Fingers twitched. Trembled.
As if reaching for a blade long lost—or a memory carved too deep to heal. Each spasm stung. Pain didn't scream—it echoed. A whisper of old fire crawling up scorched nerves.
Hatim's breath hitched. Sharp. Ragged. The air pressed down like soot-laden wool. His ribs ached, as though bruised by something invisible but intimate.
The world didn't freeze. It shimmered.
Edges bent, wavering like ink bleeding through parchment. Memory warped the chamber into a broken lens—unsteady, fractured, feral. Through it, Akar stirred beneath his skin. Not sensation—resonance. A rhythm. A forgotten song echoing in marrow.
The chamber didn't blur. It melted.
Not from heat, but remembrance. Blackstone walls veined with molten Akar pulsed like slow heartbeats. Mournful. Alive. The liquid memory moved like breath under flesh—truth in motion, restless and eternal. Where the stone resisted, it blistered. Ash-white flakes spiraled outward—embers of moments long dead. The masonry crackled softly, like secrets exhaled in confession.
And still—silence.
Not stillness. Something deeper. A silence that listened.
The chamber did not observe. It remembered.
And in its remembering—it watched him.
At its center stood the hooded figure.
Still. Not blurred, but sharpening—like reality was reluctantly accepting its form again.
Hatim's mind cleared like smoke sucked through flame.
The hood lowered.
Not illusion. A face. A man.
Old—not with age, but with weight. Time etched him in sharp lines. Skin like parchment stretched thin. Silver hair bound in a loop above the crown—a seal, not a style. Robes bled rust and dark crimson, as if soaked in memory, not dye.
But the eyes stopped everything.
Amber-gold. Not with power—but comprehension. They rooted Hatim. Undid him.
That quiet force. The same stillness that once shattered thugs with a glance—now turned inward.
Hatim faltered.
Then: "Hatim."
Dry. Familiar. Wrong.
Granny Maldri.
Not her shape. Her ache.
Her defiance. Her tenderness. Her anger.
Wound behind the man's eyes like smoke coiled in frost.
Hatim staggered. A breath caught mid-chest, too sharp to finish.
Torchlight stuttered.
Shadows warped—refusing to stay in place. Memory fought the present.
The man's frame slouched. His jaw loosened.
Then—a smile.
Gums dark. Familiar. Terrifying.
The scent followed: boiled roots. Ash. Rotted wool. Maldri's scent. Not illusion.
Memory. Made flesh.
Realer than sight.
Hatim's knees buckled.
Gone.
The old man stood steady. Silent. Unapologetic.
Hatim clutched his stomach. Not pain. Hollow. A wound with no edge.
A name removed.
"I need to go," he rasped. Words scraped raw. "Bolun owes me a meeting. I didn't come for ghosts."
The old man raised a brow. "And yet they follow. You don't even know what you're chasing."
"I need food. Coin. That's it."
"And when you find them?" The man's voice sharpened. "What remains?"
Hatim stilled.
The words struck not like a wound—but like a weight that fit. A blade shaped for him.
The old man turned. Cane tapped stone. Akar stirred beneath—rippling golden light that reached, not like a servant, but like a witness.
"Come. One trial. One truth. Then you may go. Then you'll understand why Akar clings to you."
The descent began.
Spiraling stone steps cut down through the bones of the mountain. Raw windows blinked past, revealing veins of Akar pulsing like arteries. Honey-thick. Firelit.
Ash thickened the air. It drifted slow, like dead skin from dreams shedding truth.
At last: a vault.
A hollow carved from marrow.
Air pressed heavy—saturated with memory. Breathing here felt like swallowing someone else's story.
Symbols encircled a stone basin. Glyphs carved in reverence—the language of Cultivation. Stories too old for tongue.
The old man knelt. Hands gnarled like root and bark. He moved them in spirals—no command, only invitation.
Akar rose.
Liquid light. Gold laced with shadow.
It climbed, slow as grief, into the shape of a gourd. Blackstone, veined and etched. Lines pulsed like breath remembering itself.
Then—the Babs.
Winged things. Beetle-like—but not. Shells gilded, shimmering like molten thought. Tails hissed fire when near Akar, yet never touched it.
Drawn. Hungry. Worshipful.
One hovered near Hatim's face.
As if tasting his shape.
The old man batted it gently. "Even Ash-born hunger for memory. But not all may taste."
He offered the gourd.
"Kander," he said.
The name rang like stone in still water.
"Drink."
The gourd tipped.
Akar kissed his tongue.
And the world—shattered.
No walls. No floor. No shape.
Only strands.
Threads of memory. Gold. Raw. Infinite.
A web spun of self.
Akar tested.
First thread: Kander. His teachings. Humility over force. The thread pulsed. Held.
Second: Maldri. Her hands. Her stew. Her faith. It shimmered. Held.
Then—his oath. Protection. A hollow promise. It trembled.
It snapped.
No fade. Just fire.
Ash rose.
Another broke: Coin as salvation.
Gone.
The Babs drifted through the wreckage—feeding on shed illusions. Gentle. Almost kind.
Kander's voice: "Akar does not judge. It reveals. You erase yourself."
Then—clarity.
A memory untouched:
A starving boy. Not stealing from a blind woman. Not from pride.
Because Maldri had once said: "Your soul is the only weight you carry across time."
It held.
Another: Shielding a child from guards. Not brave. Afraid. But he stood anyway.
That thread held.
The web trembled.
Then—reformed.
Not restored. Reforged.
Ash fell like blessing.
New threads spun where lies had burned.
Akar pulsed.
Hatim collapsed.
But did not break.
Forged.
Kander stood nearby. Silent sentinel.
The Babs dissolved into dark.
"You survived," he said.
Hatim: "I lost so much."
"Only what never belonged."
Hatim drew in breath. Deep. Clean.
The chamber did not shrink. It welcomed.
Akar still pulsed.
Ash still fell.
But now—something under his skin answered.
He didn't remember everything.
But what remained—
Was true.