Part 2-Chapter 14

Part 2-Chapter 14
~HAMISH~

The city tasted wrong. That was the first sign, always. Not the noise, not the lights flickering themselves into foolishness, not even the humans clutching their heads like they’d misplaced something vital and couldn’t name it.

Taste never lied.

I stood on the Manor’s outer balcony long after the others drifted back inside, breathing deep through my nose as the night crept in. Iron on the wind. Old magic scraped raw and left to dry. Memory unmoored and drifting like ash.

Aye. The forgetting was failing.

Below, the city pulsed in uneven rhythms, wards brushing against things they’d been built to ignore. Streets remembered they’d once been paths. Buildings remembered being stone stacked by hands that had bled for it. Even the river was restless, curling around itself like it knew it had once swallowed more than bodies.

I leaned my elbows on the stone and muttered, “Ye’ve gone and done it now, love.”

Not her fault. Never was. But the world had a nasty habit of blaming the one who survived.

The convergence wasn’t a single thing. That was what most of them always got wrong. They expected a beast. A god. A war.

It was erosion. Forgetting had been the spell. Remembering was the consequence. And Kaisha…she was the crack the tide kept finding.

Behind me, the Manor sighed again, wards adjusting their pitch like a singer trying not to shatter glass. Clever house. Older than it pretended to be. It had felt me step through its skin and chosen, after a long pause, not to spit me back out.

That was something.

“Still listenin’, are ye?” I murmured, patting the stone with two fingers. The wards hummed in response, not friendly, not hostile.

Wary. Same as everyone else.

I straightened as the air shifted, a subtle tightening, like the dark paths brushing too close to the waking world. Not an arrival. A ripple. They were paying attention now.

I closed my eyes and reached sideways, not forward. Never forward. Forward was how you got noticed.

The city answered in fragments. A woman on a bus clutching her chest, breath stuttering as she smelled smoke that wasn’t there. A child waking from a nap screaming a name his parents had never taught him. A man standing ankle-deep in the river, swearing he could hear singing under the water.

None of them remembered enough to know why they were afraid. That was the mercy. For now.

“You always were a problem,” I said quietly, thinking of her. Not the woman she was tonight standing in that room wrapped in denial and instinct and borrowed time.

The other one. The one she’d sealed away.

I hadn’t meant to help her go that far back. Gods knew that. When she’d come to me years ago, eyes hollow, power bruised and flickering like a dying star, all she’d asked was how to sharpen memory without drowning in it.

I’d told her the truth. Memory was a blade. Use it wrong and it cuts both ways.

She’d listened. Too well.

Most souls, when they touched what she touched, clung to it. Named it. Let it define them. She hadn’t. She’d looked into the dark and said no. Not yet. Not like this. Not if it costs everything. That kind of will left scars. And seals.

A breeze stirred, colder now, threading through the balcony railings with a scent I didn’t like at all. Ancient. Dry. Watching.

“Ah,” I sighed. “There ye are.”

I didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. “You’re pushin’ too hard,” I said calmly. “The girl’s not ready.”

The pressure in the air increased, not aggressive, just insistent. Like a finger pressing against glass, testing for weakness.

No voice answered me. No form stepped out of shadow.

That was worse. Entities that announced themselves wanted something simple. This one wanted time.

“You remember her,” I went on, choosing my words with care. “But she doesn’t remember ye. Not properly. And that matters.”

The pressure shifted, curious now.

I felt it then…a pull toward the city center, toward the river corridor where everything had cracked open. A path laid not by feet, but by attention. By hunger.

“She buried herself to survive,” I said softly. “Ye don’t get to punish her for that.”

The air trembled.

Somewhere, glass shattered. Not near. Not here. A ripple in the pattern.

I exhaled slowly. “Aye. That’s what I thought.”

I turned back toward the Manor and found Redakai standing in the doorway, arms crossed, expression carved from suspicion and fury in equal measure.

“You’re talking to it,” he said.

I smiled faintly. “More like remindin’ it of its manners.”

His eyes flicked past me, scanning the dark. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“Someone has to,” I replied. “And it won’t listen to you. Not yet.”

“That’s supposed to comfort me?” he asked.

I gave a half shrug. “Not particularly.”

He stepped onto the balcony, presence rolling off him in controlled waves that made the wards tighten reflexively. “You said the seal would hold.”

“I said it could be reinforced,” I corrected. “Not forever.”

He clenched his jaw. “You’re still here.”

I nodded. “Aye.”

He glowered at me. “Why?”

I met his gaze fully then. No humor. No charm.

“Because when it breaks,” I said, “she’ll need someone who’s seen what happens next and lived.”

His eyes darkened. “You think I won’t?”

I didn’t answer right away. Some truths weren’t meant to be sharpened.

Instead, I said, “Ye love her.”

It wasn’t an accusation. Just a fact. “That makes you dangerous,” I continued. “To her. To yourself.”

He bristled. “Careful.”

“I am,” I said quietly. “That’s why I’m tellin’ you this.”

I leaned closer, lowering my voice so the wards would carry it but the house would not.

“When she sealed that memory, she didn’t just lock away who she was. She locked away what she did.”

Redakai went still.

“The darkness ye fear?” I went on. “That wasn’t what scared her most.”

“Then what did?” Redakai asked, his voice rough.

I looked out over the city again, lights flickering like a nervous pulse. “What she was willin’ to become to end it.”

The words hung between us, heavy as stone.

Below, the city shifted again, subtle but unmistakable. Another wave. Smaller. Sharper.

Redakai swore under his breath.

“Aye,” I said. “That’s the second tremor. Smaller than the first. Means the world’s adjustin’.”

“Or breaking,” he countered.

“Both,” I agreed.

From inside the Manor, I felt her then. Not consciously reaching. Not calling. Holding. Clinging to the seal with instinct alone, teeth sunk into the present because the past tasted like blood.