The next day he went to the market where chanting of merchants turned into a dull roar as he slipped back into the thickest part of the market. Stale incense smoke drifted around him like some funeral shroud. For a moment, he wondered if this place had ever known fresh air.
His stomach twisted with hunger. Memories might keep your mind alive, but your body didn't give a shit about philosophy. It wanted food.
He ducked between two robed traders arguing over the price of a jagged rune-etched coin. Their voices were flat, mechanical, devoid of life. He kept moving, sweat dripping down his temple, eyes scanning for anything edible.
'Focus. Priorities.'
He checked his pouch again. Twenty-eight coins left. Twenty-eight memories, or twenty-eight tickets to insanity – he couldn't decide which. His fingers brushed across one that felt colder than the rest. He flinched away without knowing why.
"Oi, you lookin' for basic rations or what?" a rough voice barked from the shadows.
He turned sharply, muscles tensing to fight or flee.
A squat woman leaned against a blackwood stall, robes dusty with mineral residue. Her face was hidden behind a ceramic mask shaped like a serene fox. Only her eyes showed – dark, sharp, calculating.
She gestured to racks lined with dried meat strips and something that looked like flatbread.
"How much?" he asked warily.
"Three memory shards for a day's ration."
"Memory shards?", he frowned.
The woman tapped her mask with one lacquered fingernail. "Don't play dumb. Not here."
Above her stall there was a brass plate which contained - Registered Guild Vendor – Partial Memory Shard Accepted.
'So… legal enough to operate under Guild license, illegal enough to buy partial stolen memories.'
"Show me"
"You are new, aren't you?" she said with amusing look.
"..", He said nothing, just glared back.
With a sigh, she reached beneath the counter and set down a basin of black obsidian rimmed with silver runes.
"Coin goes here. Basin extracts a fragment – usually no more than two seconds of memory. You get food. I get something to sell to desperate bastards wanting to taste someone else's childhood summer breeze."
It sounded to easy.
She saw his hesitation and chuckled, "Don't worry, pretty boy. You won't even feel it."
He pulled out the cold coin from earlier, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
'What's in you?' he wondered.
'Better to test a coin memory than his own brain first.'
He dropped it in.
There was a quiet chime. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a flicker of silvery light rose from the coin and sank into the runes carved around the basin's edge.
He felt… nothing. Just a faint tingle across his knuckles.
"That's it?" he asked.
She was already packing a small linen pouch with food. "That's it. You wanna keep buying, you better keep finding memories to sell."
He grabbed the ration and left before she could say anything else.
The bread was stale, the meat tougher than leather strips, but as he chewed, he felt a tiny sense of triumph.
'Step one: survive. Step two: everything else.'
As he walked deeper into the market's underbelly. The lanterns grew sparser here. He passed a row of robed figures sitting cross-legged on thin mats, each holding out coins in trembling hands, whispering,
"Buy my regrets… buy my regrets…"
The whispers stuck to his mind like sour bile.
'Regrets? Who in the right mind would buy regrets?'
Then again… he remembered the flicker of pain in that first coin he'd touched.
'Maybe people bought regrets to punish themselves. Or to feel like they'd paid penance for sins they didn't have the courage to commit.'
He shoved the thought aside.
Further down, he came to a small stall guarded by two burly men in iron-studded leather. Above them, a sign carved from bone read:
Guild Memory Appraisal & Registration
The Memory Guild.
He lingered at the edge of the crowd gathered around. One by one, traders placed coins or memory shards onto a black velvet cloth.
A thin man in grey robes inspected each with long iron tongs, peering at them under a rune-etched monocle.
"Five silver standards," the man said to one trader.
"Two gold bars," to another.
Sometimes he simply waved his hand dismissively and the guards would shove the trader aside.
'So… this is where value gets assigned.'
He noticed the emblem stitched onto the appraiser's sleeve – a crescent moon biting into a sun. That insignia burned into his mind like a brand.
The Guild truly owned everything.
And if they owned everything… they probably owned him too.
Suddenly, a ripple passed through the line. A young boy – no older than ten – was shoved forward. Tears streaked down his cheeks. The trader behind him, a scrawny man with bloodshot eyes, held out a small crystal vial.
"Pure childhood laughter," the man croaked. "Please… at least half a gold bar."
The appraiser barely looked at him. "Child laughter is common. Quarter bar, final offer."
The boy let out a broken sob as the man snatched the coin and turned away.
Something twisted in his chest.
Rotten place.
But he had no illusions about playing hero. He couldn't even remember his own name. Saving others? That was a luxury for people with choices.
Still… as he turned away, something inside him whispered.
'One day… I'll burn this place to the ground.'
He found a quiet corner behind an empty stall, sank down onto a broken crate, and pulled the pouch of coins into his lap. He studied each coin in turn, fingers tracing their runes, their silent secrets.
Which ones hold skills? Which ones hold pain?. He picked up a coin etched with an angular rune that reminded him of a wolf's fangs. Taking a deep breath, he pressed it against his temple.
Pain flared through his skull – sharp, savage and then–
Snow swirling in a dark forest. The feeling of teeth sinking into raw meat. Hunger. Cold. Rage. A howl torn from his throat that echoed through endless dark trees.
He jerked the coin away, gasping.
The memory clung to his skin.
As he calmed himself, his ears twitched at the faintest shuffle of cloth in the market beyond his hiding spot.
'This… this was a predator's memory.'
He clenched the coin in his fist, feeling its edges bite into his palm.
'Not bad. I'll keep this one.'
A hollow laugh slipped in his throat.
"Look at me… collecting memories like trading cards… what's next, do I evolve them too?" he muttered under his breath, a hysterical edge in his voice.
He stood up, brushed the dust from his pants, and melted back into the market's shifting currents.