Time lost meaning.
There was no sun, no moon, only the perpetual bruised twilight filtering through the shattered windows. Kaelen's watch had stopped the moment he arrived. The only metrics he had were the soft synth-pop tunes cycling through different emotional tones in his head, and the steady, radiating heat from the Sorrowful Knight's armor against his back.
The Apathy Debuff was a strange thing. It didn't make him feel nothing. It made him feel everything through a thick layer of glass. His terror at his situation, his hollow exhaustion from using the Whisper, even the faint warmth from the metal—they were all distant, muted. It was a professional detachment taken to a pathological extreme. It was, he realized with a clinician's cold interest, probably the only thing keeping him from screaming.
He sat, knees drawn up, and observed his surroundings from his new, privileged vantage point. From here, he could see the careful, almost reverent order to the knight's domain. The ash on the floor was swept into neat, concentric lines around the throne, a silent, endless task. Each pile of armor—each memorial—was dusted. This wasn't a monster's lair. It was a cathedral of regret, and Gareth was its penitent priest.
The knight itself was motionless, a steel mountain in repose. But Kaelen, trained to read micro-expressions and subtle tells, began to see its language.
The slow, almost imperceptible shift of its fingers on the sword hilt. The slight dimming and brightening of the red coals in its helm. The minute adjustments in the tilt of its head. It was listening. Not to sound, but to him. To his breathing, his heartbeat, the rustle of his suit fabric.
He had to speak. Proximity had halted the decay, but it wouldn't raise the meter. The System was a cruel gamemaster; it rewarded active engagement.
But what do you say to a being of silent grief?
"Do you remember them?" Kaelen asked, his voice quiet in the vastness. He didn't look up. He stared at the nearest set of small armor. "Their names?"
No movement. No chime. The Affection meter held at 18.
A wrong approach. Too direct. Too soon. He was asking for data, not sharing feeling.
He shifted, the apathy making the movement sluggish. "I had a client once," he began, speaking to the air. "A firefighter. He was the only survivor of his crew. A building collapse. He came to me wearing this… invisible armor. He could barely move under the weight of it. He'd polished every piece of their memory until it was a blinding, painful mirror. He thought if he forgot for one second, if he let himself be happy, it would be a betrayal."
He paused. The knight's fingers tightened on the sword hilt. A single, soft creak.
"It took two years for him to understand that remembering them didn't require destroying himself. That honoring their lives meant living his own." Kaelen sighed, the sound swallowed by the hall. "He sent me a postcard, eventually. From a beach. It just said, 'The water is warm.' It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever read."
He fell silent. The story was true. It was one of his few clear successes. It felt strange to offer it here, to this creature. A confession of his own humanity.
A low, resonant hum vibrated through the metal at his back. It was not a sound heard with ears, but felt in the bones. It thrummed through him, deep and melancholic.
[EMOTIONAL RESONANCE DETECTED.]
[AFFECTION METER: 18 → 22/100]
The chime was soft, like a distant church bell.
The knight's massive hand, still resting on the ground beside him, slowly unclenched. The armored palm lay open, upturned. An invitation. Or a question.
Hesitantly, Kaelen reached out. His hand looked like a child's against the vast, pitted steel. He placed his fingertips on the center of the cold metal palm.
A jolt.
Not of electricity, but of memory. Not his own.
Sensation: The rough grip of a sword hilt, leather straps biting into a human palm. The smell of forge-fire and oil. Laughter, deep and booming, clapping him on the back. "Sir Gareth! The king awaits!" A young squire's face, beaming with pride, polishing a breastplate until it shone like silver.
Emotion: Pride. Duty. Warmth. Belonging.
Then, a fracture. A screech of metal, a roar of collapsing stone. The same laughter, turned to screams. The same young face, covered in ash and blood, eyes wide with terror, then empty. Heat. So much heat. And the crushing, suffocating weight of stone and beam and guilt. "I was their shield. I failed. I lived. I should not have lived."
The memory-sequence ended as suddenly as it began. Kaelen snatched his hand back, gasping. His heart hammered against the glass wall of his apathy. The emotions—the vibrant pride and the cataclysmic guilt—were so raw, so enormous, they almost cracked his detached state.
