Chapter Seven: The Market Without Memories
By morning, the market had healed.
Not rebuilt—forgotten.
Aerin stood at the edge of the square, stomach twisting, watching vendors argue over prices where rubble had buried people the day before. Bright cloth fluttered between stalls. Someone laughed. Someone dropped an apple and cursed like it was the worst thing that had happened all week.
No cracks.
No dust.
No blood.
The mountain loomed in the distance, whole again. Silent. Innocent.
Aerin's breath came shallow.
"This is wrong," they whispered.
Kerris, chewing on a skewer beside them, nodded thoughtfully. "I mean, yes, philosophically. Also practically. I tripped over a corpse right there yesterday."
"There were bodies," Aerin said. "People died."
Kerris grimaced. "I remember running. And screaming. And being very certain I was about to die in a dramatically undignified way." He paused. "But when I try to picture who died… it's like grabbing smoke."
Aerin's chest tightened.
A woman brushed past them, humming. Her sleeve tugged free from Aerin's hand without either of them noticing.
Aerin noticed.
They always noticed.
They walked deeper into the square. Aerin's eyes traced paths that no longer existed—where stone had folded inward, where walls had split like bone. Their feet remembered the broken ground even when the ground did not.
A child ran past, chasing a hoop. It rolled cleanly over a place where the earth had collapsed.
Aerin flinched.
"Careful," they said instinctively.
The child looked at them, confused. "Careful of what?"
Aerin opened their mouth.
Nothing came out.
Behind them, Maelra stopped short.
Her stone hand clenched.
She stared at the square with an expression Aerin hadn't seen before—something like grief stripped of softness.
"They've sealed it," she said.
"Sealed what?" Kerris asked.
"The memory," Maelra replied. "Cleanly. Too cleanly."
Aerin turned to her. "People forgot."
"Yes."
"Overnight."
Maelra's jaw tightened. "That's not forgetting. That's removal."
A pressure built behind Aerin's eyes. Not pain—resistance. Like something inside them was refusing to let go.
"They're wrong," Aerin said. "Everyone here is wrong."
Maelra looked at them sharply. "What do you remember?"
Aerin swallowed.
The screams.
The dust.
The weight of stone folding inward.
The hollow place—the wound where something had been taken.
And—
"My mother," Aerin said quietly.
The word landed heavy.
Kerris stilled. "Your mother wasn't—"
"She died," Aerin said. "Here. Or somewhere like this. I can feel the echo of it."
Maelra went very still.
"That memory was severed," she said slowly. "Wasn't it."
Aerin nodded. "I didn't know her face until yesterday. I don't know it now either. But I know she died wrong."
Maelra's stone hand trembled.
"That shouldn't be possible," she said.
"What shouldn't?" Kerris asked.
"For you to remember what the world has agreed to forget."
A gust of wind swept through the square. Cloth snapped. Bells chimed.
For a heartbeat, Aerin felt the hum rise—angry, unsettled. The stone beneath the market shifted almost imperceptibly, like a sleeper disturbed.
Aerin staggered.
Maelra caught them. "Easy."
"They're still here," Aerin said, voice shaking. "The echoes. They didn't leave."
"No," Maelra agreed grimly. "They were buried."
Kerris looked around at the laughing crowd, unease creeping into his voice. "So let me get this straight. Someone didn't just erase a disaster. They erased the proof it ever mattered."
"Yes," Maelra said.
"Why?"
Aerin looked up at the mountain.
Because remembering hurts.
Because forgetting is quieter.
Because silence looks like peace.
"They think they're helping," Aerin said.
Maelra met their gaze. "That's what makes them dangerous."
A shadow passed across the square.
Aerin felt it before they saw it—the familiar hollow ache.
Across the market, near a spice stall, a woman stood watching them.
Robes untouched by dust.
Eyes calm.
Smile careful.
Sereth.
No one else noticed her.
The crowd flowed around her like water around stone.
Sereth inclined her head, just slightly.
Acknowledgment.
Then she turned and vanished into the press of bodies.
Aerin's hands curled into fists.
"She knows," Aerin said.
Maelra followed their gaze, face darkening. "Yes."
Kerris swallowed. "I'm starting to feel like staying ignorant was the safer career choice."
Aerin didn't answer.
Because beneath their feet, beneath the market, beneath the lies—
the world remembered.
And it was waiting.