[Fourth Era – Year 1036 of the Divinity War; Sirithae (formerly known as Hopron), Valley of the Innumenary]

  How long was he to be trapped here, reliving memories? Jestil wondered. But I pressed on. I needed to know. I needed to put myself back together. And he needed the strength that came from cultivating these memories. But it was more than that. I was searching for something in those memories. Something I couldn’t quite remember. Something so vital that I would hold them here as long as needed. So I drove him onward into another memory.

  Crammed into a box of pain, Jestil’s head and neck pressed down to his chest, all his limbs folded into himself where each shallow breath strained against the pressure of his body being shoved inward by the sides of the box. The bones of each joint grating and throbbing as the box slammed against something, jarring through every bone, tearing at his joints, straining ligaments with sharp agony.

  One elbow dug into a thigh, his foot twisted backwards. Suffocating. Straining for each shallow breath, lungs denied the space to expand. He felt himself swing, then another strike, a deafening clatter echoing through the box. Bruises pulped, growing numb, though gratitude surged to heal him, even as bruises formed repeatedly.

  He needed to scream, but his lungs could hold no breath. The box was swinging again. He tensed for the next strike. His thigh spasmed, clenching, he could not relax it, tighter, tighter, the agony was endless. Slam. He could not breathe. He struggled not to sob, but no one could see him, so what did it matter?

  Breathe. He had to breathe. There was no space for his lungs to expand.

  Death would not take him as it had his father, as it would all his friends.

  In the darkness, Barthum’s whispers began to fill his mind. No release, no escape through death. There was no end. He attempted to surrender to the torture. Endless pain.

  Slam, the pain jolted bone-deep through the core of him. This agony could last forever. Chill wind whistled through the cracks in the trunk, cramping muscles into iron slabs of pain.

  Slam–

  …

  What was this memory? Though we had barely set one liminal footstep into the memory. Yet Jestil halted, pushing away from the memory of pain. The world slowed, blurred, dimmed.

  Jestil heaved himself away from the recollection and found himself out of the box.

  Now he stood at the dinner table of the grand hall, standing deliberately, while his whole house sat. “Choose me,” he called.

  Few others had probably even heard the scribe's announcement, sitting together over dinner as they were, leaning together in their conspiratorial conversations.

  The scribe looked in Jestil’s direction, but his gaze was not toward him. He was gaping at the giant standing behind him. Fane, his cousin. Why would Fane want to become an apprentice scribe?

  “Of course, I will want to see your journal,” the scribe said to Fane. Then spared a glance for Jestil, including him as an afterthought.

  “Don’t worry,” Irinai, his twin sister, looked up at him, and put a comforting hand on his arm. “You know the quality of your journal.”

  He kept a meticulous journal, not only of all his observations of the family, but also expounding every discovery and realization, knowing every memory he held was precious.

  At first, he hadn’t realized that Amnesia Storm could last for years, eating away at you little by little. He thought all his knowledge would be torn away in an instant as they struck. Thought it was a lonely belief. Some said there would be no others.

  He had gathered enough records to be convinced that there had been at least two Amnesia Storms. There were more than a few hints of an Amnesia Storm before that. He felt that perhaps they had been going on since the beginning of time, wave upon wave, an endless cycle.

  He turned to look at Fane, who smirked back.

  “What could he know of history?” he muttered to Irinai.

  But Fane caught the words. “Far more than a weakling like you.”

  What? How could Fane know more than I? I’d been seeking to know what happened as far back as I could remember. And that was before the sinkhole, when I’d seen into a secret room hidden beneath our manor house, and inside that room, a door. When had Fane shown even the slightest interest in knowing anything?

  His incredulity must have shown, for Fane responded. “It’s rather simple. I remember.”

  What? How could anyone, especially such a monster, remember anything past the Amnesia Storm? Why would such a brute be given a reprieve when no one else had?

  “I remember because I am better than you.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Jestil scoffed.

  “You think you know the truth. You study and you write in your little journal, and you try to sort it all out. But you are chasing phantoms of fragmented memories. I have the real thing. That’s what makes all your floundering so amusing, and so pathetic.”

  “I bet you can’t even remember breakfast.” Jestil mocked.

