The tears wouldn't stop.
Jiko sat on the floor of their rented room, Dr. Seo's Shard clutched in his hand, and wept. Not quiet tears, but gut-wrenching sobs that shook his entire body. He didn't understand what was happening, didn't recognize the sensation overwhelming him.
"Jiko," the Cartographer said gently, kneeling beside him. "Can you hear me?"
He nodded but couldn't speak. The Shard's contents had been too much. Dr. Miriam Seo's final thoughts, her crushing guilt as she activated the Empathy Engine. She'd believed she was saving humanity, forcing everyone to feel everyone else's pain so that cruelty would become impossible.
Instead, she'd made suffering tangible. Made morality into weight that could be traded, exploited, weaponized.
And in her last moments before the Severance took her, she'd known. Known that she'd destroyed the world in trying to fix it. The guilt had been so absolute, so overwhelming, that even the Shard's recording couldn't contain it fully.
It had leaked into Jiko. And for the first time in his life, he'd felt something close to emotion. Not his own guilt, but an echo of hers. Borrowed feeling that he didn't know how to process.
"It's the conscience," the Cartographer said quietly to the others. "It's forming faster than I thought. The Shard accelerated the process."
"Is he going to be okay?" Ven asked, her own eyes red from crying for Tallis.
"I don't know. He's experiencing emotion for the first time without any framework for understanding it. It's like being born directly into trauma."
The Cartographer put a hand on Jiko's shoulder. "Listen to me. What you're feeling, this is normal. It's grief and horror and guilt, all mixed together. It's what Dr. Seo felt when she realized what she'd done."
"Make it stop," Jiko managed. His voice was raw, broken. "I don't want this. I don't want to feel this."
"I can't. Once the conscience starts forming, it doesn't stop." The old man's expression was tortured. "I'm sorry. This is my fault. All of it."
Gradually, over the next hour, the tears subsided. Jiko was left hollow in a new way, emptied not of morality but of energy. Everything hurt. Not physically, but in ways he didn't have words for.
"What was in the Shard?" Marik asked carefully.
Jiko tried to organize his thoughts enough to answer. "Dr. Seo's memories. The moment she activated the Empathy Engine. She thought she was creating global compassion, forcing everyone to feel each other's suffering so they'd stop causing it."
He took a shuddering breath. "But the Engine worked too well. Instead of creating empathy, it made thoughts real. Made memories extractable, emotions tangible, morality visible. She watched it happen, watched reality break, and knew it was her fault. The guilt killed her. Literally. Her heart stopped from the emotional weight."
"And you felt that?" Ven asked.
"Some of it. Not all. But enough." Jiko looked at his hands, surprised to find them shaking. "Is this what you all feel constantly? This weight?"
"Not constantly," Marik said. "And not this intense. This is trauma-level emotion. Most days, feelings are quieter."
"I don't want quiet feelings. I don't want any feelings." Jiko stood, unsteady. "I want to go back to being empty."
"You can't," the Cartographer said. "The process has begun. In days or weeks, you'll have a fully formed conscience. And when that happens, any guilt you absorb will affect you the way it affects everyone else."
"Then I won't absorb anymore guilt."
"You won't have a choice if someone forces it on you. The Testimony, the Sanctum, even merchants who want to weaponize you. Now that you're changing, you're vulnerable in new ways." The old man stood. "We need to complete this quickly. Either find a way to stop the conscience from forming, or prepare you for what comes after."
"How do we stop it?" Jiko asked.
"We can't. Not through any method I know. The only possibility is the Empathy Engine itself. If we could reach it, study it, understand how it made morality concrete, we might be able to reverse the process. Remove your forming conscience before it fully integrates."
"Or we could destroy the Engine entirely," Ven said. "End the Severance, return the world to how it was before. No more memory-Shards, no more visible Marks, no more guilt as currency."
"That would change everything," Marik said slowly. "The entire economy would collapse. Every faction would lose its power base. It would be chaos."
"It's already chaos," Ven countered. "Just organized chaos that benefits those in power. Maybe unorganized chaos would be better."
The Cartographer was pacing again. "Destroying the Engine is theoretical. No one knows if it's even possible, or what would happen if we succeeded. It could end the Severance, or it could make things worse. Kill everyone whose existence depends on the new rules."
