The flame inside the memory-lantern sputtered like a candle caught in a dying breath. Rue held it close as they wove their way through the fading arteries of the Bazaar, dodging sentient scarves and overly polite mirrors.
Ashwen walked beside her, jaw tight, arms crossed. Loup had taken to pirouetting with a stray breeze, humming a tune only he seemed to find haunting.
"Do we have any idea how to read this thing?" Rue asked.
"You don't read memory," Groat piped up from the pocket. "You experience it. Preferably not all at once, unless you like nosebleeds and temporary identity loss."
Ashwen stopped suddenly. "Then where do we experience it?"
"Somewhere safe," Rue guessed. "Somewhere less bazaar-y."
"Like a nice dungeon," Loup offered. "Or a spa for existential crises."
They found a crumbling dome at the edge of the marketplace. Forgotten by both time and customers, it was filled with discarded fliers for events that had never happened. Inside, the shadows curled politely around them.
Rue placed the lantern on a pedestal made of stacked ticket stubs. "Alright, memory time."
"Careful," Groat warned. "The lantern doesn't just show. It pulls."
Ashwen knelt beside it. "Then let it pull."
The moment the flame touched her gaze, everything changed.
The dome fell away, replaced by endless corridors made of bone-white light. Voices echoed like memories shouted down an old hallway. And there—there stood Ilyan.
Not as he was. Not whole. But flickering.
He stood on a bridge made of shattered clocks. Across from him: death. Not robed, not skeletal—just... absence, wearing his face.
"I didn't mean to die," Ilyan said, voice thin as spider thread.
The absence tilted its head. "That's what they all say."
Ashwen reached forward, forgetting this wasn't real. "Ilyan!"
He didn't hear her. He stepped forward.
"You can't bargain your way back," absence-Ilyan said. "You were never meant to return."
Real Ilyan opened his mouth—but the memory ended before he could speak. The dome returned. The flame in the lantern dimmed.
"Is that enough for a witness?" Rue asked.
Groat buzzed. "It's compelling. But not official. You still need the non-legal testimony. Someone alive. Someone unreliable."
"So, basically…" Loup grinned, placing a hand on his chest. "Moi?"
Rue groaned. "No. Someone less theatrical."
Loup gasped, scandalized. "You wound me."
Ashwen rose, face pale. "We need to find someone else. Someone who knew Ilyan during that time."
Groat clicked. "I have a name. But it's going to be weird."
Rue raised an eyebrow. "Weirder than this?"
Groat was silent for a beat. Then: "Okay, fair point.
"This way," Groat muttered, vibrating with uncanny glee in Rue's pocket. "Follow the stall that smells like punctuation and shame."
They moved through aisles that seemed to rearrange themselves when no one was looking. Rainclouds followed specific vendors like loyal pets. One woman argued with a teacup that insulted her in fluent Morse code. A child traded their own voice for a pet storm. Valeight, as always, never made sense—and the Bazaar of Forgetting even less.
Monsieur Loup trailed behind with a swaggering slouch, juggling three marbles that whispered secrets in reverse Latin. "I am starting to feel like we are inside a novel that has lost its author," he said cheerily.
Ashwen was quiet. Again. Rue noticed. Again.
Finally, they reached the umbrella stall. Above it, a cracked sign read: WEATHER TO GO. Each umbrella hung upside-down, catching distant climates: snowfall, desert breeze, a tempest from a shipwreck memory.
Behind the stall stood a curtain of black vellum. Loup, perhaps sensing the dramatic tension, bowed low and peeled it back.
The Inkwell Prophet was not a man. Not anymore. He was a swirl of ink encased in glass bones. A face floated in his fluid chest cavity, distorted and ever-shifting like a reflection that didn't belong to you.
"We come for a memory," Ashwen said before anyone else could speak. Her voice cracked the air like cold iron.
The Prophet stirred. His body rippled with inky script, ancient dialects, symbols Rue couldn't recognize. He poured his reply not with voice but action—reaching behind his pulpit and producing a lantern. Within it floated a swirl of misty gray, pulsing like a sleeping thought.
Groat spoke for him. "The Prophet says: This is the memory you seek. Pilgrim Jax's recollection of Ilyan's death, brief and fragmented, sealed for trade."
Rue eyed it suspiciously. "What's the cost?"
A ripple in the Prophet's glass skull. Groat translated. "One truth. Yours."
Ashwen stepped forward. "Take mine."
"Wait—" Rue began, but the transaction had already begun.
Ink tendrils wrapped around Ashwen's arm, crawling to her temple. The Prophet's chest filled with an image—Ashwen, younger, standing before a burned-down house, holding a blade that dripped only with regret. Then it faded.
The lantern floated to them. Rue took it reverently.
"We should leave before he wants interest," muttered Loup, his accent thickening as if defending him from the seriousness of the moment.
The Bazaar had begun to hum. Something in the ground. A vibration. A pulse.
They turned to go.
Behind them, the Prophet whispered in a language none of them spoke. Not even Groat.
Outside the Bazaar, as the sky stitched itself back into coherence, Ashwen staggered.
Rue caught her. "What did you give up?"
Ashwen didn't answer immediately. Then, softly: "The reason I started all this. I don't remember it anymore."
Loup clapped once. "Well, mes amis, now we are all even more dysfunctional. Shall we go pretend we know what to do next?"
Groat chimed in. "Find someone who can validate Ilyan's absence. A rogue witness. Someone illegal enough to remember what others want to forget."
Rue tucked the lantern inside her coat. "Where do we find someone like that?"
Loup's smile widened. "I know a tavern where the drinks forget you before you pay."
Ashwen nodded, faint but present. "Then let's drink. And remember why we're still here."
The city of Valeight turned its many eyes away. The Bazaar whispered. And far above, a seam in the sky blinked.