He stared at the knight's open palm. It wasn't just a hand. It was a reliquary. A living record.
"You remember everything," Kaelen whispered, understanding dawning. "Not just their names. Their feelings. Their last moments. You carry it all. That's the true armor."
The knight's fingers slowly curled, just slightly, as if to cradle the ghost of the memory he'd just shared.
[EMPATHETIC SYNCHRONIZATION ACHIEVED.]
[AFFECTION METER: 22 → 30/100]
[DEBUFF UPDATE: 'APATHY' DISPELLED. REPLACED BY 'EMOTIONAL ECHO' (LOW).]
The glass wall shattered. The full force of his own fear and exhaustion rushed back in, but now it was mixed with the lingering, ghostly aftertaste of Gareth's pride and despair. It was overwhelming. A tear, hot and entirely his own, traced a path through the ash on his cheek. He wasn't crying for himself. He was crying for the knight. For the lost squire. For the unbearable weight of a memory too perfect to let go.
The System chimed, a brighter, more complex melody.
[MILESTONE REACHED: AFFECTION > 25.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: 'GALGE CONQUEST PROTOCOL' ADVANCING TO PHASE 1.]
[NEW MECHANIC UNLOCKED: 'MEMORY FRAGMENT COLLECTION.']
[OBJECTIVE: TO DEEPEN BONDS, COLLECT AND UNDERSTAND KEY MEMORIES OF YOUR LOVE INTEREST. THIS WILL UNLOCK GREATER POWER AND ADVANCE THE 'ROUTE.']
A new, smaller icon appeared next to the pulsating heart—a tiny, pixelated journal. It glowed softly.
[CURRENT FRAGMENTS: 1/7 (THE SQUIRE'S PRIDE)]
[FRAGMENT EFFECT: SLIGHT INCREASE TO 'WHISPER OF SORROW' POTENCY. VAGUE SENSE OF DIRECTIONS TO RELATED MEMORY LOCATIONS.]
Kaelen wiped his face, his mind reeling. This was no longer just about survival. The System was actively making him an archaeologist of this creature's soul. Each fragment was a piece of a tragedy he was being compelled to solve.
The knight moved. It slowly retracted its hand and then, with a deliberate slowness that was almost gentle, it raised its index finger again. This time, it pointed not at the floor beside it, but across the hall, towards a specific, darkened archway he hadn't noticed before—one partially obscured by a collapsed pillar.
A direction. A nudge.
The next fragment is there.
The message was clear. Their connection had deepened enough for it to want him to understand. Or perhaps the System was puppeteering them both.
The synth-pop music shifted again, becoming a tune with a sense of gentle adventure.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: EXPLORE THE 'LOWER CHAPEL' TO SEEK MEMORY FRAGMENTS.]
[WARNING: THE HALL'S PERIMETER IS PROTECTED BY SIR GARETH'S AUTHORITY. VENTURING BEYOND MAY ATTRACT HOSTILE ATTENTION.]
[RECOMMENDATION: USE 'WHISPER OF SORROW' FOR DEFENSE. MAINTAIN PROXIMITY TO LOVE INTEREST WHEN POSSIBLE.]
Kaelen looked from the dark archway back to the Sorrowful Knight. The red coals gazed at him, no longer just observing, but… expecting.
He had a choice. Stay in the relative safety of the knight's shadow, where Affection might slowly decay without new stimuli. Or venture into the unknown dark, armed only with a fragment of sorrow and a dating sim's guidance, to dig deeper into a pain that was already threatening to drown him.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, the echo of a dead squire's pride mixing with his own dread.
He stood up.
His legs were steadier now. The knight watched him, a silent sentinel granting permission to leave its side.
Kaelen nodded, a faint, desperate parody of a brave smile. "Okay," he said, to both the knight and the System. "Let's see what you're trying to show me."
He took his first step away from the throne, towards the dark archway. The warmth at his back faded, replaced by the hall's pervasive chill. The knight's gaze was a physical weight between his shoulder blades.
He was no longer just a prisoner in the cathedral.
He had become its pilgrim.