Liam's fingers closed around the silver eye. It was ice-cold, vibrating with a high-pitched frequency that felt like a needle stitching through his brain. The moment he touched it, the "Council" shifted. Their polite, tea-sipping facades dissolved into columns of white static.
Mayor Sterling's face didn't change, but his jaw unhinged further than humanly possible. "You chose the thorn, Liam. Now you must feel the prick."
The Mayor didn't strike him. He simply exhaled. A blast of pure, concentrated Silence hit Liam, throwing him back against the bronze doors. It wasn't a physical force; it was a sensory vacuum. Liam's sight went grey; his sense of touch vanished. He felt himself becoming a "gap" in the world, a detail being erased by a giant, celestial thumb.
Forget the shop, the Silence whispered in his mind. Forget the scratch on the wood. Forget the girl with the yellow ribbon.
"No," Liam gasped, his lungs feeling like they were filled with dry sand.
He reached into his satchel. He didn't pull out a weapon; he pulled out the Black Book. He slammed it down onto the glass tile, right over the parchment of the First Trade.
"Elara!" he screamed, hoping his voice could bridge the gap between Oakhaven and the Archive. "The names! Read the names on the first page!"
Across the veil, in the heart of the Archive, Elara was huddled under the driftwood table, the Fog nipping at her heels. She heard his voice like a bell in the dark. She flipped to the very beginning of the Book—the charred, ancient pages that Elias had warned were too heavy to carry.
She began to read.
"Arthur Vance! Sarah Thorne! Leo Gable!"
As she spoke the names, the silver eye in Liam's hand began to glow a violent, bruised purple. The parchment beneath the glass tile started to smoke.
"Stop it!" the Mayor shrieked, his form flickering like a corrupted video file. He lunged for Liam, his hands turning into talons of white noise. "The peace is fragile! You'll kill them with the truth!"
"They're already dead!" Liam yelled. He grabbed the iron key Elias had given him and, using the silver eye as a hammer, he drove the key into the glass tile.
The glass didn't just break; it detonated.
A shockwave of raw memory blasted outward. It wasn't a cloud; it was a hurricane of color, sound, and scent. The smell of wet wool, the sound of a child's birthday whistle, the taste of bitter coffee, the stinging heat of an old argument.
The First Memory—the Great Wave—erupted from the floor.
Liam was no longer in the Town Hall. He was standing in the center of the square, but the square was underwater. He saw the ancestors of Oakhaven, their faces contorted in the moment of the trade. He saw them handing over their grief to a shadow in the water, watching as their loved ones' names vanished from their minds like ink in a tide.
The contract was tearing.
In the real Oakhaven, the "Council" began to scream. They weren't screams of pain, but the sound of thousands of individual voices suddenly remembering their own names. The Mayor's static form shattered into a hundred different men and women, all falling to their knees as fifty years of suppressed sorrow hit them at once.
Outside, the clock tower groaned. The fourth hand—the ghostly shadow—suddenly snapped into solid metal. It began to tick, loud and rhythmic, marking the return of real time.
But the Silence wasn't finished.
The Fog, feeling its anchor break, began to pull back toward the center of the square, coiling like a wounded serpent. It realized it couldn't keep the town asleep, so it decided to take the Keeper with it. The white static surged toward Liam, a wall of non-existence.
"Liam, get out of there!" Elara's voice was fading. The connection to the Archive was closing as the town's magic stabilized.
Liam looked at the Black Book. It was glowing so brightly it hurt to look at. He realized he couldn't run. If he left now, the memories would have nowhere to land. They would dissipate into the air, and the town would be left hollow—not peaceful, just empty.
"I am the Witness," Liam whispered, his fingers curling around the edges of the Book. "I catch the things you ignore."
He stood his ground as the Fog hit him.
It felt like being unmade. Every cell in his body screamed to forget, to let go, to slide into the easy, golden twilight. But he held onto the scratch on the counter. He held onto the smell of lavender and salt.
He held onto the image of Elara, her hair tied with a yellow ribbon, waiting for him in a house made of glass and shadows.
With a final, defiant roar, Liam slammed the Book shut.
The world went white.