"So we're trapped," Jiko said. "I'm growing a conscience I don't want, carrying knowledge of how the world broke, and the only solution might kill everyone." He laughed, and it came out bitter. "This is what feeling brings? Despair?"
"Not just despair," Ven said gently. "Also hope, joy, love, connection. Feeling isn't just suffering."
"I haven't experienced those things yet. Just pain." Jiko moved to the window, looking out at the settlement. "Tallis died today. I know that logically. But I don't feel sad about it. Should I?"
"Eventually, probably. Grief takes time." Ven joined him at the window. "She sacrificed herself so you could live. That means something."
"Does it? She's dead. I'm alive but changing into something I don't want to be. What was the point?"
"The point is you have time now. Time to choose what comes next instead of having it forced on you." Ven put a hand on his shoulder. "Tallis believed in choice, in agency. She gave you hers as a final gift."
Jiko thought about that. "I don't know if I can honor that. I don't know how to choose when I'm becoming someone else."
They spent the rest of the day recovering. The settlement was small but had basic amenities: food, water, a doctor who asked no questions. The Cartographer tended to Jiko, checking for signs of further emotional development. Marik and Ven traded Shards for supplies and information.
By evening, they had a plan. Rough and dangerous, but a plan nonetheless.
"We head for the Wound," the Cartographer announced. "Not to meet Syla, but to find other Echoes who might be able to extract your forming conscience. It's risky, but less risky than waiting for it to fully form."
"What about destroying the Engine?" Ven asked.
"That's plan B. If we can't stop the conscience, we consider the nuclear option." The old man looked grim. "But understand, destroying the Engine might end the Severance, or it might just kill us all. It's not a decision to make lightly."
"When do we leave?" Marik asked.
"Tomorrow. We need supplies and rest, but we can't delay longer. The Sanctum will be hunting us after what happened at the Penance Halls, and the Testimony has never stopped." The Cartographer looked at Jiko. "Are you well enough to travel?"
Jiko assessed himself. The emotional storm had passed, leaving him drained but functional. "Yes."
"Good. Then we make for the Wound at dawn."
That night, Jiko couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Dr. Seo's face as she realized what she'd done. Felt echoes of her guilt, her horror, her desperate hope that maybe, somehow, she'd been right.
She'd been trying to save humanity from itself. Instead, she'd given them new ways to hurt each other.
Was that what Jiko was doing too? Trying to help but actually making things worse?
He didn't know. Didn't have enough data. Didn't understand these new sensations well enough to make informed decisions.
A soft knock came at his door. "It's me," Ven's voice. "Can I come in?"
"Yes."
She entered, carrying two cups of the settlement's excuse for tea. She sat on the edge of his bed, and they drank in companionable silence for a while.
"I keep thinking about Tallis," Ven said finally. "About how she changed so fast. One moment she was trying to kill you, the next she was dying to save you. What causes that?"
"Seeing the truth," Jiko said. "Syla showed her what she'd really done, stripped away the justifications. Once she saw it clearly, she couldn't go back to believing the lies."
"Is that what the Shard did to you? Showed you truth you couldn't unsee?"
"Yes." Jiko stared into his tea. "Dr. Seo believed she was right. Absolutely believed it. And she destroyed the world anyway. Good intentions don't matter if the outcome is horror."
"So what do we do? Never try to change things for fear of making them worse?"
"I don't know." Jiko looked at her. "You've felt emotions your whole life. How do you make decisions when feeling pulls you in different directions?"
Ven thought about it. "You follow your values. Figure out what matters most to you, then choose based on that even when it's hard." She paused. "But you're just discovering what you value. You don't have that foundation yet."
"Then how do I choose?"
"Trust the people around you. We've been making emotional decisions our whole lives. We can help guide you until you find your own way." She smiled. "That's what friends do."
"Friends," Jiko repeated. The word felt strange. He'd understood companionship as mutual utility, but friendship implied something more. Something about caring, about valuing people beyond their usefulness.
Was that what he felt toward Ven? Toward Marik and the Cartographer?
He didn't know. But the fact that he was questioning it meant something was changing.
"Get some sleep," Ven said, standing. "Tomorrow's going to be rough."
She left, and Jiko lay back, still unable to sleep but somehow less alone than before.
Dawn came grey and cold. They packed their supplies, checked their weapons, and prepared for the journey to the Wound. The settlement's residents watched them go with the careful disinterest of people who'd learned not to ask questions.
