Chapter 18: THE WEIGHT OF FORGETTING

The orb was cold beneath her fingertips. Unlike the others, which pulsed with warmth or menace or the simple light of preserved moments, this one felt like touching ice. Like touching something that didn't want to be touched. Like touching a wound that had never fully healed.

"Kael's first word," Lyra whispered. The orb's surface rippled in response, as though recognizing its name. "That's what this one is. His first word. And I can't remember it. I've tried. In the quiet moments, in the dark, I've reached for it. And there's nothing there. Just empty space where that sound should live."

Aiden moved beside her, his shoulder pressing against hers. Solid. Warm. Real. "You don't have to do this alone."

"I know." She looked at him. Really looked. At the gray eyes that held storms and stillness in equal measure. At the jaw that tightened when he was worried but refused to show fear. At the hands that had caught her a hundred times, in a hundred worlds, without ever hesitating. "That's the difference. Last time I walked through Thornfield, I walked alone. Even when you were there physically, I was alone inside my head. Fighting my own ghosts while you fought the ones the game sent." She squeezed his hand. "This time, I'm not."

The Architect watched them with an expression that might have been envy or recognition or simple, ancient weariness. Perhaps all three. He had spent millennia alone in this archive, surrounded by memories he couldn't touch and ghosts he couldn't save. What would it have been like, to have someone stand beside him the way Aiden stood beside Lyra?

"When you enter, time will move differently," he said. "What feels like hours may be seconds in the archive. What feels like seconds may be hours. The mind protects itself in strange ways. It may try to keep you there. To lose you in the labyrinth." His voice dropped. "You must promise me something. When you find what you're looking for—when you remember—you must choose to return. Not everyone does. Some players enter their own memories and never come out. They become part of the archive. Another orb. Another ghost."

Lyra pressed her palm flat against the orb's surface. The cold bit into her skin, spread up her arm, settled in her chest like a second heart. "Aiden?"

He placed his hand over hers. "Always."

The world dissolved.

They stood in a nursery. Soft yellow walls that spoke of careful preparation, of love poured into every detail. A mobile of paper stars turned slowly overhead, each star folded by hand—Lyra recognized her own work, remembered sitting at the kitchen table night after night, folding and unfolding until each star was perfect. Sunlight streamed through a window overlooking the Thornfield gardens—the same gardens where she'd later wait nights for Alistair, but here, in this moment, they were beautiful. Blooming. Full of promise.

A woman sat in a rocking chair. Younger. Softer. The old Lyra, before the pendant became a burden, before the betrayal carved hollows beneath her eyes. She held a bundle wrapped in blue, and she was singing.

"Hush little baby, don't say a word..."

Lyra's breath caught. Her own voice, but different. Unburdened. Filled with a hope she'd forgotten she ever possessed.

The baby in her arms stirred. Tiny fingers reached up, grasping at air, at light, at the paper stars spinning overhead. A perfect moment, preserved in amber.

And then: "Mama."

The word was garbled, imperfect, more sound than speech. The consonant caught, the vowel stretched too long. But it was there. His first word. The first time Kael had looked at her and known who she was, known what she meant to him, known that she was his anchor in a world too large and strange to comprehend.

In the rocking chair, the younger Lyra's face crumpled with joy. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gathered her son closer, pressing kisses to his downy head, breathing in the smell of him—baby powder and milk and warmth.

"Mama," she sobbed. "Yes, baby. Mama's here. Mama's always here."

Lyra watched herself make a promise she couldn't keep.