The walk back into Extraction Bay 3 felt like descending into his own execution chamber. The air was still thick with the psychic residue of his violent struggle with Joren—a metallic tang of ozone and spent rage. Joren hung limply in his restraints, his head lolling, a low, continuous moan emanating from his throat. The sharp, cunning Syndicate asset was gone, replaced by a raw nerve of a man, his mind flayed open.
Valeria took her position by the door, a silent, observant sentinel. Through the one-way window high on the wall, Kaelen could feel the weight of the Archivist's gaze. There was no room for error.
"Joren," Kaelen said, his voice firm, projecting a confidence he didn't feel.
The man's moaning stopped. His clouded blue eyes drifted towards the sound, but there was no recognition, only a primal awareness of a presence.
"I'm going to help you," Kaelen lied, the words tasting like ash. He held up the spectacles. They were warm in his hand, buzzing with the chaotic energy of a hundred borrowed memories. It was a cognitive weapon, a grenade of meaningless noise. "The noise in your head... I can quiet it."
He reached out, not touching Joren, but placing his fingers on the man's temples, bypassing the focus object. This wasn't an extraction. It was an implantation. An invasion.
He closed his eyes and reached for the turbulent sea of memories within the spectacles. He focused on the core memory he had created—the simple, sharp shame of academic failure. Then, he pushed.
He envisioned it not as a gentle flow, but as a seed. A seed of a specific, powerful, and utterly false memory. He poured all his will into it, layering it with the emotional weight of truth.
You were never in the Syndicate, he mentally whispered into the ruins of Joren's mind. You were a scholar. An archivist. You failed your final examinations. The shame was too much to bear. This is your core truth. This is the pain that defines you. The rest... the stars, the secrets... it is all delirium. A fantasy you built to escape your failure.
He felt a resistance—a flicker of the true Joren, the predator, fighting against this rewriting of his soul. It was a feeble struggle, the last twitch of a beheaded snake.
Kaelen pushed harder, calling upon the Echo's chaotic energy. He unleashed the cognitive smokescreen. A jumbled torrent of birthday parties, alleyway fears, and whispered lovers' promises flooded into Joren's consciousness, drowning that final flicker of resistance. The sharp, specific lie of being a failed scholar was buried under a mountain of generic, emotional static.
Joren's body seized. A strangled gasp escaped his lips, his back arching against the restraints. His eyes rolled back in his head, showing the whites.
Then, it was over.
He slumped, breathing in ragged, wet hitches. Kaelen pulled his hands back, his own body trembling with the violation he had just committed. He had not healed; he had overwritten. He had murdered the last remnants of the true Joren and installed a ghost in his place.
Slowly, Joren's head lifted. The clouded confusion was still there, but it had a new quality. It was focused now, centered on a single, manufactured pain. He looked at Kaelen, and a tear traced a path through the grime on his cheek.
"I... I couldn't pass the theorems," he whispered, his voice hollow with a shame that felt decades old. "My father... he was so disappointed. The stars... they were just... pretty lights in a storybook I read as a boy. A foolish dream."
Kaelen's heart hammered against his ribs. It had worked. The lie had taken root.
He turned and left the bay without another word. Valeria fell into step beside him, her silence more unnerving than any interrogation. They returned to the dark Observation Deck.
The Archivist stood at the window, watching the now-weeping Joren below. He was silent for a long time.
"Fascinating," the Archivist murmured, finally turning. His weary eyes held a new, intense light—the light of a scientist observing a successful, radical experiment. "You did not merely suppress the delirium. You replaced it. You gave his shattered psyche a new cornerstone, however fragile." He stepped closer to Kaelen, examining him as if seeing him for the first time. "This 'resonant buffer'... you didn't just calm the noise. You composed a new song entirely."
Kaelen stood rigid, saying nothing. He had passed the test, but in doing so, he had revealed a capability far beyond simple extraction. He had shown he could manipulate and create.
"The words 'starlight' and 'stone' are gone from his lexicon," the Archivist continued, steepling his fingers. "They have been buried under a more... mundane trauma. You have proven your value extends beyond preservation, Kaelen. You can impose order on chaos."
He gestured to Valeria. "Schedule the next high-priority extraction. The Councilor from the Upper Spire. His mind is too valuable to be cleansed conventionally. We will use the Librarian's... gentler touch."
Valeria gave a sharp nod, her gaze lingering on Kaelen for a moment before she turned to leave.
The Archivist placed a hand on Kaelen's shoulder. The touch was cold, possessive. "You are no longer just our Librarian, boy. You are our Sculptor. Remember that. The clay you work with is human thought. Do not grow attached to its original form."
He was dismissed.
Back in the suffocating silence of his room, Kaelen collapsed onto his cot. He had survived. He had saved his secret. But the victory felt like a defeat. He had looked into the abyss of Joren's mind and, to save himself, had become the monster the Council wanted him to be. He had sculpted a man into a lie.
The Echo's voice returned, but it was no longer a chorus. It was a single, sorrowful whisper that seemed to come from the very stone he had hidden under his mattress.
...to hide the light... you had to become the dark...
Kaelen closed his eyes, the ghost of Joren's manufactured shame now a permanent stain on his own perfect memory. He was a preserver, a thief, a liar, and now, a sculptor of broken souls. And he knew, with a chilling certainty, that the Archivist would only demand more twisted sculptures, each one carving away another piece of the man he used to be.