The corridor darkened.
Not from shadows—
from absence.
The Choir's hymn spread through the stone like rot through bone, turning light thin and brittle. The torches guttered in perfect rhythm with the melody, each flicker a heartbeat closer to oblivion.
Evin clutched the wall, trying to breathe through the pressure crushing his skull. Every note scraped across his memories like claws dragging through wet clay. His thoughts blurred at the edges—
names slipping,
faces smearing,
moments dissolving.
He held Rell's name in his mind with both metaphorical hands, gripping until his knuckles would have bled if they were real.
Rell Rell Rell Rell—
But the melody pressed harder.
The remnants behind him swayed like a forest in a storm, their edges fracturing. One remnant near the front—a woman with long, flickering hair—fell to her knees, her silhouette splintering as the hymn tried to peel her apart.
"Stop," Evin gasped. "Please… stop—"
His voice broke.
The song didn't.
The remnants reached for him—hands made of broken outlines—but the hymn tore their shapes thin. Their bodies trembled like they were being shaved away layer by layer.
"No—no, no, no—" Evin stumbled toward them. "Don't disappear! Hold on—hold on!"
The melody sharpened.
A spike of sound drove through Evin's skull and he screamed, clutching his head. Images burst behind his eyes—violent flashes, shaking, unraveling into horrors he didn't own.
Someone else's memory slammed into him:
Evin gasped as fire blossomed in his vision.
Not his fire.
Someone else's.
A memory burned into the Veil.
A man knelt in a circle of scripture while priests chanted above him. He begged—not for mercy, but for his children to be spared.
They weren't.
Evin felt the heat.
Felt the blistering pain.
Felt the man's teeth break as he bit down on his own scream.
He felt the moment the fire reached the man's eyes—
and the moment doctrine declared it holy.
The memory ripped free of him—
violently—
leaving a raw wound in his mind.
Evin collapsed to his knees, gasping.
The remnants shuddered in response. They didn't try to comfort him—they couldn't. They were barely holding onto themselves.
But the hymn rose again.
Higher.
Sharper.
Hungrier.
Another memory stabbed into him—
Evin found himself seeing through the eyes of someone young—too young.
A novice.
Barely twelve.
Locked in a dormitory.
Dozens of children around him.
Door bolted from the outside.
Priests arguing in the hallway:
"They failed the test—
they carry the spark wrong—
better to purge them early—"
Screams erupted as fire flooded the room from cracks in the ceiling—
as if flame were water poured through a sieve.
The child clawed at the door.
Clawed until his fingers snapped.
Smoke filled his lungs.
His last thought wasn't fear—
It was confusion.
Why?
Why us?
Why now?
Why do they call this love?
Evin tore himself out of the memory with a violent jerk and vomited onto the marble floor. His body shook uncontrollably.
The Veil pulsed around him like a panicked heartbeat.
The remnants reeled behind him, the hymn grinding them down to thin wisps.
Evin felt another memory slam into him without warning—
No fire this time.
No screams.
Just a man kneeling before a Bishop.
He wasn't sentenced.
He wasn't condemned.
He was volunteering.
He bowed his head and whispered:
"Erase me.
Let me be pure."
The Bishop pressed a glowing hand to his skull, and the man unraveled—
not burning,
not breaking,
not even dying.
Just dissolving like sand brushed off a table.
Evin felt every shred of that man's identity slip away—
his name dissolving,
his memories bleeding white,
his soul shrinking to a single empty note—
Then nothing.
Nothing.
NOTHING.
Evin jerked backward so hard his spine arched.
He clawed at his own face, sobbing without sound.
"No more," he choked. "Please—no more."
The Choir's song grew louder.
The remnants began to break.
One by one.
Shapes flickered, blurred, then evaporated into thin wisps of shadow.
"STOP!" Evin screamed. "STOP! THEY'RE MINE!"
The song didn't stop.
It intensified.
The veil inside him convulsed—dragged inward and outward at once—trying to protect the remnants, trying to protect Evin, trying not to split apart.
The corridor warped around him.
The torches dimmed to thin blue glimmers.
The walls rippled like heat haze.
The remnants collapsed around him, flickering like dying stars. They were dissolving. The Choir was pulling them apart—untangling them into nothing.
Evin crawled toward the nearest remnant—a small figure curled on the floor, shaking. A child-shape. He reached toward it desperately.
"I've got you—please—stay—"
His fingers passed through its blurred hand.
The child-shape flickered once.
Then began to unravel.
"No—NO—NO!"
Evin reached, grabbed, begged—
but the remnant dissolved into smoke.
Gone.
Forever.
Something inside Evin snapped.
A sound tore out of him—
not a scream,
not a sob,
but a raw rupture of grief that shook the corridor.
The Choir's hymn faltered.
Evin felt the Veil respond—
not defensively,
not reactively,
but instinctively.
The shadows behind him surged upward—not like flickers, not like silhouettes.
They rose like a tide.
A pressure filled the corridor so violently that torches burst with a hiss.
The Veil—
sang back.
No melody.
No harmony.
Just one long, impossible note:
REMEMBER.
The Choir staggered.
The Bishop's eyes widened.
The remnants held their shape—stabilizing, anchoring to Evin, clinging to his silhouette like a living shield.
Evin braced himself, chest heaving.
His voice came out broken but certain:
"Try to erase them again—
and I will remember every one of you."
The corridor trembled.
The Choir faltered.
And the Bishop's calm expression finally cracked.