Chapter One: Extraction

The man sitting across from Myra wanted to forget his wife. 

Not all of her. Just the end. Those final three months of slow unraveling. 

His wedding band caught the lamplight as he twisted it, around and around, the gold worn thin from decades of the same unconscious motion.

“I want to remember her smile. I want to remember the thirty-seven wonderful years. But the clumps of hair, the smell of decay, her voice at the end... they... they haunt me. Can you take just those parts?”

Most people couldn't hold her stare for longer than three seconds. Like she'd reach across the cluttered workbench and rip their dirtiest secrets straight from their skulls. This man met her eyes without flinching. That was almost worse. When clients stopped being afraid, it meant they had nothing left to lose.

“Selective extraction is delicate work.” She set down her tools. “Pull the wrong thread and you might lose more than you bargained for.”

“I understand the risks.”

His emptiness was a mirror.

For one unguarded second, she saw herself at fifteen, dye in hand, staring at her electric-blue roots in the bathroom mirror. Trying to decide if dying it brown made her a coward. Her mother had never hidden. Had never apologized for what she was. But look where that got her.

Myra blinked, and the memory shattered.

“No. You really don’t.” The leather-bound ledger felt heavier than usual as she opened it to a fresh page. “But you’re going to sign that you do anyway.”

Myra’s fingertips tingled as she pushed the ledger toward him. It was a sensation she’d come to recognize as her body’s way of acknowledging another’s pain. Empathy, some called it. 

A fucking inconvenience is what she called it. She’d spent years building calluses over such sensitivities.

"How much?" he asked. His eyes tracked across the narrow workshop, doing math he probably couldn't afford. 

This top-floor space in the old merchant quarter wasn't much, but it was hers. Every client who climbed those stairs was a risk, but people's need for memory work never died, even when those who provided it were hunted.

“For selective work like this? Three hundred crowns,” she said. 

The color drained from his face.

"Your memory's already fading anyway," she said, watching the way his eyes lost focus when he tried to recall specifics. Not unkindly, just honest. The edges of his recollections had gone soft, bleeding into each other the way they did when age started its own kind of theft. She could see it in the pauses, the way he grasped for details that used to come easily. "Given enough time—"

“I don’t have time,” he leaned forward. “I can’t sleep. Can’t work. Can’t even look at her portrait without seeing her as... as she was at the end. However many years I have left, I want to spend them remembering her the way she was. Not like this. Not with the rot eating everything good we had."

Myra tapped her fingers on the bench.

She recognized desperation when she saw it. Desperation paid her rent, and kept her in enough wine to dull her own memories each night.

“Two hundred,” she sighed. “Plus the cost of ingredients.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, shoulders sagging with relief.

“Don’t thank me yet.” She stood and moved toward her ingredient shelves, surveying the meticulously labeled jars and bottles. “You might not find the result as comforting as you imagine. Memory alchemy isn’t just subtraction. It’s... rearrangement.”

Gathering components, she rattled off instructions: “I’ll need something connected to both of you—a wedding ring would be ideal—and something from the period you want to preserve. A photograph from happier times, perhaps?”

He nodded, already reaching into his coat.

“I’ll also need you to provide a memory vessel.” Seeing his confusion, she clarified, “Something to contain what’s extracted. People usually choose something they can destroy afterward. Or keep locked away, though I don’t recommend that.”

“Why not?”

“Because memories want to be remembered,” she said, selecting a sprig of dried moonflower. “They have... persistence. Keep them close…they find ways back in.”

Myra turned to her ingredient shelves, running her fingers along labels until she found what she needed. Moonflower Dried gentian petals, purple and blue. Valerian root and lion’s mane that smelled like earth, and a little funky. A pinch of something darker, maybe nightshade. She worked without speaking. The mortar was cool stone against her palm as she added each component. Pestle grinding in slow circles, releasing bitter oils that made her eyes water.The widower watched, transfixed, as she transferred the paste to a small copper pot. Blue flame licked at the metal base. She placed both hands on either side of the pot, feeling the paste's texture through the copper. Closed her eyes and let her consciousness brush gently into the Crucible, just inside. 

"Menoreth velisan." Her voice was steady, measured. Each syllable as deliberate as a heartbeat. 