The Wound was three days' travel northeast, through territory that grew progressively stranger. They saw memory-storms in the distance, reality glitches where the Severance's effects were strongest. Echoes moved through the landscape, hunting or feeding or simply existing in their inhuman ways.
On the second day, they encountered something unexpected.
A village. Intact, populated, seemingly normal. Children played in the streets. Adults worked in gardens. It looked like a slice of pre-Severance life preserved against all odds.
"This is wrong," Ven said immediately. "Villages this close to the Wound don't survive. The instability, the Echoes, the reality glitches... they should all be dead or crystallized."
"Should we investigate?" Marik asked.
"We should avoid it," the Cartographer replied. "Nothing good comes from places that seem too normal in the Wastes."
But as they tried to circle around, a woman emerged from the village and walked directly toward them. She was middle-aged, serene, and her arms showed no Marks at all. Not blank like Jiko had been, but clean. As if she'd never sinned or felt virtue.
"Travelers," she called. "Please, join us. We have food and shelter."
"We're just passing through," the Cartographer said.
"I insist. It's dangerous to travel at night, and darkness comes soon." The woman smiled. It should have been welcoming, but something about it made Jiko's new emotional sense scream warning. "We're blessed here. Safe from the Wound's effects. You'll be safe too."
"How?" Ven asked. "How do you survive this close to the Wound?"
"We have a protector. A Saint who guards us, keeps the Echoes away, maintains reality's stability." The woman gestured toward the village. "Come meet him. See our blessing for yourself."
Against his better judgment, Jiko found himself curious. A village surviving where it shouldn't, protected by a Saint. That was unusual enough to warrant investigation.
"One hour," he said. "We'll rest, then continue."
The Cartographer shot him a look but didn't argue. They followed the woman into the village.
Inside, everything was too perfect. The houses were clean, the people smiled constantly, the children laughed with mechanical regularity. It reminded Jiko of the deserters' camp, but worse. These people weren't marked at all. They were empty in ways that made his former blankness look normal.
"Where's your protector?" Marik asked.
"The chapel. He's always in the chapel, maintaining the blessing." The woman led them to the village's center.
The chapel was larger than the others buildings, built from stone that predated the Severance. Golden light spilled from its windows, and Jiko could feel virtue radiating from within. Concentrated, compressed, weaponized.
They entered to find a man kneeling before the altar. His back was to them, but Jiko could see his body was covered in golden Marks so dense they'd fused into armor. A Saint, but one who'd taken it further than any Jiko had seen.
The man stood and turned. His face was beatific, empty of everything except absolute certainty.
"Welcome," he said. His voice carried harmonics that made reality shimmer. "I am Brother Elias. Former general of the Choir Sanctum. Now protector of this blessed place."
"Former?" Ven asked carefully.
"I left the Sanctum when I realized their methods were flawed. They hoard virtue, force it on the unwilling, create Saints through violence. I found a better way." Elias gestured at his body. "I absorb virtue voluntarily. Take Mercy and Compassion and Honesty from others until I become pure. And in return, I protect them from sin."
"You take their virtue?" the Cartographer said slowly. "You're stripping them of moral weight?"
"I'm purifying them. Removing the burden of choice, the weight of conscience, the pain of guilt. They live simply, happily, free from moral complexity." Elias smiled. "It's the only true mercy. The only way to save humanity from itself."
Jiko understood immediately. "You're making them blank. Removing their capacity for morality entirely."
"Yes. And it's beautiful. They don't suffer, don't struggle, don't question. They simply exist in innocent simplicity." Elias moved closer. "You understand, don't you? You were blank once. You know the peace it brings."
"I wasn't at peace. I was just empty."
"Is there a difference?" Elias reached out to touch Jiko's face. "I can sense you're changing. Growing a conscience, feeling awakening in you. Let me remove it. Return you to blessed emptiness before the suffering begins."
"No," Jiko said.
Elias's hand touched his cheek anyway. And Mercy flooded into Jiko like boiling water.
It should have forced itself into his void, filled him with weaponized compassion. But something had changed. The forming conscience wasn't complete, but it was present enough to interact with the virtue.
The Mercy hit Jiko's nascent moral framework and stopped. Not absorbed, not rejected, just stopped. Held in place by something that hadn't existed before.
"Impossible," Elias whispered. "You're... you're not accepting it. Not because you're blank, but because you're choosing not to."
