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, flaring in patterns beneath his skin.
Hatim's breath hitched. Sharp. Ragged.
The air pressed down like soot-soaked wool. Every inhale was ash and iron and something older—thick with silence that had watched too long. His ribs pulsed, bruised by something not quite physical. The ache whispered of memory, not bone.
The world didn't freeze. It shimmered.
Edges bled and bent, like ink leaking through weathered parchment. Reality slipped. The chamber twisted into a lens smeared with smoke and time. Glyphs pulsed dimly on the walls, their light thudding in sync with Hatim's breath—ancient, intimate. Through the distortion, something inside him stirred.
Not sensation. Resonance. A rhythm. A forgotten song hummed in the deepest marrow of his bones.
The chamber didn't blur.
It melted.
Not from heat—but from remembrance. The blackstone walls, once quiet, now breathed with veins of molten Akar, pulsing like sluggish heartbeats. Mournful. Alive. The liquid memory moved like breath under skin—truth in motion, slow and restless. Where the stone resisted, it blistered. Ash-white flakes spiraled outward—scraps of moments long dead, drifting like snow from a crumbling god.
Even the silence deepened.
Not stillness. Something older. A listening.
The chamber did not observe. It remembered.
And in remembering, it saw him.
A figure stood at the center.
Not blurred—but sharpening. Like the world had finally remembered his shape.
Hatim blinked. Smoke cleared behind his eyes.
The hood fell.
Not illusion. A face. Flesh and time.
Not old in years—but in weight. Time carved his features in sharp relief. His skin held the texture of old bark, stretched tight and dry. Silver hair wound into a tight seal above the crown—less a style, more a ward. His robes dripped rust and dried blood, patterns not dyed but bled into the fabric. Memory soaked, not stitched.
And the eyes—
Amber. Not with power, but with something worse.
Recognition.
They looked through Hatim. Not into his soul—but into his shape before the soul formed. Into the memory the world had of him before he remembered himself.
Hatim stumbled back. Heat flushed through him. Shame. Wonder. Rage.
Then: "Hatim."
Soft. Familiar. Wrong.
Not the voice—but the gravity of it.
Granny Maldri.
Not her tone. Her ache.
Her defiance. Her warmth. Her grief. Her hands, stirring broth and striking with equal force. That lived behind his eyes.
And now it lived in this man.
Hatim's breath caught in his throat, sharp enough to draw blood.
Torchlight flickered.
Shadows twisted, unable to hold their forms. Time convulsed. The chamber warped, stammering between past and present. One moment solid, the next dripping like ink down memory's spine.
The man smiled.
Gums dark. Teeth cracked. Familiar.
The scent followed: boiled roots. Rotted wool. Smoke-soaked prayer cloth. Maldri's scent.
Not illusion. Imprint.
Memory. Dense enough to rot. Real enough to weep.
Hatim's knees buckled.
He hit the stone, palms scraping on warm glyphs.
The old man didn't reach for him. He waited. Let him fall.
Hatim curled forward. Clutched his stomach. The pain wasn't sharp—it was hollow. A void shaped like a name he didn't know he'd lost.
He choked a breath. "I need to go," he rasped. "Bolun owes me a meeting. I didn't come for ghosts."
The old man tilted his head. A slow gesture. "And yet they followed."
Hatim shook his head.
"I need coin. Food. Nothing else."
"And when you find them?" the man asked. "What remains?"
Hatim froze.
Not because the question was cruel—but because it fit. Like a blade forged for the wound he didn't admit was there.
The old man turned. His cane tapped the stone once.
Akar rippled beneath.
Golden light swelled from the cracks, not in obedience—but in recognition. Not power. Witness.
"Come," he said. "One trial. One truth. Then you may go. Then you'll know why Akar remembers your name."
The descent began.
Spiraling steps wound downward—hewn through the living bone of the mountain. Windows opened into veins of liquid Akar, pumping like slow arteries, thick and luminous. Light throbbed red-gold. Heat pulsed like breath. They passed glyphs half-eaten by time—markings that no longer spoke, only mourned.
Ash thickened the air the deeper they went. It clung like grief, like skin shed from forgotten dreams.
At last, they reached it:
A vault.
Hollowed marrow. Sacred ruin.
The air here had weight. Breathing it was like swallowing someone else's confession.
A basin sat in the center, encircled by carved glyphs that didn't glow—they waited. Their shapes were the old tongue of Cultivation. Not commands. Prayers.
Stories too old for words.
The old man knelt.
His hands moved in slow spirals—not commanding, but inviting.
Akar rose.
Like smoke. Like memory remembering itself.
It coalesced in the shape of a gourd. Blackstone. Etched with glyphs that pulsed like breath caught between lifetimes. The liquid shimmered—gold veined with shadow.
Then: the Babs came.
Winged, beetle-like—but not of this world. Shells shimmered with thought. Tails hissed steam when near Akar but never touched it. Creatures of hunger and reverence. Memory made insect.
One hovered near Hatim's cheek. Its eyes were voids. Curious. Kind.
It tasted his outline.
The old man swatted it gently. "Even ash-born hunger for memory," he said. "But not all may feast."
He offered the gourd.
"Kander," he said.
The name rang through the chamber like an old bell struck clean.
"Drink."
Hatim hesitated.
Then tipped it.
Akar touched his tongue.
And the world—fractured.
No floor. No stone. No chamber.
Only strands.
Golden. Raw. Endless.
A web spun of self.
Akar moved through it. Testing. Tasting.
First: Kander's teaching. Humility. It held.
Second: Maldri. Her hand. Her promise. It shimmered. Stayed.
Then: his oath.
Protection. A hollow lie. It wavered.
It snapped.
No warning. Just fire.
Ash rose like a scream whispered too long.
Another thread: Coin as salvation. It twisted.
Burned.
Gone.
The Babs flitted through the wreckage. Feeding on shed illusions. Not parasites—cleansers. Gentle as hands wiping a fevered brow.
Kander's voice again: "Akar does not judge. It reveals. You erase yourself."
Then—a pulse.
A memory untouched.
A starving boy. Reaching, not to steal—but to survive. And Maldri, saying: "Your soul is the only weight you carry across time."
It held.
Another: shielding a child from guards. Afraid. But he stayed.
Held.
The web trembled.
Then—
Reformed.
Not restored. Reforged.
Ash fell. Soft. Final.
New strands spun—where lies had burned.
Memory no longer a cage. Now—a mirror.
Hatim collapsed.
But did not shatter.
He had been hollow.
Now he was hollowed.
A vessel.
Forged.
The Babs dissolved into vapor.
Kander stood.
Watching. Silent. The same gravity as before. But now, Hatim understood the stillness.
"You survived," the old man said.
Hatim coughed. "I lost so much."
Kander nodded. "Only what never belonged."
Hatim pulled in a breath. Deeper than any before. The air bit his lungs—but it was clean. Pure.
The chamber no longer loomed.
It welcomed.
The Akar pulsed still—but now, something inside him answered.
He did not remember everything.
But what remained—
Was true.