The paste began to shimmer, taking on an airy blue light that pulsed in time with her breathing. 

"What did you just say?" the widower whispered.

"Old language." She opened her eyes, checking the mixture's consistency. 

"One wrong syllable and I could accidentally wipe your childhood. Or leave you thinking you're a chicken." She held the vial up to the light, watching the liquid swirl. "Had that happen once. Guy clucked for three days before I figured out how to fix him."

The widower's eyes went wide.

Myra's expression didn't change. "I'm fucking with you. Mostly.”

“So…what made you become a...” he hesitated, clearly unsure of the proper term.

“A memory thief?” Myra supplied dryly. “A mind-fucker? Consciousness corrupter? I’ve heard them all.”

“I was going to say a Mnemonic,” he replied, flushing slightly.

“No one becomes a Mnemonic,” she said, stirring the mixture three times clockwise, then six counterclockwise. “You either are one or you’re not. The blue hair is a dead giveaway around age twelve. I would have preferred just having a period. Most people find what I do repugnant,” she continued conversationally, adding a sprinkle of silver dust to the mixture. “Memories are identity. Tampering with them is tampering with the self. But here you are anyway.”

“Here I am,” he nervously agreed.

“The fascinating hypocrisy of human nature,” Myra said. “Everyone wants memory alchemy banned until they need it themselves.”

“I’ll need that wedding ring now,” she said, holding out her hand. “And the photograph.”

He placed both in her palm, careful not to touch her skin—an unnecessary precaution born of old superstitions about Mnemonics stealing thoughts through contact. Myra bit back a sarcastic comment. His money spent just as well with his folk fears intact.

She submerged both items in the luminescent mixture, then handed him a small silver cup containing a portion of the same liquid.

“Drink this while focusing on your wife. All of her—the good and the bad. The essence will identify the memory clusters I’ll be working with.”

He took the cup with trembling hands. “Will it hurt?”

“Physically? No. Emotionally...” She shrugged. “You’re about to relive thirty-seven years of marriage in about five seconds, including the parts you’re trying to forget. Judge for yourself.”

As he choked down the liquid, Myra prepared a secondary potion, the actual connection brew. 

Then she set down two more small cups and poured them both a shot. 

He stared at the liquid with disgust, then at her cup. "You're drinking it too?"

"How else am I supposed to find what you want removed?" She swirled her cup, watching the liquid catch the light. "I could go in blind. Just dive into your memories and rummage around until I find something that feels like grief. But that's messy. Imprecise. I might grab your wedding day instead of her funeral. Or worse, grab everything related to her and leave you unable to remember you were ever married at all."

His face paled.

"The potion creates a connection. Shows me exactly where the target memories are stored. Like having a map instead of wandering around in the dark breaking things."

He grabbed the cup. She raised hers in a mock toast.

They drank simultaneously.

She allowed her awareness to drift to where the boundaries between essence and form became permeable. Her eyes went distant, pupils blown wide until only a thin ring of color remained. She was looking at something no one else could see. 

The workshop didn't disappear—it layered. Reality became translucent, and beneath it, a vast emptiness opened. A single arched entrance glowed blue in the void, beckoning. Myra’s consciousness coasted through the archway and into the Crucible. It opened around her like a vast library carved from light itself. Endless shelves stretched into the distance until they disappeared. Each book a life, each page a moment someone had lived and lost. 

She counted her breaths carefully. Her father’s warning echoed in her mind. Never take a fourth breath.

One. 

The first breath always felt disorienting, like stepping into cold water. Myra let her awareness float through the ethereal library and past the shelves of books. The widower’s memories appeared as luminous volumes, interconnected by threads of association and emotion.

The connection potion had done its work. Dark tangles of grief wrapped around bright recollections like parasitic vines. There. Those final three months wound so tightly around his love that separating them would require an operation. One wrong pull and she could unravel far more than he'd paid her to remove.

She studied the architecture of his grief. Noted where it connected to other memories, which threads bore more emotional weight, which could be safely severed.

She inhaled again. 

Two. 

Deeper now. She reached out with her consciousness, carefully testing the memory threads. Following the dark tangles to their source, mapping the exact shape of what needed to be removed.

Here, at this depth, his emotions pressed against her own. His wife's laugh threatened to become her mother's. His loss bled into hers. She pushed back against the bleed-through, maintaining the boundary between his grief and her own.