  Fane pointed at the Sacrist. “Roast krimal with forinth.” Then he pointed to the chamberlain. “Isor salad.” Cellar keeper. “Also roast krimal, but with pekrin sauce. The Scribe did not break fast, nor did the Judge.”

  “And what did I have?”

  “You.” He seemed amused. “I observe things that actually matter.”

  Things looked dismal. Fane was far more observant than he’d imagined. And if he could remember, truly remember …

  If Jestil couldn’t become an apprentice scribe, he had no chance of getting into the secret records. Of learning what had really happened to the one who’d given him this ring. He traced a finger over the inscribed ring, wondering who she was.

  “Our hearts will remember each other even if our minds do not,” the inscription said.

  Not only who had given it to him, but what he was doing here. He must have had a plan for coming here? A reason, likely involving the Innumenary. If only he could discover it.

  Irinai patted my arm. “Don’t worry. We'll find out somehow.”

  So even she’d conceded defeat.

  But how could I be beaten so easily, and by Fane of all people? No. I’m not going to give up, not without a fight.

  “We will see the records. Because I will be the scribe’s apprentice.”

  ...

  Again, Jestil resisted the memory. “What is this?” he asked. “Where is the beginning?”

  I don’t know if he was asking the earth or the stars or time itself.

  “Is there ever truly a beginning … or an end?” I replied. “Even birth and death are merely boundaries of sight and memory.”

  “But where does this memory begin?”

  The darkness shifted. The world began anew.

  His mind exploded to fill the universe, and the universe filled him with endless stars, worlds, lives … and darkness. He squinted through the endless darkness, which choked the stars. The cosmos telescoped into bubbles, each world crowding out the emptiness. A million worlds filled the heavens, a million skies opened up before him. Worlds heaped upon worlds.

  He breathed, and it was like breathing on embers. The worlds flared brighter. Another breath. Brighter. Another. One of these worlds sparked into fire, flared into blinding brightness.

  It exploded into stars. New worlds flared into new stars. Stars exploding into more stars, and those into yet more stars. The heavens became a cascading explosion of fireworks, birthing endless stars and souls. More stars. More light. Birth. Joy. Life. Beauty. Stars, light, birth, joy, life, love, stars – cascading iteration upon iteration, replicating out into infinity. Each iteration, the universe brightened into a blinding field of light, until all he saw was white.

  No, this memory spanned all of time. What happened after being in the trunk?

  The pain from last night’s ordeal still screamed through every kinked joint and twisted muscle, as if gratitude had forgotten how to heal such things. There was too much chaos in his mind. He was supposed to perform the cloud burial for his father, whose lifeless body lay preserved in the ice cave. How could he perform an entanglement in this state?

  His sister came and worked out the kinks and soothed the knots. And he patted her hand in gratitude.

  The Sacrist came to pile on more sealed contracts for him to write and entangle. But he was at least a little sympathetic and said they could wait until tomorrow. “The heart is a strange thing, but even I know how difficult it can be to muster up order and will while the heart is in such pain.”

  It seemed his master knew nothing about last night, only of his father’s death.

  Then his master gave him a tiny vial with a single drop of endelirium. But he was so bone weary. How was he to manage even a single entanglement? Yet as Irinai eased the pains in his racked form, and with her kneading of his muscles, gratitude seemed to remember how to heal them. He felt that perhaps he could perform an entanglement after all.

  He stared at the list of contracts. Last night would repeat itself. What was to stop it? Nothing, not unless he stopped it. He stared at the vial. If he were wise, he would save this for the next Amnesia Storm.

  Yet how could he endure another night like last night, shoved into that trunk and dangled out the window in a storm?

  He took that single drop of endelirium, it had been heavily diluted. Even so, he knew he was drinking a sizable fortune. He uncramped his hand and struggled to write the words of the first contract with his trembling scribing needle.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  As the endelirium flowed into him, the chaos in his mind began to untangle, and all his thoughts lined up into neat little perfectly categorized rows. Then he had it, the answer as plain as the pen in his hand. And he wrote a contract that was not on the list.

  He would tame Fane and Fraela with this—if he reached his room first. He had to find Irinai.

  …

  No, he’d already seen where that memory led—to failure, a rooftop, and a storm. But where had he left off?

  He was beginning to learn to control the memories.

