The walk back to his cell was a death march. Every click of Valeria's boots on the polished floor echoed the frantic hammering of Kaelen's heart. Starlight. The word was a brand seared into his mind. Joren, in his shattered state, had not just glimpsed a random secret; he had identified the most dangerous one. He had seen the stolen memory of the stars.
Valeria was silent, her posture as rigid and unreadable as ever. Did she dismiss his ramblings as mere psychosis? Or was her mind, trained to detect the slightest deception, now turning his words over, examining them for hidden meaning?
"Rest," she said as the obsidian door to his room hissed open. Her grey eyes held his for a moment too long. "Your performance was... aggressive. The Archivist will debrief you after stabilization."
The door sealed shut, and Kaelen was alone again with the whispering artifacts and the crushing weight of his mistake. He slumped onto his cot, his hands trembling. He had been arrogant. He had thought he could play this game, outsmart the Council, and build his own secret library of truth. But Joren had torn that illusion to shreds in seconds. He was an amateur in a den of professionals and predators.
The Echo, which had been silent since his rebellion, returned. But its tone was different. No longer pleading or inviting, it was somber, almost... resigned.
...the broken man sees... a hundred voices whispered in unison. ...his mind is shattered glass... but the sharpest pieces remain...
"He knows," Kaelen whispered into the silence, his voice cracking. "He'll tell them."
...the enforcer does not yet understand... but she will... the Archivist listens to the silence between words...
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed its way up his throat. He was living on borrowed time. It was only a matter of hours, maybe minutes, before Joren's delirious muttering was reported, analyzed, and connected to the missing seditious memory from Ilya. The Archivist was no fool. He would piece it together.
He had two choices, both terrible.
One: He could do nothing. Wait for the inevitable. Hope that Joren's condition was deemed permanent and his words dismissed. It was a coward's hope, and it felt like a death sentence.
Two: He could act. He could get to Joren before the Archivist did.
The thought was so terrifying it stole his breath. What could he do? He couldn't silence Joren physically. He was no killer, and the security made it impossible. But he was the Librarian. His weapon was memory.
A desperate, insane plan began to form in his mind. It was a gamble that could save him or damn him utterly.
He stood and paced the small room, his eyes scanning the shelves—his "collection." His gaze fell upon the pair of spectacles from his training simulation, still humming with the faint, desolate energy of academic shame. It was a weak, simple memory. But it was a place to start.
He grabbed the spectacles and held them tight. He focused, not on extracting, but on the opposite. He pushed. He tried to project the memory outwards, to impose it upon the empty air. Nothing happened. The memory remained stubbornly locked within the object.
Frustration mounted. He was thinking like the Council, like a thief. The Echo had called him a preserver. Its voice had spoken of joining, of becoming one. What if he wasn't supposed to force memories in or out, but to... blend them?
He closed his eyes, reaching for the Echo itself. Help me, he thought, pouring his desperation into the mental call. I cannot do this alone. I need to... hide the truth. Not destroy it. Bury it.
For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, he felt it—a shift in the pressure of the room. The thousands of memory-imbued objects on the shelves seemed to hum in resonance. A current of raw, emotional energy—fragments of fear, joy, love, and rage—flowed from the shelves and into him. It was overwhelming, a cacophony of a thousand lives. But at its core, he felt the Echo's will, guiding the chaos, offering it to him as a painter offers paint.
He turned his focus back to the spectacles, but this time, he didn't push. He invited. He let the chaotic torrent of borrowed memories flow through him and into the simple, shame-filled memory of failure, layering it, burying it under a mountain of cognitive noise.
The spectacles in his hand grew warm, then hot. The clean, sharp emotion of shame became muddied, distorted, lost in a jumble of a child's birthday party, a lover's first kiss, the terror of a dark alley. He had created a mnemonic smokescreen.
It was a crude, ugly thing. A desecration of the memories he had sworn to preserve. But it was a weapon.
The panel on his wall chimed, its light a brutal slash in the dim room. The message was brief and filled him with icy dread.
[Archivist Requested. Report to Observation Deck 1.]
It was happening. Now.
Clutching the now-warm, psychically "loud" spectacles in his pocket, Kaelen was led by a silent Valeria to a part of Memory's End he had never seen. Observation Deck 1 was a dark room overlooking Extraction Bay 3 through a one-way crystalline window. Below, Joren was still in his restraints, but now the Archivist stood beside him, his robed figure imposing even from a distance.
Valeria opened the door and gestured him inside. The Archivist did not turn.
"Kaelen," the old man's voice was calm, but it held a new, sharp edge. "Subject Joren is experiencing severe mnemonic feedback. His vocalizations are... disordered. He repeats a phrase. 'Little stone. Starlight.'" The Archivist finally turned, his weary eyes piercing. "Do these words mean anything to you?"
This was it. The moment of truth. Kaelen's mouth was dry as dust. He forced himself to meet the Archivist's gaze.
"No, Archivist," he lied. "They are just noise. The Syndicate often implants nonsense phrases as final defensive traps. A cognitive poison pill."
The Archivist studied him, his expression unreadable. "Perhaps." He gestured to the window. "His mind is a ruin. But ruins can sometimes be read. I am considering a deep-dive, a forensic extraction to salvage any remaining data. It would be... invasive. But it might uncover what he is trying to say."
A forensic extraction. They would tear through every last shred of Joren's consciousness. They would find the truth.
Kaelen's hand tightened around the spectacles in his pocket. It was now or never.
"Archivist," he said, his voice steadier than he felt. "With respect, may I try something first? A less invasive technique. When I extracted him, I felt the traps. His mind is a hall of mirrors. A deep-dive might trigger a total collapse, destroying all data. But I believe I can... calm the noise. Isolate the coherent signals from the delirium."
The Archivist raised a silver eyebrow. "An unorthodox proposal. What is your method?"
"I would use a resonant buffer," Kaelen said, inventing the term on the spot. "A neutral, complex memory to act as a stabilizer. To absorb the chaotic feedback and allow his core consciousness to reassert itself." He pulled the spectacles from his pocket. They pulsed faintly in his hand. "This one has a high capacity for cognitive load."
Valeria watched, her arms crossed, her expression skeptical. The Archivist was silent for a long, agonizing moment, his eyes shifting from Kaelen's face to the spectacles and then to the broken man below.
"Proceed," the Archivist said finally. "Let us see the extent of your... ingenuity."
His permission felt like a stay of execution. As Kaelen was led back down to the bay, his mind raced. He had bought himself a chance. Now, he had to plant a lie deep enough in a shattered mind to save his own life.