Sahrin led us through streets we'd never seen before, through parts of the city that seemed to shift and reconfigure as we walked, buildings sliding past each other like puzzle pieces being rearranged by invisible hands. The grey light pressed down as always, but something about it felt different in Sahrin's presence. Heavier. More aware. As if the silence itself recognized him and moved aside to let him pass.
We tried to track our route, to memorize turns and landmarks in case we needed to find our way back, but it was useless. Every street looked identical in its decay, every building equally unmemorable in its wrongness. After what might have been twenty minutes or might have been two hours, we'd lost all sense of direction, all certainty of where we were in relation to anywhere else.
Maybe that was intentional.
Sahrin didn't speak as we walked, but we could feel him observing us, his mirror-like eyes taking in every flicker of our failing form, every moment when our body became more transparent than solid. He moved with that same soundless grace we'd noticed before, his footsteps creating no echoes, his breathing making no noise. It was as if he'd learned to exist in the gaps between moments, in spaces where causality didn't quite apply.
Finally, we reached a building that looked no different from any other, a narrow structure wedged between two larger ones, its facade crumbling and grey. But when Sahrin opened the door, what lay beyond defied the building's exterior entirely.
The space inside was vast. Cathedral vast. Warehouse vast. Impossible vast. The ceiling stretched upward into darkness that the grey light couldn't penetrate, and the floor extended so far in every direction that the walls were barely visible, just distant suggestions of boundaries that might not actually exist. The air smelled of preservation and decay simultaneously, of things kept alive too long and things dead but not allowed to rest.
And everywhere, covering every surface, filling every available space, were bottles. Vials. Jars. Containers of every size and description, each one glowing with internal light, each one holding an echo trapped mid-scream or mid-song or mid-prayer. But these weren't arranged on shelves like in the Crimson Hall. These were integrated into something larger, something more complex.
They were part of people.
Living people. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Scattered throughout the vast space, standing or sitting or suspended in positions that suggested they'd been frozen mid-movement. Their bodies were covered in bottles, vials grafted directly onto their skin, tubes running from containers into veins and arteries, creating networks of glass and flesh that pulsed with light in rhythm with heartbeats that were too slow, too deliberate, barely maintaining the minimum requirements for existence.
We stopped walking, horror rising through our shared consciousness like bile. This wasn't a collection. This was a factory. A farm. Sahrin wasn't just harvesting echoes from the dead. He was keeping people alive, barely alive, just alive enough to produce voices that could be extracted and stored and sold.
"Don't look so appalled," Sahrin said calmly, gesturing at the human garden surrounding us. "They volunteered. Every single one of them. They came to me desperate, fading, terrified of dissolution. I offered them what you've been seeking. Permanence. A way to exist that doesn't require constant feeding, constant consumption, constant fear of the next moment being your last. They give me their voices, and in return, I keep them alive. Keep them suspended in this moment forever. It's a fair exchange."
"This isn't life," Lysithe's voice said through our shared vocal cords, disgust making the words sharp. "This is torture. This is existence as violation. You've turned them into echo factories and convinced them it's salvation."
"Is it any different from what you are?" Sahrin moved closer to the nearest figure, a woman whose body was covered in small vials like scales, each one glowing faintly blue. He ran his fingers along the glass tubes connecting them to her flesh, and the blue light pulsed brighter. "You're two people forced into one body, feeding off each other's existence, unable to separate, unable to be whole. At least these people know what they agreed to. At least they made a conscious choice."
"We didn't choose this," Ardyn's voice protested. "I chose to consume her, yes, but I didn't know it would lead to this. Didn't know we'd merge. Didn't know we'd become we."
"Didn't you?" Sahrin's smile was cold. "You built a cathedral designed to hold sound forever. You spent your life perfecting the architecture of permanence. And then when the woman you loved was dying, you consumed her echo and trapped it inside a body that was itself trapped inside a building that couldn't release what it held. You knew exactly what you were doing, Ardyn. You just didn't have the honesty to admit it to yourself."
The words hit like physical blows, each one landing in the hollow space behind our ribs where guilt lived. Because he was right. On some level, Ardyn had known. Had understood that consuming Lysithe in the cathedral would trap her permanently, would create exactly the kind of eternal connection that looked like love but functioned as imprisonment.
Sahrin walked deeper into the vast space, gesturing for us to follow. "But that's not why I brought you here. I didn't bring you to my farm to show you what you already are. I brought you to show you what you could become. To show you the next stage. The synthesis."
We followed reluctantly, our transparent feet making soft sounds against the floor that Sahrin's never did. The people we passed were in various states of integration with their bottle networks. Some had just a few vials attached, their faces still recognizably human, their eyes still tracking movement even if they couldn't turn their heads. Others were almost completely covered, their human forms barely visible beneath layers of glass, transformed into something more sculpture than person.