  Jestil awoke on the rooftop, his robes still steaming with warmth. The storm passed, and morning came.

  “Jestil are you okay?” Irinai asked as she stood and stretched. As she reached up, she brushed against his robes. “Ouch, I didn’t realize you were still holding its entanglement.”

  “I’m not.”

  He reached out. It was still hot, just as hot as before, he wondered if he hadn’t just been holding onto the entanglement accidentally. But of course he wasn’t. He let go of the entanglement on their robes when he fell unconscious. Yet even dropping all his entanglements, his and Iranai’s robes were still as hot as ever, as if they were still entangled.

  “If you’re not holding the entanglement, then why is it still hot?”

  “Good question.” Of course, he had entangled the entanglement with itself, how many times? Not sure why he had, it had just seemed like somehow it would do something to help. And perhaps it had. An entanglement entangled with itself … What would that even be? Was it causing some kind of self-perpetuating cycle?

  “This could be a remarkable discovery.” Jestil fell into his thoughts.

  Slate tiles glistening like oil-slick glass beneath the pallid morning sun. The forms of petrified morthel loomed behind them—their shadows long and jagged across the rooftop where Jestil and Irinai sat wrapped in hot kajin robes.

  “What are we going to do?” Irinai asked, her voice hoarse from the wind’s cruelty. “How can we last another night like that?”

  Jestil stared out over the forest and mountains, which jutted out across the horizon like the ribs of a giant half-buried monster. Smoke curled between them. Their Innumenary banners, still soaked, hung heavy and low. He pulled his kajin robe tighter across his chest.

  “We just need to prepare better,” he said. “This place would be just fine if we had shelter and heat.”

  Irinai turned her eyes to him, skeptical. “What do you mean?”

  He stood, crossing to the edge of the roof slates where the stone gave way to air, then pointed as if trying to cast an illusion of a pulley rig—a makeshift hoist. “We lower a bucket over the side. Fill it with crushed rock. Entangle the rock with mud, and then we can mold it like clay. If we put it right there,” he pointed at a spot where the ridges of the roof met around one of the chimneys, “It will surely hold the weight.”

  She followed his gaze, eyebrows knitting. “What are you saying? You want to build a home for us up here?”

  “Not just a home.” Jestil gave a mystic grin. His eyes lit with something sharper than survival—something like vision. “A tower. We need a tower.”

  “The Innumenary will never agree to it,” she said quietly. “This is their manor.”

  He turned, face set like stone. “We won’t ask.”

  Silence stretched, punctuated only by the call of distant birds far below. Irinai looked at her brother—really looked at him—and saw a man who had already decided, who had already begun molding stones in his mind.

  “Are you sure about this?” she whispered.

  Jestil didn’t blink. “Certain.”

  Dawn light was just breaking over the mountains. Jestil stood to reach for the sunlight now spilling through a few of the gaps between peaks.

  Something glittered out there, not quite like the snow on the mountain peaks.

  He focused on it. It was ice. A chunk of glacier must have slid down one of the mountain peaks at the edge of the habitable lands, perhaps even out into the morthel wilds. It looked almost unnaturally clear, but he couldn’t quite … he blinked and squinted into the distance. Was there something in that ice? Perhaps a wall or fence.

  “Irinai, do you see that?”

  “I’m sorry, it was a rough night. I feel a bit wrung out. Perhaps we can rest a bit more.”

  But that glacier, a feeling stirred within him, it was the same feeling that guided him every time he made the soul key to unlock the power of entanglement. He had been searching for his purpose for being here for so long. But any journal he might have left himself had been lost. Yet a certainty grew within him that there, in that ice, he would finally find what he’d been seeking. He would get his answers.

  “I want to see something. I’ll be back.”

  He needed to get down, but the shutters were still locked. So he started looking down over the eaves for open shutters. He finally found an opening into a hall. Likely opened recently, after the storm had passed.

  He called Irinai. “These are open when you want to come down.”

  He slipped down, through the manor house, and outside. He had never gone very far from the manor alone except on roads, but he knew their land extended quite a distance in all directions—all the way to the northern boundary of habitable land.

  He began walking as near as he could figure in the direction of the glacier.

  The storm had softened the ground, turning any bare patches of earth to mud. So he watched his step and kept to grass, stone, or tree roots as often as he could.

