The Wound grew larger with each passing hour, its impossible light dominating the horizon. Reality became negotiable here. Gravity shifted without warning. Colors existed that had no names. Sounds occurred before their sources. Time felt elastic, stretching and compressing randomly.
Jiko found the instability almost comforting. The physical world's unreliability matched his internal state. He was changing, transforming into something he didn't understand, and having the external environment reflect that chaos felt appropriate.
They camped on the third night at the Wound's edge, where the border between stable and unstable reality blurred. The Cartographer set up detection wards while Marik and Ven prepared food. Jiko sat apart, watching the Wound's light and trying to understand what he'd done to Elias.
He'd reversed the virtue. Taken weaponized Mercy and thrown it back at its source. But he hadn't just rejected it or absorbed it. He'd controlled it, manipulated it, weaponized it himself.
That suggested his forming conscience wasn't just giving him the capacity to feel. It was giving him power over moral weight itself.
"You're thinking too hard," Ven said, sitting beside him. "I can practically hear your brain working."
"I don't understand what I'm becoming," Jiko admitted. "I'm not blank anymore, but I'm not normal either. I'm something between."
"Maybe between is good. Maybe you don't need to be one or the other." She offered him food. "Eat. You need strength for tomorrow."
"What happens tomorrow?"
"We enter the Wound proper. Look for Echoes that might be able to extract your conscience before it fully forms." Ven paused. "Are you sure that's what you want? To go back to being blank?"
"I don't know what I want. I just know I don't want to feel like I did when I used Dr. Seo's Shard. That pain, that crushing weight. If that's what emotion is, I don't want it."
"That was trauma. Extreme emotion. Most feelings aren't that intense." Ven looked at the Wound. "But I understand being afraid. Change is terrifying, especially when you don't know what you're changing into."
"Are you afraid?" Jiko asked. "Of going into the Wound?"
"Terrified. We're walking into the most dangerous place in the Dominions, looking for creatures that feed on emotion, hoping to make a deal with something that probably wants to eat us." She smiled. "But I'm going anyway because you're my friend, and that's what friends do."
Friend. There was that word again. Jiko examined his internal response and found something warm, something that might be the beginning of appreciation or gratitude or affection. He couldn't name it yet, but it was there.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
"For not abandoning me when I became inconvenient."
Ven laughed. "You've been inconvenient since the moment we met. That hasn't changed." She grew serious. "But you've also saved us multiple times. Taken on burdens no one else could carry. You're not just useful, Jiko. You matter. As a person, not as a tool."
The warmth grew stronger. Definitely something positive. He filed it away for future examination.
The Cartographer called them over. "I've been analyzing the Wound's patterns. There are stable corridors through the instability, paths that Echoes use for hunting. If we follow them, we might find what we're looking for."
"Or we might find something that eats us," Marik said.
"That's always a risk. But staying out here is dangerous too. The Sanctum will still be hunting us, and now the Testimony knows what happened at the Penance Halls. We're running out of places to hide." The old man spread a map. "My proposal: we enter at dawn, follow the stable corridors until we encounter an Echo powerful enough to help, make our bargain, and exit. Three days maximum."
"And if we can't find an Echo willing to deal?" Ven asked.
"Then we continue to the center. Try to reach the Empathy Engine itself." The Cartographer's expression was grim. "That's where Syla wants us to go anyway. Maybe it's time to stop running from that meeting."
"You think she can help?" Marik was skeptical.
"I think she's been manipulating events to bring Jiko to the Engine. That suggests she believes something important will happen there. Whether that helps or harms us remains to be seen." The Cartographer looked at Jiko. "Ultimately, it's your choice. Your life, your conscience, your decision."
Jiko thought about Brother Elias, about how the Saint had tried to force his vision of mercy on others. Thought about Dr. Seo forcing empathy on humanity. Thought about the Cartographer surgically removing his guilt as an infant.
Everyone making choices for others, believing they knew best.
"We go in," Jiko said. "Find an Echo that can help if possible. If not, we continue to the Engine. Whatever happens, it should be something I choose, not something forced on me."
"Then we enter at dawn," the Cartographer confirmed.
They slept fitfully, each processing their fears in different ways. Jiko dreamed of crystallized Saints and weeping creators, of guilt made physical and virtue weaponized. He woke before dawn, disoriented and unsettled by the vividness of the dreams.
His conscience was definitely forming. Dreams were becoming more detailed, emotions more accessible. He could feel anxiety now, a tight sensation in his chest that made breathing uncomfortable.
This was what normal people lived with constantly?
Dawn came with colors that hurt to perceive. The Wound's light painted everything in shades that shouldn't exist, making the landscape both beautiful and nauseating. They packed quickly and approached the border.
Crossing was like walking through a membrane. One moment they were in normal reality, the next they were inside the Wound proper. Everything shifted. The ground beneath their feet was sometimes solid, sometimes not. The sky showed stars despite being day. Echoes drifted in the distance, hunting or feeding or simply existing.
