The Pyramid's quake finally eased, leaving the air sour and nauseous—like moldy bread or socks forgotten half a year under a bed. As they caught their breath, a slit opened on the far wall, gaping like the mouth of some titanic beast.
From that darkness, a figure emerged.
It was monstrously tall, head scraping the Pyramid's ceiling. Its body was stitched from mismatched corpses, limbs crooked, its eyes more numerous than zeros on an accountant's nightmare. Worst of all was its mouth—gaping, toothless, wide enough to swallow a soul whole and belch afterward.
"Welcome," it rasped, voice like rusted iron dragging across glass. "I am the Gatekeeper. Passage is simple: just give me… a piece of your memory."
Ember blanched. "Memory? Can we trade a kidney instead? Heard they go for more on the black market."
The Gatekeeper wheezed a laugh—or maybe vomited. "Kidneys are cheap. Memories are priceless."
The air thickened, a suffocating certainty. This was no joke. To reach the Pyramid's deeper heart, someone had to pay.
"Give up memory… we'll forget ourselves?" Ethan asked tightly.
The Gatekeeper lifted a deformed finger. The air shimmered, showing an agent stripped of memories. The man smiled blankly, identity erased, as if binge-watching sitcoms had liquefied his brain."Correct. Forget names. Forget parents. Forget dreams. Until you, too, are hollow shells like me."
One survivor snapped. "Then we'd rather die than pay!"
The Gatekeeper's eyes glinted. A moment later, the man was sucked into its maw. No scream. No blood. Only a satisfied burp.
"See?" it crooned. "Dying just makes me hungrier."
Everyone's scalps crawled.
Ember's laugh shook. "Ahaha… so that's the punchline. Choice A: voluntary amnesia. Choice B: free lunch special."
Ethan narrowed his eyes. There was no avoiding this toll. The real question was—what memory to give up?
His mind raced: his mother's faint silhouette, the stolen college seat, the betrayals and redemptions of friends, the Bureau's endless treachery. Each memory was a blade—painful, but also what kept him alive.
"One of you must go first," the Gatekeeper rumbled. "Or none shall pass."
Silence smothered the hall.
Then Ember laughed suddenly. "Fine, I'll do it. Nothing worth keeping anyway. Take the memory of when I got my leg broken stealing kimchi from a noodle shop."
The Gatekeeper's hand plunged into Ember's skull, drawing out black smoke. Ember shuddered, then oddly relaxed. "Huh… weird. I feel… happy? Like I've never been beaten down before."
Ethan snorted. "Careful. Forget too much, and you won't even remember your own name."
"Even better," Ember smirked. "No name means no boss can call me into overtime." His grin wavered, though, flickering with emptiness.
Then came Ethan's turn. The Gatekeeper's voice dripped like venom: "And you, Nightmare Key? What will you surrender? Your pain… or your hope?"
Ethan stared into the abyssal mouth. A wild idea pulsed—maybe giving up memory would make survival easier.
He inhaled sharply. "Take… my most beautiful dream."
Agony tore through his mind. A night—precious, vital—was ripped away. He couldn't recall it anymore. In its place lingered only a hollow smile. "There. Now I'm perfectly adapted to this hellhole."
The Gatekeeper gurgled with satisfaction, as if savoring gourmet meat. "Excellent. You may pass."
A passage yawned open, dripping with dim, sickly light.
Ember sighed. "We just paid memories for tickets. Feels like buying overpriced seats to a terrible movie."
Ethan's eyes were cold, locked on the dark ahead. "Relax. The ending's almost guaranteed—everyone dies."
They stepped into the new shadow.
Behind them, the Gatekeeper whispered gleefully:
"Remember this—no matter how far you walk, your forgetting shall always be my feast."