Saevus didn't sleep.
He lay on the cot in Idris's back room, staring at rust patterns on the ceiling, and thought about the Remnant in its case. Every time he closed his eyes he saw that pulsing blue light. Felt that cold pulling sensation in his chest.
By the time gray light filtered through the grated window, he'd given up pretending.
"You look like shit," Nox said when he stumbled into the workshop. She was perched on a workbench, eating something from a can. Probably the synthetic peaches Idris kept for her.
"Didn't sleep."
"Nervous?"
"No."
"Liar." She grinned around a mouthful of peach. "It's okay to be scared. This is crazy."
Idris emerged from the storage room, wiping his hands on a rag. He looked at Saevus for a long moment, then nodded. "Alright. Let's do this before you think yourself out of it."
The Remnant case sat on the cleared table, right where they'd left it. In daylight it looked less mystical, more medical. Like something that belonged in a lab.
"Ground rules," Idris said. He wasn't looking at Saevus anymore—he was checking equipment, pulling on thick rubber gloves. "If you start to seize, I'm pulling you off. If your eyes go white like Hollow Sickness, I'm pulling you off. If you scream, I'm—"
"Pulling me off. Got it."
"This isn't a joke."
"I know." Saevus sat down across from the case. His hands were shaking. He pressed them flat on the table. "What do I actually do?"
"Touch it. If you can hold contact for more than three seconds, you're not a Null." Idris paused. "If you can hold it for thirty seconds, your body will start trying to integrate it. Pull the Remnant into yourself. That's when it gets dangerous."
"What happens if integration works?"
"You get a Vestige. A power. You become a Keeper."
"And if it doesn't work?"
Idris didn't answer. He didn't have to.
"Okay," Nox said too loudly. "Let's do this! Saev's gonna be a superhero!"
"Not how it works," Idris muttered, but he was smiling a little. He opened the case.
The Remnant sat there, beautiful and terrible. This close, Saevus could see patterns in the crystal, like frost on glass or neural pathways. It hummed. Not a sound—a feeling, a vibration in his teeth and bones.
"Whenever you're ready," Idris said.
Saevus reached out.
His fingers touched the crystal.
Cold. The same impossible cold from yesterday, but worse, deeper, like jumping into frozen water. His vision blurred. Doubled. He saw the workshop and he saw *somewhere else*, a place made of gray fog and distant screaming, and he knew without being told that this was the Hollow, this was where dead thoughts went to crystallize—
Three seconds passed.
The cold became bearable. Almost comfortable.
Five seconds.
He could feel something in the crystal now. A presence. Not alive, but not completely dead either. Like an echo of a person, a recording that didn't know it was just a copy.
Ten seconds.
The presence was angry. Confused. It had been someone once, someone with dreams and fears and a name, but all that was gone now. Only the emotion remained, crystallized and pure. Rage without context. Fury without memory.
*Let me out,* the presence whispered in a voice that wasn't words. *Let me out let me out let me out—*
Twenty seconds.
"Saevus," Idris said, voice tight. "Your nose."
Saevus tasted copper. Blood. The presence was pulling at him now, trying to claw its way into his head. He should let go. Should pull back.
He didn't.
Thirty seconds.
The Remnant *moved*. Not physically—it stayed on the table—but Saevus felt it slide into him anyway, like water through a crack. The presence screamed and he screamed with it, and there was light behind his eyes, blue and blinding, and the workshop vanished.
He was in the Hollow.
Not fully, not his body, but his consciousness had slipped sideways into that gray place between life and death. He could see the fog now, thick and cloying, and shapes moving in it. Other Remnants. Thousands of them. Millions. Every dead person who'd ever existed, reduced to fragments and feelings.
And in front of him, taking shape from the fog, was the presence.
It looked like a man made of broken glass. Tall, thin, with too many joints in the wrong places. Its face was a cracked mirror reflecting a thousand versions of rage. When it opened its mouth, black smoke poured out.
*GIVE IT BACK,* it howled. *GIVE ME BACK MY LIFE—*
"I don't have it," Saevus said, or tried to say. His voice came out wrong, distorted.
*THEN I'LL TAKE YOURS.*
The presence lunged.
Saevus didn't know how to fight here. Didn't know the rules. But instinct kicked in—the same instinct that kept him alive in the Lows, that let him slip through crowds and read people and survive. He *moved*, not his body but something else, and the presence's glass claws scraped past him.
It shrieked frustration.
"You're already dead," Saevus said. The words felt right. True. "You can't take anything. There's nothing left to take."
*LIES.*
"No. You're just an echo. A recording. The real you is gone."
The presence hesitated. The cracks in its mirror-face spread wider.
"But I can carry you," Saevus said, not knowing where the words came from. "I can keep you from disappearing completely. That's what integration is. That's what I'm offering."
*...Offering?*
"Yeah."
The presence looked at him with eyes like empty holes. Then, slowly, it nodded.
It dissolved.
Not into nothing—into Saevus. He felt it seep into his skin, his bones, his thoughts. The rage became his rage. The echo became his echo. For a second he was two people at once, Saevus Kain and someone else, someone who'd died screaming, someone who—
Snapped back.
He was in the workshop. Lying on the floor. Nox was shaking his shoulder and Idris was checking his pulse and everything hurt.