In the physical workshop, the widower gasped, his eyes widening as Myra explored his memories. Tears began streaming down his face, but his expression cycled rapidly between joy, tenderness, grief, and pain, reliving decades in moments.

“When you feel a cooling sensation behind your eyes, nod,” she instructed, her voice taking on a slightly echoed quality as she straddled the material realm and the Crucible.

Frost formed on the widower's eyelashes. The physical manifestation of memories becoming untethered. He nodded.

Three. 

By the third breath, Myra could feel the power of the Crucible surging through her body. She spoke the incantation that would pull memory from mind into matter.

"Mnemora venth solarin."

She caught the wisps in her waiting vial, sealing it before the essence could dissipate.

But at this depth, she could feel the Crucible's pulse—that rhythm she'd known since childhood, steady as a heartbeat, familiar as home.

Except.

Something moved in the depths below her. Not memory. Not the natural current of consciousness. Something other. Watching. Waiting.

The wrongness of it made her skin crawl. This was her space, her sanctuary, the one place she'd always felt safe. And now something was in here with her. Something that didn't belong.

She could feel it looking back. 

What is that? No.

Three breaths. Her father's warning burned through her mind: Never take a fourth. What goes too deep doesn't always come back whole.

She yanked herself back. Reality slammed back into focus—single-layered, solid, almost disappointingly mundane after the vast expanse of the Crucible.

The widower sat slumped in his chair, tears drying on his cheeks. His expression had already softened, the sharp edges of grief visibly blunted. He looked lighter. Emptier. Like someone had carved out a piece of him and the remaining parts hadn't quite figured out how to fill the space.

"Is it done?" His voice was hoarse.

"Done." Myra held up the sealed vial. The memory had taken liquid form—swirling indigo shot through with crimson. "Your wife's final three months. Most of what you asked me to remove, anyway."

His eyes sharpened. "Most?"

"Memory work isn't surgery. I can't cut with a scalpel." She turned the vial slowly, watching the liquid swirl. "Some good memories were wrapped too tightly around the grief. I pull one thread, others come with it. A laugh. A gesture. Small moments from better times that got tangled up in the end."

"How many?" His voice was tight.

"Not many. A dozen moments, maybe less. Nothing that defines your relationship—just details." She set the vial down carefully. "You'll remember loving her. You just might not remember why you bought her tulips instead of roses that one spring, or what she said that made you laugh during dinner at that restaurant you can no longer quite picture."

He stared at the vial like it had just become something more complicated than simple relief.

He nodded slowly, not quite liking the answer but trusting the process anyway.

Myra pressed a blue vial into his hands. "Drink this before bed. It'll help with the disorientation." She stood, the universal signal that their business was concluded. "The full fee is due now."

His hands trembled as he counted out coins from a worn leather purse. Two hundred fifty crowns—more than he could afford, but less than the cost of one more sleepless night.

"Go home. Sleep. You'll feel better tomorrow."

After the widower left, his footsteps fading down the narrow stairwell, Myra locked the door. Both bolts. The chain. She moved to the window, watching through the gap in the curtains until she saw him emerge onto the street below and disappear into the evening crowd.

Not Guild. Not an informant. Just a grieving man who'd never think to mention the Mnemonic in the merchant quarter to anyone who mattered.

Probably.

She checked the wards on the windows anyway—still active, still humming with the faint charge that would alert her to alchemical surveillance. Then returned to her workbench, and held up the vial to the light. Her stomach dropped. 

A thread of inky blackness wound through the memory essence, moving against the natural flow of crimson. Not floating. Not suspended. Moving.

"What the fuck," she whispered.

She should destroy it immediately. Whatever that darkness was, it didn't belong in a grief extraction. But three cases in as many months, all with the same corrupted essence...

She needed to know what she was looking at.

Most Mnemonics verified extractions through secondary equipment. Alchemical tests that confirmed memory integrity without direct experience. But equipment couldn't tell her what that darkness felt like, couldn't show her what had infected this man's grief.

Myra reached for a small glass dropper.

Just one drop. To verify.

The rationalization felt thin to her ears. This wasn't professional verification. This was morbid curiosity mixed with the growing certainty that something was very, very wrong.