  And then he spotted a strange series of stones sticking out from the ground. It was unnaturally straight, running for some distance in a perfect line before the ground mounded up again, burying it. The top of it was perfectly level, falling off at matching angles to each side.

  It was precisely like the ridge of the rooftop he’d spent the night upon. What was a house doing buried out here? Had there been other Innumenaries whose houses had fallen? Been buried? He didn’t know the dirt went deep enough to bury a whole house. He’d been under the impression that the bodies of the morthel were right beneath his feet. Otherwise, why were they forbidden from digging?

  Maybe the soil was deeper in some places than others. But still, to bury a house. It must be quite deep in some places. And he began to wonder what history might be buried in that house. Perhaps if he dug out just enough to get in, perhaps then he could discover what had happened here. But that would have to come later.

  He took a fallen branch from a nearby tree and broke off a small section for a tracking entanglement. With that, he could easily find this spot again.

  But for now, he continued on toward the glacier.

  He was starting to worry he’d become lost when he came to a row of burning pylons, houses for the sacred flame.

  He remembered these. This was the border that kept out morthel from their lands. Guarded by the sacred flame, which all morthel feared.

  He’d gone out with the flamist a few times to help maintain them. But always from one end to the other, never coming at them from the middle like this.

  But where was the glacier? It had seemed to be in some kind of gully carved out by rain over the years. He went east along the northern border, keeping just behind the pylons that fenced their land.

  He walked near the pylons searching for any sign of the glacier he’d seen glinting in the dawn light. He crested a hill, but still it was nowhere to be seen.

  Perhaps it was time to turn back. But he knew it was out here somewhere.

  In that moment, he heard a scream and rushed toward the sound. It was beyond the borders protected by the sacred flame, out in the morthel wilds. Who would be out there?

  Stepping out from between the pylons of the sacred flame, he risked the morthel lands for a closer peek.

  Jestil rushed toward the scream, only to hear the sounds of battle. There were three kids out here, and a morthel. A live morthel in the shadows of the trees.

  He had never seen a live morthel before. It bubbled and frothed, but a girl was fighting the beast as the kids ran away from it. She was dropping things onto and around the beast. The morthel was trying to bubble and claw toward them, but the girl plopped giant boulders in its way—pulling them out of her revenescent, no doubt.

  Jestil ran back to one of the pylons holding the sacred flame and took up a fallen branch. Holding it in the sacred flame, he flared it so the fire would take quickly. Then he ran with that flaming branch toward the morthel.

  Morthel are petrified by the sacred flame, so he’d been told. As he approached the morthel, he once again flared the sacred flame. It responded to his will, as all sacred flames do. Burning the branch halfway down in a blinding flare as he fed its hunger.

  The morthel fled from the flame, back into the shadows. He chased it into the trees before it went into some hole in the mountain and was lost from his sight.

  He returned to the girl and the children. She was calming each of them and drying their tears.

  “That was so scary,” one of the children said between sobs. “It almost ate us.”

  The girl held them tight, whispering to them, hushing their fears. “Nothing to fear. We chased it off. You’re safe now.”

  “I wish they were.” Jestil approached and looked one of the children in the eye. “Why did you pass the sacred flame and come out to the morthel wilds? Don’t you know how dangerous it is here?”

  The child only looked at the firebrand in his hand and wept. Jestil sighed, then brought the branch back to the pylon and coaxed the sacred flame off the branch, back into its home. Then he dropped the charred stick.

  When he returned, he found that the girl’s approach was far more gentle. “What brought you out here?”

  “Marley said that Jinre told him that she heard someone found an ice village out here. It sounded like an adventure.”

  “I suppose it was.”

  “Did you see it?”

  One of the kids nodded, wiping his nose, “Just past those trees.”

  “I’m sure your parents are worried sick. Why don’t you go home?” Jestil clapped two of the kids on the back. “These pylons were made by the Innumenary to protect our homes from morthel. You must never travel beyond them.”

  The kids nodded, and he sent them off. The girl whispered something to the last child and sent her off. After they had passed the pylons, Jestil turned to the girl.

