The Tredex Power Grid groaned under the monster's weight, the massive steel transformers sparking like dying stars. The Mnemosyne Parasite was no longer a shadow; it had become a mountain of jagged obsidian and weeping ink, its many eyes fixed on the man standing at the edge of the concrete pier.
Samson felt the city behind him vibrating with a new, terrifying energy. The Great Awakening wasn't the peaceful reunion he had hoped for. It was a chaotic explosion. He could hear the sirens, the screams of people suddenly remembering lost children, and the sound of old blood feuds reigniting in the streets. The weight of eighty years of truth was crushing the people he had tried to save.
"Look at them, Architect," the monster hissed, its voice like the grinding of rusted gears. "They aren't thanking you. They are drowning. Your 'truth' is a salt-water flood, and I was the only thing keeping them dry."
"You weren't keeping them dry," Samson countered, his voice steady despite the tremor in his hands. "You were keeping them hollow. You were the hole in their hearts where their courage should have been."
Samson reached into his coat and pulled out a small, lead-lined vial—the concentrated Aetheric Residue, the very essence of memory. With a sharp crack, he smashed the vial over his service blade. The iridescent blue liquid didn't drip; it clung to the steel, coating the weapon in a shimmering, sapphire flame.
The tattoo on his arm burned white-hot. He wasn't just holding a sword; he was holding the collective will of every soul in Tredex.
The monster lunged. It didn't move like an animal; it moved like a glitch in reality. One moment it was fifty yards away, and the next, a massive tendril of void-matter was smashing into the concrete where Samson had been standing a second before.
Samson rolled, his senses heightened to a superhuman degree. The ink in his blood was communicating with the ink on his blade. He could feel the monster's weak points—the gaps in its physical form where the "static" was thinnest.
He struck. The blue-flamed sword cut through the monster's hide like a hot wire through wax. Where the blade touched the creature, the obsidian scales didn't just break; they dissolved into stories. A flash of a wedding in 1952. The smell of a grandmother's cooking. The sound of a first kiss.
The monster shrieked, a sound that sent ripples across the harbor water. "You are killing me with their trivialities! Their pathetic, small lives!"
"Those 'small lives' are the only things that matter," Samson roared.
But the monster was learning. It realized it couldn't touch the blade, so it attacked Samson's mind instead. It unleashed a wave of Negative Memory—every failure Samson had ever endured, every person he had failed to save, every dark thought he had ever buried.
The world turned gray. Samson saw himself back in the rain, a failure of a detective with a bottle in his hand. He saw the bodies at the harbor and felt the crushing guilt that it was all his fault. The blue flame on his sword flickered, turning a dull, dying gray.
"Yes," the monster whispered, its face appearing inches from his. "Remember your shame, Samson. That is the only truth you truly own."
Samson fell to one knee, the weight of the sword becoming unbearable. The monster raised a massive, clawed limb to finish him.
Suddenly, a sound broke through the psychic static. It was a song—a rough, off-key melody being hummed by a thousand voices across the city. It was the same song the "drunkard" used to sing at the bar, the same rhythm the "blind man" used to tap on the floorboards.
The people of Tredex were fighting back. They were sharing their memories, connecting their minds through the blue light that still hung in the air like fog. They were pushing back against the void.
Samson felt the power surge back into his arm. He wasn't just Samson; he was the memory of the city itself.
"I don't just own my shame," Samson whispered, his eyes turning a brilliant, solid sapphire. "I own their hope, too."
He stood up, the sword roaring back to life with a brilliance that blinded the monster's many eyes. He didn't just swing; he drove the blade directly into the gaping void where the monster's heart should have been.
"Tredex... remembers!"
The explosion was silent. A pillar of blue fire shot into the sky, visible from every corner of the city. The Mnemosyne Parasite didn't die; it shattered into a million tiny fragments of light, each one returning to the person it had been stolen from.
As the light faded, the docks were silent. The monster was gone. The transformers hummed with a normal, steady vibration.
Samson stood alone in the dark, his sword now just a piece of cold steel, the blue ink on his arm finally cooling into a permanent, silent tattoo. He looked back at the city. The fires were being put out. The screaming had turned into quiet conversation.
The Enigma was solved, but a new era had begun. For the first time in nearly a century, Tredex City knew exactly who it was.
Samson took a deep breath of the salt air and began the long walk back to the station. He had a lot of reports to write—and an entire lifetime of his own to finally start living.