"Stay close," the Cartographer instructed. "The stable corridors are marked by this." He held up a device that glowed with steady blue light. "As long as it stays blue, we're in safe zones. If it turns red, we need to retreat immediately."
They walked for hours through impossible terrain. Mountains that inverted halfway up. Rivers flowing upward. Forests where the trees grew downward from invisible ceilings. The Wound was reality's nightmare, everything that could go wrong with physical laws made manifest.
And everywhere, Echoes. They saw Grief Walkers drifting through the distortions. Joy Thieves laughing as they fed on passing emotions. Rage Colossi smashing through reality like it was paper. And stranger things, Echoes so alien that Jiko couldn't even categorize them.
"How do we know which ones to approach?" Marik asked quietly.
"We wait for one to approach us," the Cartographer replied. "Echoes can sense emotional density. Jiko's forming conscience makes him interesting. Something will find us."
They didn't have to wait long.
It appeared as they crossed a field of crystallized screams, a place where people's final moments had frozen into jagged formations. The Echo was massive, easily twenty feet tall, made of shadows and whispers. Its form constantly shifted, never settling on one shape.
When it spoke, its voice was chorus of hundreds of stolen voices.
"Hollow one," it said. "You've changed since last we met."
Jiko recognized the presence. This was one of the Echoes from the tunnel beneath Ember's Rest, the one that had commented on his emptiness. It had followed them or perhaps been waiting.
"I remember you," Jiko said.
"And I remember you. Empty then. Filling now. Growing something new where nothing was before." The Echo drifted closer. "Why do you return to the between-place? What do you seek?"
"Help. I'm growing a conscience I don't want. I need it removed before it fully forms."
The Echo laughed, and the sound was made of screaming. "You want to return to emptiness? To throw away the gift you're being given?"
"It's not a gift. It's a burden."
"All gifts are burdens. All burdens are gifts. You'll learn this when the growing completes." The Echo circled them. "But yes, I could remove it. Tear out the forming framework, leave you hollow again. I could do this."
"What do you want in exchange?" the Cartographer asked.
"A memory. Not yours, hollow one. You have no memories worth taking. But the creator's memories, those are valuable. Give me your memory of creating him, and I'll give him back his emptiness."
The Cartographer went pale. "That memory is everything. My greatest achievement and worst sin. Losing it would be losing part of myself."
"Yes. That's why it's valuable." The Echo's form solidified into something almost human. "Fair trade. Your memory for his conscience. Your guilt for his emptiness. Poetic, don't you think?"
Jiko looked at the Cartographer. The old man's expression was tortured. This memory defined him, drove him, haunted him. Losing it would change who he fundamentally was.
"Don't," Jiko said. "I won't let you sacrifice yourself for me."
"It's my choice," the Cartographer replied. "I created this situation. I should be the one to fix it."
"But you'll lose yourself. Lose the guilt that makes you want to help me. Without that memory, you won't care about me anymore."
"Maybe that would be better. Maybe I've cared too much, manipulated too much, forced my will on you too much." The Cartographer turned to the Echo. "I accept your deal. Take the memory, restore his emptiness."
"No!" Jiko stepped between them. "I refuse. I don't want your sacrifice. I don't want to go back to emptiness if it costs you yourself."
The Echo laughed again. "Now this is interesting. The hollow one refusing help because he doesn't want others to suffer for him. That sounds like empathy, little blank. That sounds like caring."
The realization hit like a physical blow. Jiko was refusing help because he cared about the Cartographer. Was choosing to keep his forming conscience because losing it meant the old man would sacrifice something precious.
He was feeling. Actually feeling, not just mimicking or calculating. The forming conscience had progressed further than he'd realized.
"I'm changing," Jiko whispered. "Right now, I'm changing."
"Yes," the Echo confirmed. "The process accelerates near the Wound. Moral weight is more concentrated here, more real. Your forming conscience is drinking it in, growing faster than it would elsewhere." It tilted its head. "You waited too long, hollow one. Another day, maybe two, and the conscience will be permanent. Irreversible. You'll feel everything."
"Can you still remove it?" the Cartographer asked desperately.
"I could. But it would damage him now. The conscience is integrating with his core self. Tearing it out would leave him broken in new ways. Catatonic or mad or something worse." The Echo's form dissipated. "You're too late. The decision has been made for you by time itself."
It began to fade, but Jiko called out. "Wait. If you can't remove it safely, can you tell me what I'm becoming? What happens when a blank grows a conscience?"
The Echo solidified again, considering. "You're becoming something new. Not blank, not normal. You had morality surgically removed as an infant, then grew for decades without it. Your mind adapted, built structures that don't exist in normal humans. Now you're growing a conscience on top of those structures."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you'll feel guilt and virtue like everyone else. But you'll also retain your ability to analyze them objectively, to see them as weights rather than truth. You'll experience morality but not be controlled by it. You'll be conscious of conscience itself." The Echo laughed. "You'll be both blind and sighted simultaneously. Feeling but separate from feeling. It will be very confusing."
"That sounds terrible," Marik said.
