Chương 20: “The Memory”

He went back to the second floor. The conditions were met, but not because he was ready this time. He had not been ready for three thousand years and waiting for ready had not moved the situation forward. He went back because something had changed in the garden the night June sat with him in the dark, and he had been thinking about something and thinking about something without looking at it was, he was starting to understand, its own kind of cowardice. He looked at the memory. It was still a room. Small fire.

Young man, cold, underground, not yet anything. But this time he stayed long enough to see what came after, what happened in the minutes that followed the moment he sealed away. He had never let himself see that part before. What came after was not dramatic. Nobody arrived. Nothing exploded. The young man simply sat by the fire for a long time, and then he made a decision, and the decision was quiet and certain. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Vorrath stood there and watched himself decide to become what he became. He had remembered it as inevitable. An external thing, something that happened to him, not something he chose. He had told himself this for three thousand years and believed it because he needed to. He went back upstairs. June was asleep. The drawing of the purple oval was still on the wall. Mr. Grumpy, two dots for eyes, small frown, the label in large uneven letters. He kept looking at it. She'd drawn it before she knew what he was.

She'd drawn what she wanted to find, hadn't she? He sat on the windowsill. He didn't know what to do with any of it. He wasn't sure he had to do anything with it yet. He just sat with it, the way June had sat with him in the dark after the garden, without fixing it, without leaving. He stayed until morning. System: Bond Strength: 59%. We're not going to say anything about the memory. We're not going to say: we told you. We're not going to say: there it is, finally. We're just going to sit here. Like you sat there.

That's all.