She placed a single drop on her tongue.

Verdan dissolved.

A woman’s laugh, warm and genuine. Sunlight through windows. The weight of her hand in his. The fruity smell of her hair.

These impressions flickered rapidly, then:

Her naked body against his, her moans echoing in his ears. The taste of salt on her collarbone. Her nails raking down his back as she cried out his name.

Myra’s own body responded to the borrowed pleasure and a flush spread across her chest, heat gathering low in her belly. Fuck. This part of verification felt like an invasion, experiencing someone else’s most intimate moments. Yet she couldn’t deny the bittersweet ache it awakened, reminding her how long it had been since she’d felt another’s touch.

The memories shifted abruptly.

A dim room thick with the smell of illness. The shouts from Verdant healers. A beloved face gaunt with pain. Whispered goodbyes.

The grief hit like a train, knocking the air from her lungs. Myra felt the widower’s devastation as though it were her own, his love for this woman filling every corner of her being before shattering into jagged shards. Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest.

Standard grief memories, painful but ordinary. But then something unexpected. A darkness spreading like ink through water. A glimpse of violet eyes shifting to bottomless black.

The weight crashed into her—not grief, but its opposite. The hollow certainty that feeling anything at all was pointless. Why bother? Why fight? Why keep breathing when every inhale was just another delay before the dark took everything anyway?

Words spoken in a voice like broken glass: "Your grief creates such beautiful shadows. What would you sacrifice to see her again, even for a moment?"

Her hands went numb. The vial hung suspended in her fingers for one endless moment before it dropped on the table. She should move. Should care. But the will to do anything at all had been sucked away, leaving only the terrible heaviness of a body that wanted nothing more than to stop. After several agonizing minutes, the feeling passed.

Myra sat back in her chair, the corrupted vial glowing faintly on her workbench. The workshop suddenly felt too small, too quiet. 

The phantom sensations from the verification lingered in her body, both the pleasure and the pain. 

She pressed her thighs together, trying to ignore the persistent ache. Some days she hated this part of her gift most of all—the way it forced her to feel, to remember what it was like to be touched, to be wanted. Nobody built a life with a woman who could steal their darkest secrets with a touch.

She poured herself wine—the cheap stuff that burned going down—and pulled her journal from its hidden drawer. Her hands still weren't steady as she added notes in her personal cipher. Three corrupted extractions in as many months. Violet eyes shifting to black. A voice offering bargains.

What would you sacrifice to see her again?

The question echoed in her mind, and Myra realized with uncomfortable clarity that she didn't know the answer. What WOULD she sacrifice to have her mother back? To have a single conversation, one more embrace, one more chance to—

The temperature plummeted.

Her breath misted. The wine in her glass developed a thin skin of ice. And the shadows under her workbench moved, not with the light, but against it, pooling and spreading like something alive.

Myra froze, every prey instinct screaming.

Then the whisper came, brushing against her consciousness like fingernails on glass:

Found you.

She spun, hand going for the knife strapped to her thigh. The workshop was empty. Door still locked. Windows secure. But the certainty of being watched pressed against her skin like a physical weight.

"Talking to yourself is one thing," she said to the empty room, surprised her voice worked at all. "But answering back is where I draw the line."

The shadows didn't respond, but slowly dissipated.

Myra stood in her workshop—her sanctuary, her carefully warded safe space—and felt the walls closing in. Whatever had spoken those words in the widower's memory, whatever had infected his grief with that spreading darkness, it knew where she was now.

And it was patient.

She could feel it in the way the shadows pooled in corners they shouldn't reach. In the certainty that sleep, when it finally came, would bring dreams that weren't entirely her own.

Tomorrow she'd figure out what the hell was happening. Tomorrow she'd find answers.

Tonight, she'd pour another glass of wine and pretend the darkness wasn't watching her drink it.

The corrupted vial sat on her workbench, its contents swirling with that thread of absolute black. In the dim lamplight, it almost looked like the darkness was spreading, testing the boundaries of its container.

Myra turned away. Some things were better examined in daylight.

But even after she'd blown out the lamps and crawled into bed, the workshop never quite got dark enough. The shadows under her workbench remained deeper than they should be, and somewhere in their depths, something waited with infinite patience.

It had found her.

And it had all the time in Verdan.