At the center of the vast space stood something different. Not a person covered in bottles, but something that might have once been multiple people merged into a single structure. It was taller than any individual human, wider, its form difficult to parse because the boundaries between bodies had dissolved. Arms emerged from torsos that connected to other torsos. Heads tilted at angles that suggested multiple spines intersecting. And throughout the entire structure, thousands of vials glowed with light in every color imaginable, creating a living stained glass window made of flesh and voice and desperate permanence.
"This," Sahrin said with something that might have been pride or might have been horror, even he couldn't seem to tell which, "is synthesis. Five people who came to me separately, each one fading, each one terrified of dissolution. I offered them a choice. They could remain individual, could be preserved in isolation like the others. Or they could merge. Become something new. Something stronger. Something that could resist the Hushed not through hiding but through sheer mass of existence."
The structure moved slightly, and we realized with sick fascination that it was aware. Multiple eyes opened in faces that belonged to different people, all looking at us with expressions that ranged from contentment to horror to something too complex to name. Mouths opened and closed, but no sound emerged. The voices had all been extracted, stored in the bottles covering the merged flesh.
"They can't speak," Sahrin continued, "but they can think. They share consciousness now, all five minds existing in one distributed network. They experience everything each other experiences. Know everything each other knows. They are, in essence, what you are. Except they're stable. Permanent. They won't fade. Won't dissolve. Will exist like this until the world ends or I choose to release them."
"That's monstrous," we said, our dual voice harmonizing perfectly in its revulsion.
"Is it? They were dying. Now they're not. They were alone. Now they never will be. They were silenced. Now their voices are preserved for eternity." Sahrin walked around the structure, examining it like an artist admiring his work. "You see the difference between what I do and what you've done? I give people choices. I offer them alternatives to dissolution. You just consume what you want and tell yourself it's salvation."
"We're not like you."
"Aren't you? Then why are you here? Why did you follow me instead of staying in that garden of impossible flowers? Why are you still fighting dissolution instead of accepting the peace that ending would bring?" He stopped walking and turned to face us fully. "I'll tell you why. Because deep down, beneath all the guilt and philosophy and desperate moral calculations, you want the same thing I want. The same thing everyone in this room wants. To exist. To continue. To refuse the silence no matter what that refusal costs."
We wanted to argue, wanted to reject his logic, wanted to prove that we were different from this collector who'd turned people into echo farms and called it mercy. But the words wouldn't come. Because on some level, he was right. We had followed him. We were still fighting. We were still choosing continuation over peace, existence over ending.
Sahrin seemed to sense our internal conflict. His expression softened slightly, becoming almost sympathetic. "I'm not your enemy, Ardyn. Lysithe. Whatever you call yourselves now. I'm the only person in this dying world who understands what you're going through. Who knows what it means to exist in the spaces between living and dying, to refuse both states, to become something else entirely."
He pulled back his sleeve, revealing his arm. The skin was transparent, just like ours, but more advanced. We could see through to bone and muscle and the network of vessels beneath, but we could also see something else. Bottles. Small vials embedded directly into his flesh, integrated so completely that they'd become part of his anatomy. Each one glowed with different colored light, dozens of echoes living inside his body, feeding him, sustaining him, keeping him anchored to existence.
"I've been doing this for eighty-seven years," he said quietly. "Since the silence first began, since the Hushed first learned to eat. I was the first one to discover that echoes could be consumed, that voices could sustain us. I built this entire economy of death. Created the market. Established the rules. And I've been integrating echoes into my body ever since, one after another, becoming less human and more archive with each passing year."
He rolled his sleeve back down, covering the glass-studded flesh. "I'm showing you this not to horrify you but to prepare you. Because there are only three possible endings for people like us. We can fade completely, dissolve into the grey, let the Hushed finally eat what remains. We can become like them." He gestured at the people frozen throughout the space, at the merged structure in the center. "Preserved but static, existing without truly living, trapped in amber made of glass and light. Or we can transcend. Become something new. Something the Hushed can't eat because we're no longer quite food and not quite predator."
"What does transcendence look like?" Lysithe's voice asked, curiosity warring with horror in our shared consciousness.
Sahrin's smile returned, but there was something sad in it now. "I don't know yet. I've been working toward it for nearly a century, consuming and integrating and transforming, but I haven't reached it. Haven't found the final synthesis that would make me truly immune to dissolution. That's why I need you. Both of you. You've done something I haven't managed. You've merged two distinct consciousnesses into one functioning whole. You've created actual unity instead of just integration. If I can understand how you did it, if I can replicate it, I might finally achieve what I've been seeking all these years."
"And if we refuse to help you?"
"Then you'll fade. Simple as that. Your body is mostly transparent already. Another week, maybe two, and there won't be enough of you left to maintain coherence. You'll dissipate like all the others who tried to fight without understanding what they were fighting against." He paused, letting the words settle. "Or you could take my offer. Let me separate you. Give Lysithe her own body, constructed from echoes, sustained by the same systems keeping all these people alive. You'd lose the merger, yes, but you'd gain the possibility of real relationship. Real connection. Two separate people choosing to be together instead of being forced together by the mechanics of consumption."