"I don't want your Mercy," Jiko said. "I don't want to be empty again. And I definitely don't want whatever you've done to these people."
Elias's expression shifted. The beatific calm cracked, revealing something desperate beneath. "You don't understand. I'm saving them. Saving everyone. If people can't feel guilt or virtue, they can't be controlled by those who weaponize morality. They're free."
"They're not free," Ven said. "They're lobotomized. You've stolen their ability to be human."
"Being human means suffering!" Elias's voice rose. "It means guilt and shame and the crushing weight of conscience! I'm offering liberation!"
"You're offering oblivion," the Cartographer said. "There's a difference."
Elias looked at them, at Jiko specifically, and something in his eyes broke completely. "If you won't accept my blessing, then I'll force it. I'll strip your forming conscience before it can torture you. I'll make you blank again whether you want it or not."
He raised both hands, and the chapel exploded with golden light.
Virtue poured from Elias in waves, Mercy weaponized and amplified beyond anything Jiko had experienced. It crashed over them like a tsunami, trying to force compassion, trying to strip away their capacity for anything except blind kindness.
Ven collapsed immediately, overwhelmed. Marik fell beside her. The Cartographer screamed as the Mercy tried to convert him, tried to make him feel nothing but love for all beings.
But Jiko stood unmoved.
The Mercy hit his forming conscience and couldn't push through. His nascent moral framework was incomplete, but it was his. Not Elias's to take, not the Severance's to manipulate. His own developing sense of right and wrong rejected the forced virtue instinctively.
And then Jiko did something he'd never done before.
He grabbed the Mercy and pulled.
Not to absorb it like guilt, but to redirect it. Take the weaponized virtue and throw it back at its source. He didn't understand how he was doing it, just knew that the forming conscience gave him new capabilities. New ways to interact with moral weight.
The Mercy reversed, flooding back into Elias. The Saint tried to absorb it, had absorbed so much already, but this was too much. Decades of accumulated virtue plus his own attack, all returning at once.
Elias began to crystallize.
"No," he whispered. "I was supposed to save them. I was supposed to free everyone from suffering. I was right. I had to be right."
Golden crystal spread across his body, turning him into a statue. His eyes were still aware, still terrified, as the crystallization reached his face.
"You were wrong," Jiko said quietly. "Liberation isn't the same as emptiness. And peace isn't the same as the absence of feeling."
The crystallization completed. Brother Elias, former Saint, became a statue of frozen Mercy. Proof that too much virtue was just as dangerous as too much guilt.
The chapel's light faded. The village outside began to change. Without Elias's power maintaining them, the residents started regaining their Marks. Confusion and fear replaced the mechanical calm.
Jiko knelt beside Ven and Marik, checking them. They were alive, just overwhelmed. The forced Mercy had affected them but not permanently. They'd recover.
The Cartographer was staring at Jiko with something like awe. "You reversed his attack. Turned his own virtue against him. That should be impossible."
"The conscience," Jiko said. "It let me interact with moral weight in new ways. I didn't just reject the Mercy. I controlled it."
"That's..." the old man struggled for words. "That's unprecedented. You're not just blank or normal. You're something new. Something between."
Jiko looked at his hands. They were still unmarked, still clean. But he'd felt the Mercy trying to enter him, had felt his forming conscience rejecting it. Had felt power in that rejection.
"What am I becoming?" he asked.
"I don't know," the Cartographer admitted. "But whatever it is, it's terrifying the established order. Saints with decades of training couldn't do what you just did. And you're still forming."
They gathered their companions and fled the village as reality reasserted itself. Behind them, Brother Elias stood frozen in his chapel, a monument to good intentions gone wrong.
As they traveled onward toward the Wound, Jiko couldn't stop thinking about Elias's words. The Saint had been trying to help, trying to save people from the burden of morality. Just like Dr. Seo had tried to force empathy. Just like the Cartographer had tried to create someone immune to guilt.
Everyone trying to fix humanity. Everyone making it worse.
Was Jiko any different? Was his quest to stop his forming conscience just another attempt to escape the human condition?
He didn't know. But for the first time, he cared about finding out.
The Wound loomed ahead, its light painting the horizon in impossible colors. And somewhere in its depths, Syla waited with answers he wasn't sure he wanted.
But he was going anyway. Because running from choices was the same as making them.
And Jiko was done running.