  “Thanks for your help with that thing. I didn’t know how to stop it. Oh, I’m Sowan, by the way.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Sowan. I’m Jestil.” He looked at her askance. She wore no kajin robes, but rather some kind of summer dress, breezy and wildly out of place. “You look like a stranger to these parts.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m from Taengoo,” she said brightly, as if she were casually discussing her favorite lunch spot.

  Jestil raised a brow. “You came from another world? It was … fortuitous that you were here to help those kids.”

  “Fortuitous or fated?” Sowan raised an eyebrow dramatically. Then she dropped the voice. “Nah, probably just a hunch. Something told me to come this way. You ever get that feeling?”

  “A feeling?” Jestil considered what had drawn him out here.

  “Yeah, like a cosmic itch. Except it doesn’t need ointment, just good deeds.”

  “So you go around … helping people?”

  Sowan nodded. “Yep. I’m basically a wandering altruist. Like a soup cart, but with more smiles and fewer lentils.”

  “There is power in helping others?”

  “Oh, for sure. People think gratitude is just a polite ‘thank you,’ but it’s got real numen. You ever get a toddler’s thank-you hug? That stuff could knock a Severed flat.”

  Jestil’s mouth dropped open. “Power from helping others?”

  “Absolutely. I’m basically fire-powered, but instead of the flames, it’s warm wishes and tearful thank-yous.”

  Jestil glanced back at the sacred flames, confused.

  “I can’t be the only one who knows of it,” she continued. “I saw those shrines along the road—people giving thanks to the Innumenary. For the sun and stars, no less!” She leaned in. “Do people really think they made the stars? That’s a lot of stars.”

  Jestil shrugged. “That is what we are told.”

  “Man, I’ve been sweating for years for crumbs of gratitude, and these guys just hand out celestial bodies and call it a day? I’m doing this the hard way. No shortcuts, no divine prayer houses.”

  “The Innumenary do help,” he said a bit defensively. “They protect us from morthel, and they use their numen to do many wonders.”

  “Oh? Like what?” Sowan tilted her head. “Free honey-creams? Memory restoration?”

  “Well … One can change the instincts of creatures to make them more helpful. Another gives us the sacred flame. Another can grow massive crops and even regrow limbs. The Everking lets us bind contracts, make them unbreakable.”

  “Okay, I’ll admit, massive berries would be nice. I can barely keep a houseplant alive.” She grinned. “But can any of them do this?” She brought a shimmering bit of gratitude to her fingertip. “Wanna see what gratitude can do? Got any sick folks lying around?”

  Jestil offered a mystic grin. “You can heal others … with gratitude? I thought it only healed—”

  “Yeah, it heals me. But if you know what you’re doing, you can channel it. Gratitude is like soup—better when shared.” She leaned in to stare into his eyes. “You know of gratitude then?”

  Jestil slowly nodded. “Here.” He summoned a heaping handful of shimmering gratitude. “You were trying to help those children. I interfered. I took some of the gratitude you rightfully earned.”

  Sowan’s eyes widened. “Whoa. This is more than I’ve seen in years. Either you’re a closet altruist, or those kids were really, really thankful.”

  “Please, take it.” Jestil extended his hand. “The world needs more people like you.”

  She took it carefully, reverently, and her smile softened. “Well, now you’ve gone and made me all maudlin. If I start crying, it’s just gratitude leaking out.”

  Jestil felt the energy replenish even as she absorbed it.

  “It’s been a true pleasure, Jestil. But I feel a tug to the southeast. Someone else is probably in desperate need of sass and unsolicited life advice. I hope we meet again.”

  “As do I, Sowan of Taengoo.”

  He watched her depart, his lips forming a mystic grin, then turned to see if he could follow the path those children had taken to this ice village they’d spoken of.

  He spotted a glint of ice just around a bend.

  From down here, the gully was deeper and more difficult to see than he’d imagined. The glacier appeared to have slid down between the walls of this gully on meltwater, for a stream flowed down toward him.

  Morning light hit the glacier, and he swore the ice looked like nothing he’d seen before. That’s when he saw the village, behind the glass-like walls of the glacier. This place was ancient and strangely built for being in a gully. Its high tower could see nothing from down there. Why build a tower in such a deep gully? He looked up the mountain and saw the furrow that had been cut down the mountain from the scraping of ice and stone.

  It looked as if the entire village had slid down the mountain in one solid mass, all the way from the peak.