The silence Morwen left in her wake was a different kind of void. It wasn't the hollow, aching absence of a lost memory. It was the silence of a transaction completed. The product had been delivered; the supplier was left to count his cost.
Kaelan remained on his knees, the basalt cool through his trousers. Valerius's shame was a slick, oily film on his soul, a borrowed guilt that felt more real than the numb spaces inside him. And beneath that, a newer, fresher emptiness: the memory of his own academic failure, gone. He knew the fact of it, the date, the outcome. But the searing heat of the shame, the specific curve of his mentor's disappointed frown—the emotional texture of the event had been scraped clean. It was a historical footnote now, not a lived experience.
He pushed himself up, his movements slow, mechanical. He felt like a used tool, discarded after a job. Morwen was already a dozen paces away, a dark silhouette against the swirling, bruised colors of the Echoing's sky, not looking back.
You'll learn to measure the hollow places.
The words echoed in his mind, cold and precise. Is that what he was now? A connoisseur of his own erosion?
He forced his legs to move, following her. His footsteps sounded unbearably loud in the dead air of the plaza. She didn't acknowledge him as he fell in step behind her, a ghost trailing its master.
They walked in silence for a long time, leaving the structured ruins for a landscape of rolling, obsidian hills. The psychic hum of the place was softer here, a constant, low-grade pressure against the mind. Kaelan's archivist instinct itched to ask questions, to fill the silence with data, to understand the rules of this world. But the cost of speaking felt immense. Trust was a currency he couldn't afford.
It was Morwen who finally broke the silence, her voice cutting through the hum like her dark-metal blade. "The memory-lock. Describe the Read."
The question was so clinical it threw him. She wasn't asking how he felt. She was debriefing an asset.
"It was… immersive," he said, the words feeling inadequate. "I wasn't watching. I was him. Valerius. I felt the weight of the gold. I felt the… the certainty of the betrayal."
"Affective resonance," she stated, as if reading from a textbook. "The memory wasn't a recording. It was a pattern of emotion and sensation, preserved at its point of highest intensity. Your Scribe ability doesn't just copy data. It resonates with the pattern and replicates it within your own neural pathways."
Kaelan stared at her back. She spoke about the violation of a man's soul in the language of mechanics. "You talk about it like it's a weather pattern."
"It is," she said, glancing back, her grey eyes utterly serious. "It is a natural phenomenon. A particularly complex and dangerous one. Sentiment is what gets people killed here. The Echoing doesn't care about your grief. It simply is."
He looked away, at the swirling sky. Her worldview was as alien and harsh as the landscape. "And the Tax? Is that just a natural phenomenon too?"
"That," she said, her voice lowering a fraction, "is the interesting part. The price is yours alone to pay. The mechanism is… unique. It suggests your power isn't just drawing on the Echoing. It's creating a closed circuit. You provide the fuel—your memories—to power the manifestation of others. It is the ultimate transaction. A life for a life. A past for a moment of power."
A life for a life. The words landed with devastating finality. He was burning the chapters of his own book to print out copies of others.
"Why are you helping me?" The question left his lips before he could stop it, born from a place of raw need.
This time, she stopped and turned to face him fully. The assessment in her eyes was back, but it was deeper now. "Two reasons. The first is the one I gave you. You are a key. There are vaults in the deep places that hold echoes powerful enough to change the balance of everything. Echoes that Weavers have only dreamed of. You can open them."
"And the second?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"The second," she said, her gaze unwavering, "is that a Scribe who doesn't understand what he is is the most dangerous thing in the Echoing. A bomb waiting to go off. You were lucky with the Wraith. You were luckier with the Hound. Your next mistake won't just cost you a memory. It will unravel a piece of local reality, or draw something even worse than a Hound. Something that doesn't just hunt resonance. Something that feeds on Scribes."
A new kind of cold seeped into his bones. He wasn't just a victim or a tool. He was a hazard. A walking catastrophe.
"Then teach me," he said, the words a plea. "How do I not make a mistake?"
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. It wasn't warm. It was the smile of a master craftsman presented with a challenging piece of raw material. "Finally. The right question." She pointed to a nearby formation—a spire of crystal that hummed with a gentle, golden light. "That spire. It's stable. Benign. Its resonance is simple—the memory of sunlight on a still pond. Read it."
Kaelan approached the spire cautiously. He reached out his hand.
"Don't touch it," Morwen snapped.
He flinched back. "How else am I supposed to—"
" You're thinking like a man grabbing a tool. Don't grab. Listen. Feel for the edges of the memory. Sense its weight, its texture. A Scribe who plunges in blind is a fool. You must learn to dip a finger in the water before you dive, or you'll drown in a current you can't swim."
He took a breath, centering himself. He held his hand near the crystal, not touching it. He closed his eyes, trying to quiet the fear and the grief. He focused on the hum. Beneath the simple vibration, he began to feel something else. A warmth. A sense of profound peace. The faint, imagined sensation of dappled light on closed eyelids.
"I… I feel it," he whispered. "It's calm."
"Good," Morwen's voice was a low guide. "Now. Record it. But only a thread. A single moment. Not the whole tapestry."
He focused his will, not on seizing the memory, but on inviting it. He pictured drawing a single, golden thread from the spire.
The sensation was different. Not a flood, but a trickle. The warmth flowed into him, a tiny, perfect snapshot of peace.
"Now," Morwen instructed. "Play it back. The smallest expression."
He let the memory flow out through his fingertips. A soft, golden light, no brighter than a candle flame, glowed for a moment before fading.
The demand for the Tax was a faint, almost negligible pull. The memory of the taste of a bland nutrient bar he'd eaten days ago vanished without a ripple.
He opened his eyes, a stunned realization dawning on him. The control had been minuscule, but it had been his. He had chosen the amount. The cost had been proportional.
Morwen gave a single, curt nod. "Control isn't about strength. It's about precision. You don't need to burn down the forest to light a candle. Remember that. The next time you see a 'blunt instrument,' you'll know there is another way."
She turned and began walking again, leaving him with the faint, fading warmth of borrowed sunlight and the first, fragile ember of something he hadn't felt since arriving in this terrible place.
Hope. Not for escape. But for agency.