"Or powerful," the Echo countered. "Imagine feeling guilt but being able to choose whether to be crushed by it. Experiencing virtue but deciding whether to follow it. Most humans are slaves to their moral intuitions. You'll be able to question yours even while experiencing them."
"Is that even possible?" Ven asked.
"We'll find out. The hollow one is unique. What he becomes will be unique too." The Echo began fading again. "One more thing, hollow one. The one who waits for you in the Wound's center, the shame-feeder. She knows what you're becoming. She's been watching you change, planning for it. Whatever she wants, whatever deal she offers, remember this: she feeds on shame. Your forming conscience makes you vulnerable to her in ways you weren't before."
"Why tell me this?" Jiko asked.
"Because I'm curious to see what happens. You're the most interesting thing to occur since the Severance. I want you to survive long enough to see what you become." The Echo fully disappeared. "Good luck, hollow one. You'll need it."
Silence fell. The group stood in the field of crystallized screams, processing what they'd just learned.
"So that's it," Marik said. "We're too late. Jiko's going to feel everything whether we want it or not."
"Not everything," the Cartographer said slowly. "According to the Echo, he'll be able to analyze his feelings, separate from them even while experiencing them. That's not normal, but it's not catastrophic either."
"It's terrifying," Jiko said. His voice was shaking. "I'm going to feel guilt. Shame. Regret. All the things I've watched destroy others. And I won't be able to stop it."
Ven took his hand. "But you won't be alone. We'll help you learn how to manage it. Teach you what we know about living with conscience."
"And you'll have advantages normal people don't," the Cartographer added. "The ability to question your moral intuitions, to not be completely controlled by them. That's valuable."
"It's also the same thing that makes sociopaths," Jiko pointed out. "The ability to feel guilt but choose to ignore it."
"You're not a sociopath. You care about us. You refused to let me sacrifice my memory. That proves you're developing genuine empathy, not just mimicking it." The old man squeezed his shoulder. "You'll be okay. Different, but okay."
Jiko wanted to believe that. But he could feel the conscience growing inside him, could sense the moral framework crystallizing, could anticipate the weight that would soon become inescapable.
In days, maybe hours, he'd stop being himself. Would become someone new, someone who felt and suffered and experienced all the things he'd been spared his entire life.
The transformation was inevitable now. Irreversible. All he could do was move forward and hope he survived becoming human.
"We should continue," he said. "If Syla knows what I'm becoming, she might have answers about how to survive it."
"Or she might use it against you," Marik warned.
"Probably. But standing here won't change anything. We go forward or we go back, and going back means hiding while I transform. At least moving forward gives us options."
They continued deeper into the Wound, following the stable corridors through impossible terrain. The Cartographer's device stayed blue, indicating safety, but Jiko knew that could change at any moment.
Hours passed. The landscape became more surreal, more broken. They saw places where causality had reversed, where effects preceded causes. Echoes grew more common, drawn by their presence or perhaps by Jiko's changing state.
As evening approached, they found a relatively stable zone and made camp. The Cartographer set up wards while the others prepared food. Jiko sat apart, feeling his conscience grow with every passing moment.
He could sense emotions now. Not just his own developing feelings, but echoes from the Wound itself. Guilt and shame and regret made tangible, floating through the air like pollen. His forming moral framework absorbed them, used them as templates, grew faster from the exposure.
"How long?" he asked the Cartographer.
"A day. Maybe two. Your conscience is accelerating toward completion." The old man sat beside him. "I'm sorry. I should have found a way to stop this."
"You tried. It didn't work. That's not your fault." Jiko paused. "Will I hate you? When the conscience fully forms and I can feel what you did to me, will I hate you for it?"
The Cartographer was quiet for a long time. "Probably. At least at first. What I did was monstrous, even if I believed it was for research. Taking an infant and surgically removing his capacity for moral emotion... that's unforgivable."
"But you've tried to make amends."
"Amends don't erase the original sin. They just add context." The old man looked at his hands. "I've spent eighteen years running from what I did. Then three months trying to fix it. Neither undoes the fact that I stole your humanity."
"Did you though?" Jiko met his eyes. "I survived things that would have killed normal people because I didn't feel guilt or fear. I helped others carry weight they couldn't bear alone. I'm about to become something unique, something that might change how morality works. Would any of that have happened if you hadn't made me what I am?"
"That doesn't justify what I did."
"No. But it complicates it. Good outcomes don't excuse bad methods, but they don't make the methods meaningless either." Jiko felt something twist in his chest. "I think that might be guilt. The beginning of understanding that actions have weight beyond their consequences."
"Welcome to conscience," the Cartographer said sadly. "It only gets heavier from here."
They sat together as darkness fell, the creator and his creation, both guilty and innocent in complicated ways. Around them, the Wound pulsed with broken reality and concentrated emotion. And somewhere in its depths, Syla waited with her terrible patience.
Tomorrow, they would continue inward. Tomorrow, Jiko would be closer to human.
But tonight, he was still himself. Still between. Still unique.
He tried to savor the feeling, knowing it wouldn't last.
Knowing that by this time tomorrow, he'd be someone else entirely.
And wondering if that someone would still recognize himself in the mirror.