"I'm okay," Saevus croaked.
"You stopped breathing for forty seconds!" Nox's voice was shrill with panic.
Idris sat back on his heels. He was staring at Saevus like he'd seen a ghost. "It worked," the old man said quietly. "Holy shit, it actually worked."
Saevus pushed himself up. His head pounded. His nose was still bleeding. But he felt... different. Like there was more of him now. Like his mind had expanded to accommodate a passenger.
He looked at his hands.
When he flexed his fingers, the air around them *rippled*. Just slightly. Just enough to notice. Like heat haze, but sharper. Wrong.
"What..." He trailed off.
"That's your Vestige," Idris said. "The power the Remnant gave you. Do you know what it does?"
Saevus concentrated. The knowledge was there, buried in his new memories, in the echo of the dead man who'd been crystallized. The man had been a fabricator. Worked with metals and alloys in some factory. When he'd died—explosion, Saevus knew somehow, crushed under collapsing machinery—his last thoughts had been about cutting, shaping, *severing*.
"I can cut things," Saevus said slowly. "Not with my hands. With... space? Reality? I don't know the word."
"Spatial severance," Idris supplied. "Rare. Useful." He stood, brushing dust off his knees. "Congratulations, kid. You're a Keeper now."
Nox whooped and tackled Saevus in a hug. He almost fell over.
"Easy," he said, but he was smiling. He couldn't help it. A Vestige. An actual power. He'd gone from Null to Keeper in one morning.
Everything had changed.
---
Idris made him rest for an hour. Gave him water and painkillers and ran tests—checking his eyes, his reflexes, asking him questions about the integration. Saevus answered as best he could, but honestly he wasn't sure what was his own memory and what belonged to the echo now.
The dead man's name had been Tomas. He'd had a daughter. The knowledge sat in Saevus's mind like someone else's photograph.
"That's normal," Idris said when Saevus mentioned it. "The Remnant carries fragments of the original person. Memories, emotions. Sometimes just impressions. Most Keepers learn to filter it out."
"And if they can't?"
"Dissonance. The foreign thoughts overwhelm your own. Eventually you forget who you are." Idris met his eyes. "That's why Keepers are careful about how many Remnants they integrate. Three or four is standard. Five or six is pushing it. Beyond that..."
"What's your record?" Saevus asked.
Idris smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "More than I should have. But that was a long time ago." He changed the subject. "You should practice. Get a feel for your Vestige before you try using it in a real situation."
They moved to the sub-level, a cavernous space full of broken machinery and abandoned equipment. Idris set up targets—sheets of scrap metal bolted to frames.
"Start small," he said. "Your Vestige is aggressive. Cuts through matter. You need to learn control before you accidentally sever something important. Like your own arm."
"Comforting."
"I'm serious."
Saevus faced the first target. Breathed. Felt for that strange new sense in his mind, the one that told him where to *cut*. It was like having a phantom limb, an extra muscle he'd never used before.
He extended his hand and *pulled*.
The air in front of his palm split. Just a crack, barely visible, but the metal target shrieked and a line appeared across it, perfectly straight. The sheet fell apart, top and bottom clattering to different sides.
"Holy shit," Nox said from her perch on a pile of crates.
Saevus stared at his hand. He'd barely tried. "Is it supposed to be that easy?"
"No," Idris said. "Most Initiates struggle for days to manifest their Vestige. You did it on the first attempt."
"Is that good?"
"It's abnormal." The old man's expression was unreadable. "But then, everything about you is abnormal."
They practiced for another hour. Saevus learned he could create cuts up to about six feet away, that they appeared instantly, that they could slice through metal and concrete but required more effort for organic matter. He accidentally cut through a pipe and had to dodge the spray of rust-water. Nox thought it was hilarious.
By the time they stopped, Saevus was exhausted. His head ached and the echo of Tomas was louder, whispering about daughters and factories and the moment metal came down on flesh—
"Enough," Idris said. "You're getting Dissonance. Need to let your mind settle."
They went back up to the workshop. Saevus collapsed on a crate while Nox brought him water. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Is it always like this?" he asked.
"The first integration is the hardest," Idris said. "Your consciousness isn't used to sharing space. It'll get easier. Or you'll get used to it."
"Which one?"
"Both. Neither. Depends on the person."
Helpful.
Saevus drank the water and tried not to think about Tomas's daughter, tried not to wonder if she knew her father was dead, if she knew his consciousness was now a crystal in some underground workshop, now a whisper in a stranger's head—
A knock at the workshop door made them all freeze.
Idris's hand moved to something under his work table. A weapon, probably. "We expecting anyone?"
"No," Saevus said.
The knock came again. Polite. Patient.
Idris moved to the door, looked through the viewer, and went still. "Shit."
"What?"
"It's Valdris Corporation."
Saevus's blood went cold. He met Nox's wide eyes. How had they found this place? How had they found *him*?
"Should we run?" Nox whispered.
Before Idris could answer, a woman's voice came through the door. Calm. Familiar.
"Saevus Kain. I know you're in there. I'd like to talk."
It was Lyric Ashenthorn.
The Keeper from yesterday.
And somehow Saevus knew that everything was about to get much, much worse.