The offer hung between us, tempting and terrible. We could feel both sides of our consciousness considering it, weighing the possibilities, calculating the costs. Ardyn wanted it desperately, wanted to give Lysithe the independence he'd stolen from her, wanted to undo the violation of consumption by creating separation. Lysithe wanted it too, wanted her own body, her own choices, her own existence that didn't depend on being filtered through his guilt.
But we both also feared it. Feared losing the connection that had become our identity. Feared being alone again after becoming so accustomed to plural existence. Feared discovering that without the merger, without being we, there might not be enough of either of us left to sustain individual consciousness.
"How would it work?" we asked carefully. "The separation. The body creation."
Sahrin's eyes lit up with something that might have been genuine enthusiasm. "I'd need to extract both your consciousnesses, separate the threads of Ardyn and Lysithe that have woven together, and house them temporarily in neutral vessels while I construct Lysithe's new form. It would take time. Days, maybe weeks. And during that period, you'd both be vulnerable, stored in bottles like the echoes you've been consuming. But once it was complete, you'd be two separate people again. Whole. Independent. Free."
"Stored in bottles," Lysithe repeated. "Like these people. Trapped and aware and unable to escape if something goes wrong."
"There are always risks. But isn't it worth the risk to be real? To have your own body? Your own voice that doesn't have to share vocal cords with someone else?"
We looked around at the vast space, at the people frozen in their glass prisons, at the merged structure that had once been five individuals seeking permanence. We looked at Sahrin with his bottles embedded in his flesh, his eighty-seven years of consumption and integration and still no transcendence. We looked at our own failing transparency, at the body that was more absence than presence.
Three choices. Three endings. Three paths forward.
Fade into nothing.
Become preserved but static.
Or attempt transcendence and risk losing everything we'd become.
"We need time," we said finally. "Time to consider. Time to understand what we'd be giving up and what we'd be gaining. Time to decide if separation is salvation or just another form of death."
Sahrin nodded as if he'd expected this answer. "Of course. Take all the time you need. Though I'd suggest you decide soon. Every day you wait is a day closer to dissolution. And once you cross that threshold, once you become more absence than presence, even I won't be able to help you."
He led us back through the vast space, past the frozen people and their bottle networks, past the merged structure with its multiple faces and silent mouths. As we walked, we noticed something we'd missed on the way in. Some of the bottles attached to these people were dark. Empty. The echoes they'd held had been consumed or sold or simply dissipated, leaving hollow glass grafted to flesh that couldn't support it.
And where the bottles were empty, the people were dying. Slowly. Imperceptibly. But definitely dying. Their skin turning grey, their eyes losing focus, their bodies beginning the slow collapse toward dissolution.
Sahrin's preservation wasn't permanent after all.
It was just another way of buying time.
We emerged back onto the street, and the building's door closed behind us with a sound like a coffin lid. The grey light felt almost bright after the darkness inside, and we breathed deeply, trying to clear our lungs of the smell of preservation and decay.
"Think about my offer," Sahrin said, his hand on the door. "Think about what you want more. To remain we or to become two separate yous. To stay merged or to risk separation. To accept what you've become or to try to become something else." He smiled that cold empty smile. "I'll be waiting for your answer. But don't wait too long. Time is one luxury people like us can't afford."
He stepped back through the door and disappeared, and we were alone on the street, our body flickering between transparency and solidity, our shared consciousness churning with possibilities and fears and the terrible weight of having to choose.
From somewhere in the distance, we heard the bells ringing again. Painting the world red. Calling us toward something or warning us away, we couldn't tell which.
And in our pocket, Kerra's vial pulsed. Our own voice. Our original echo. The third option we'd been avoiding.
Consume ourselves. Separate. Or fade.
Three paths. Three endings. Three ways to refuse or accept what we'd become.
We started walking, no destination in mind, just movement for the sake of movement. And as we walked, Lysithe's voice spoke in our shared consciousness, soft and uncertain.
"What if there's a fourth option? What if we don't choose any of his paths? What if we create our own ending?"
"What would that look like?" Ardyn's voice asked.
"I don't know yet. But I think it involves going back to the garden. Back to the flowers. Back to the threshold we refused to cross. Maybe there's something there we missed. Maybe the answer isn't in preservation or separation or consumption. Maybe it's in transformation. In becoming something that isn't human or ghost or echo. Something new."
We considered this as we walked through the grey streets, past buildings that had forgotten their names, through plazas where fountains had run dry. The idea had a rightness to it, a pull that felt different from Sahrin's manipulative offers or Kerra's uncomfortable truths.
Maybe transformation was the answer.
Maybe we needed to stop trying to preserve what we'd been and instead embrace becoming what we'd never imagined.
The bells rang louder, and the world bled red with each vibration, and somewhere far away, the Hushed was laughing.
It sounded almost human.
Almost.