CHAPTER 4: THE MEMORY LEAK
I walked for six minutes before I realized I was counting.
Steps. Breaths. My hand slid along the cold obsidian wall. My body was still trying to measure progress toward a goal my mind couldn't remember.
I was holding a book. It felt heavy. I didn't know its name, but I knew I couldn't drop it.
Somewhere behind me, a massive shape moved through the dark. I heard the click of claws on stone. Every few seconds, a freezing draft hit the back of my neck. Breath. The creature was right there, its snout probably inches from my hair, but it was moving blindly.
It was hunting a girl who wasn't there. I was a void.
I kept walking. It was the only thing that made sense.
The tunnel widened. The air lost the smell of old paper and took on the sharp, metallic tang of ozone. The obsidian walls receded into a chamber so vast the darkness felt heavier, pressing against my skin.
I stopped at the edge of a drop-off.
Below, the floor was gone. A lake of liquid mercury filled the space—thick, shimmering, and humming with a low-frequency vibration that made my bones ache.
[Location Reached: The Memory Leak.]
[Description: The drain. Every memory sacrificed to the Ledger pools here. It is the landfill of the soul.]
I stared down at the silver. My reflection was a mess of shifting faces. A crying child. A dying old man. A screaming soldier. None of them were mine. The pool was a soup of discarded identities.
A man in a charcoal suit stood on the surface of the mercury. He wasn't sinking. He held a glass jar, dipping it into the liquid like a child catching minnows.
"You're early, Architect."
I didn't turn around. If the beast hadn't killed me yet, it couldn't see me.
"Twenty-four minutes left," the Quiet Man said. He checked a gold pocket watch. "Then the Silence ends. The purpose returns. And the beast—standing three feet behind you—will remember exactly how you taste."
He walked toward the shore. The mercury didn't splash under his boots.
"You're empty, Ani. You've traded your mother's face. Her voice. Your skill. You're a hollow vessel. And hollow vessels are easy to fill with things that don't belong to them."
He reached the edge and held out the jar. Inside, a single golden thread twined through silver liquid.
"This belonged to the man who built these tunnels eighty years ago," he said. "He knew every structural flaw. Every secret exit. It's a complete map. Much better than the one you lost."
I looked at the jar. Behind me, the scraping was getting louder.
"The Red Ledger lets you trade your own life," he warned. "But if you take a memory that isn't yours, you're letting the Nightmare edit you."
[System Prompt: External Memory Detected.]
[Trade Offered: The Architect's Map.]
[Price: Permanent Soul-Sync. You will gain the map, but you will inherit the Architect's final moment.]
My purpose hadn't returned yet. I grabbed the jar anyway. I smashed it against my chest.
The gold thread lunged.
I wasn't in the chamber anymore. I was behind a mahogany desk, eighty years ago. The air smelled of tobacco and rain. I was looking at a blueprint, my hands shaking. I was tired of building walls for men who only wanted to tear them down.
The world exploded.
The ceiling came down in a roar of white dust and screaming stone. I was pinned. The weight of the Eastern Quarter was on my chest, crushing my ribs. I tried to breathe, but I only swallowed dirt. I was dying alone in a hole I had designed.
The light left my eyes. The cold settled in.
I opened them.
I was back on the edge of the mercury lake. My chest ached with phantom pressure. I could taste dust. But the tunnels were different now.
They weren't dark. They were glowing.
A three-dimensional grid of the entire Quarter was burned into my retinas. I saw the pressure valves. The rusted service hatches. I saw a structural weak point in the tunnel ceiling fifty yards behind me.
I also felt a flicker of a grudge. A hatred for the High Circle that didn't belong to me.
[Variable Updated: The Map is Complete.]
[Warning: Soul-Sync at 12%. The Architect is watching.]
"Seven minutes left," the Quiet Man said. He was already walking away, fading into the grey clouds. "Better hurry. The beast is tired of sniffing the air."
The Silence frayed. I heard my own heartbeat. I remembered Zima. I remembered Rust.
The beast roared. The sound vibrated through my new, phantom ribs.
It saw me.
The monster lunged. I threw myself sideways. Claws raked the air where my head had been. I hit the obsidian floor, rolled, and came up running.
The map pulsed in my head—golden threads showing me the flaw. Fifty yards ahead.
The Vex-creature was faster. Its shadow touched my heels. I ripped the Ledger open while sprinting.
[Variable Detected: The Stress Fracture.]
[Trade: The memory of your first kiss.]
Twenty yards. The beast's breath was a freezing wind on my neck.
I tore the page.
The ceiling didn't just crack. It screamed.
The obsidian buckled. A jagged shard of the roof slammed down, pinning the creature's hind leg to the floor. The beast howled—a sound of grinding metal.
I stood up, brushing white dust from my jacket. The Architect's map was a golden light behind my eyes.
"One down," I said.
I turned toward the central hub. My hand twitched. I reached for a pocket I didn't have, looking for a pack of tobacco I'd never bought.
"We have work to do," a voice muttered in the back of my mind. It was deeper. Older.
I started running. But I wasn't alone anymore. A dead man was running with me, and he wanted the High Circle to burn.
[Soul-Sync: 15%.]
[Time until Dawn: 3 Hours.]