove.
A chamber made of ash-brick and buried bones.
There were vessels here. Jars of thick glass, sealed with wax and wrapped in bark-thread. Some glowed faintly. Others hissed when he neared. One was broken, leaking a silver liquid that turned to vapor when it touched air.
He crouched beside it.
A glyph was etched on the ground beside the broken vessel.
His fingers hovered over it.
He didn't understand it.
But his body remembered.
He pressed his hand to the glyph—and the entire chamber lit.
---
From the walls, vines unfurled. Not from above. From within. They split open, revealing dry flowers—preserved, brittle, and glowing with faint traces of what they once were.
And then, in the center of the chamber: a basin.
Stone. Empty. Waiting.
The fox's voice returned—soft and low, like a thought caught in soil.
"This is the Alchemist's Root," it said.
"I don't remember being an alchemist."
"No," said the fox, appearing beside the basin now, pawing gently at the dust. "But the Emporium remembers your hands learning how."
He stared into the basin.
The forge had been about shaping.
This… was about mixing.
Not science.
Not sorcery.
Memory as medium.
He didn't move, but the walls began to pulse again—one by one, the sealed jars shifted, as if waking.
Each waited to be chosen.
And above them, carved into the brick in a hand that might've once been his:
> Take only what the self has forgotten. Return what the world still remembers.
---
He selected a jar without knowing why.
The glass was clouded, wax-sealed and bound with thorn-twine. Inside, a viscous liquid shimmered faintly green—like memory suspended in sap. The wax gave under his fingers with a sigh. The twine uncoiled itself.
He poured it into the basin.
It didn't splash. It settled. As if it had returned to something it missed.
Then the basin began to shift.
Lines appeared in the stone, revealing engraved channels—interlocking symbols, layered and recursive, none of which he understood. But they responded to the liquid. One by one, the grooves lit with dull gold.
Another jar vibrated on its shelf—this one heavy with a slow-moving powder the color of bruised copper. He touched it, and it drew his hand downward. Not violently—inevitably.
He added it.
The liquid darkened. Thickened. Not boiling, but stirring itself. The scent of scorched pine filled the air.
The fox's eyes reflected the glow of the basin.
"You've remembered the first principle," it said.
"What is it?"
"That emotion is the strongest reagent."
---
When the final element was placed—a sliver of bark that had once whispered songs in another life—the basin ceased movement. The substance within had gone still, opaque, but thrumming with potential.
He didn't need a tool.
He knew to touch it.
The moment his fingers met the surface, the mixture surged—not up, but inward—drawn into him through skin and breath and something deeper. It didn't burn. It didn't numb. It settled near his ribs, like a name that hadn't been spoken in centuries.
The basin emptied.
And in its center, coalescing like frost on memory, a shape formed.
Not an item. A sigil.
Etched into air.
His hand moved without instruction, sketching its shape into his palm.
And with that gesture, the Emporium above shifted.
---
The hatch sealed behind him.
The pendant on the counter blinked softly. The forge now burned in the same hue as the basin's final glow.
He placed his hand on the anvil.
The sigil in his palm lit.
Not a system. Not magic. Memory shaping substance.
The pendant hummed in answer. The mirror rippled.
He had just remembered how to make something dangerous.
Not a weapon.
Not yet.
But the possibility of one.
---
The rift opened like an exhale.
Slow. Reluctant. As though the shop wasn't certain it should allow what stepped through.
She came cloaked in the color of dusk. Her face was lined, not from age, but from restraint. Her right arm was covered in wax-stained cloth. In her left hand, she carried an urn sealed with six braided cords.
Behind her walked a beast.
Large, limping, stitched together from fur and feather, bone and ribbon. One eye made of glass. The other… blinked backward.
The shop did not welcome her.
Not at first.
The lanterns dimmed. The garden's glow receded. The forge burned low.
The beast—Tharn, he would later learn—sniffed the floor and let out a sound like rust cracking in winter.
"I was told this place could hold what no grave dares keep," she said.
He nodded.
She stepped forward. Tharn hesitated, then followed.
---
She placed the urn on the counter.
"I cannot open it," she said. "No one can, so long as they remember their own name."
The Emporium responded for him.
The red book flipped open. The forge sparked blue, then grey. And the mirror in the garden glowed—once, like a pulse.
The fox padded silently over.
"That vessel holds more than ash," it said. "It holds the refusal of memory."
She removed a vial from her pocket—a single thread of hair wrapped around it.
"My last dream," she said.
The Emporium trembled.
He reached forward and took both—the dream and the urn.
The moment he touched them, the floor rippled.
The forge flared. The garden vines rustled in alarm. The mirror cracked.
Not shattered.
Opened.
Within it, Tharn appeared—but whole.
"Don't let me see it," the woman whispered. "Please."
He turned the mirror away.
The dream dissolved. The urn vanished.
Tharn whined.
She knelt beside the beast, placed a kiss on its glass eye. "You followed me this far. It's enough."
A door opened—one she hadn't asked for.
She passed through it without looking back.
---
The Emporium stilled—but not peacefully.
The forge hissed and reshaped itself.
It forged no blade.
Only a cradle.
From its base emerged a mold, twine, mirror-fragment, and broken dream.
He assembled them without knowing why.
The forge flared white.
Then cooled.
In the cradle sat a coin.
Cold as grief. Warm as breath.
The fox spoke softly. "It's made from what she couldn't let go of."
He placed the coin on the counter.
The mirror flickered.
And showed a place of ash, bone, and starlight blossoms wilting in reverse.
He looked away.
The garden's roots shifted uneasily.
Something beneath the soil had woken.
---
The red book opened again.
This time, no instructions. No inventory.
Just three words:
> Prepare. It comes.
From the forge rose a second object.
Tongs.
Etched not with symbols, but veins.
As if once part of something living.
He did not take them.
Not yet.
---
The garden had changed.
In the center bloom sat a glass vial, filled with a golden thread.
A memory not yet lived.
The forge dimmed.
The Emporium drew a breath.
The fox whispered, "She left it so we would remember."
He returned to the counter. The red book closed. The mirror shimmered.
This time, it showed him.
But not as he was.
As he would become.
Surrounded by beasts.
Holding glowing tongs.
Shaping something unnamed.
Then the image faded.
And the shop grew quiet again.