The first thing I feel is the floor. Smooth. Cold. Not wood. Not metal. Crystal, pulsing crystal.

  I open my eyes, and the ceiling of my room is gone. So are the walls. The blanket, the mattress, the faint creak of the old house in the night—gone.

  I stand barefoot in the grayscale expanse again. A thin fog curls around my ankles like smoke that doesn’t move with the air. There’s no heartbeat in my ears, no startled breath in my lungs. Just the fact of being here.

  One moment I was asleep. The next, here.

  I exhale once. “Again.”

  The realm hasn’t stayed the same.

  The fog stretches farther this time, spilling into a horizon that didn’t exist the first night. The ground beneath my feet is smoother now, too—less like stone, more like something carved and polished to a wicked gleam. Above me, faint strands of light twist through the air. Thicker than before. They pulse slowly, like veins carrying something alive through an invisible body.

  A low hum vibrates through the space. Not loud. Not directed at me. Just… there. A presence.

  Last time, the place felt empty. This time, it feels as though something has been waiting—patient, ancient, hungry.

  I turn slowly, taking in the fog, the distant light, the shape of the world that isn’t quite a world.

  A pulse rolls through the floor—slow and steady, like a heartbeat too large to belong to any living thing. The crystal under my feet glows faintly, then more, then more still, until veins of light spread out beneath me like a living map. The lines converge in the distance, where a single point flares brighter than the rest.

  I squint into the light.

  The fog thins there, as if the realm itself wants me to see. A shape hovers just above the ground—neither solid nor soft. It’s a sphere at first, then flattens, then twists until it’s something between a lantern and a beating heart. Each pulse pulls at the air around it.

  It’s calling.

  I start walking. I don’t think about why. Steps sound like crystal chimes, faint and sharp. The closer I get, the stronger the pull—not on my body, but somewhere behind my eyes.

  Then I hear it.

  A whisper, wrapped in rhythm. A rhyme.

  “To hold what fades, to shape the seen, A mind that builds what once has been. What’s made remains, no more, no less— A memory forged, a memory kept.”

  The words aren’t sound. They land in my head like a stone dropped into water.

  The sphere—no, the core—tilts forward, light spilling down its surface like liquid gold. And then the restriction follows, as clear as the rhyme itself:

  “You may make what once was yours, but time will march as memory pours. No skipping, no breaking, no tearing apart— the memory holds as true as the start.”

  I understand. It can only create memories. I can’t destroy them. And time will pass in a 1:1 ratio while I replay the memories.

  No shortcuts.

  The core floats closer, stopping just within reach. A silent question.

  I breathe out. “I accept.”

  Light cracks through the ground like lightning under ice.

  The pulse slams downward, through me, into the earth. Crystal splits. From the point where the lines converged, a spire tears its way out of the floor—a jagged, perfect tower of memory, glowing from within.

  The fog recoils around it like it knows this thing now belongs to me.

  I wake up as if someone snapped their fingers.

  No drifting. No half-sleep. Just a breath and then the world is there—the low ceiling, the smell of iron from Father’s work clothes, the faint buzz of the old heater in the corner. My heartbeat is steady. Not faster. Not slower.

  But it feels different.

  The spire is still behind my eyes—not as an image, not even as a sensation. More like a door I can open without moving. When I think about it, it’s there. Waiting.

  I stare at the ceiling for a long second before sitting up. It’s early, but I can’t shake the feeling that time is already moving. That if I don’t use it, I’m wasting it.

  School passes in its usual rhythm. Gray corridors. Instructors that flip between praising me or keeping me at arm’s length. Students who whisper just enough for me to hear they’re whispering.

  But now, there’s something beneath it all.

  The first time I activate the power, it’s like trying to play a guitar without strings. Instructor Ren hands out a stack of old arithmetic primers for the morning exercise block. The kind printed in cheap ink, with numbers smudged from too many hands. Multiplication tables. Fractions. Problems with neat rows of empty boxes waiting to be filled.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Normally, I’d finish the exercises without thinking much about them. Memorize the patterns. Move on.

  But when I open the book this time, I reach inward. The spire responds.

  A thread of light—invisible to everyone else, bright to me—unravels from my mind and touches the page. A moment later, it clicks into place.

  The page is mine. Not just the numbers. Not just the answers. The exact moment I read it.

  The smell of paper. The scratch of pencils. Ren’s voice in the background, droning about “showing your work.”

  All of it locks into the spire.

  I blink. It’s done. No strain. No fatigue. Just… stored.

  A single memory. Complete and untouched.

  Then I do it again. And again. The power doesn’t resist. There’s no pressure in my head, no countdown, no signal telling me to stop. I realize then: there’s no limit.

  So I start recording everything.

  The flick of chalk against the board. The way the numbers blur at the edges of the cheap paper. The sound of students shifting when someone answers wrong. The exact rhythm of Ren’s steps between the rows of desks.

  Every detail. Every second.

  It’s quiet work. No one sees it. No one knows. I sort the memories as they come in.

  School → Arithmetic → Multiplication Table → Exercise Block A

  The thought alone creates the folder, the layer, the place where that memory will stay.

  Then more: Lunch, Answering Questions from the Instructors, every page of the book.

  It’s clean. Precise. Every time I look at the spire, I can feel the archives settling into order like bricks laid into a wall.

  By the third class, I’m not just storing the lessons. I’m storing the entire day.

  Every breath I take, every step I make. I can watch it all again.

  The world doesn’t change for anyone else. But for me, it’s like someone handed me a camera and unlimited data space.

  I catch myself wondering—not for the first time—what I can build with this. What I can learn.

  But more than that…

  It feels… dangerous.

  I walk out of the classroom slowly, letting the crowd pass first.

  If I start showing this—the way I can replay every word, every number, every line—people will notice.

  Perfect recall isn’t something you can shrug off as a growth spurt. Here, being different means someone will put you in a box.

  I start the slow walk to the depot.

  What would make sense? What would they believe?

  If I suddenly start acing every subject, people will talk. Instructors will notice. And the lord technician might start asking questions I don’t want to answer yet.

  So I test a few “techniques.”

  First, I pull out the same arithmetic primer from earlier and pretend to mouth the numbers under my breath like I’m memorizing through repetition. It’s slow, deliberate, something an instructor could see and think, ah, he’s been practicing.

  Then I try tracing lines with my fingers—as if drawing shapes in the air is how I focus. It looks awkward, but it also looks believable.

  Finally, I start muttering little mnemonics to myself, soft enough that only someone standing too close would hear. Clumsy rhymes and short counting rhythms—things any student might invent if they were desperate to remember more.

  These are my excuses. The smoke that hides the fire.

  When people look, they’ll see the boy who studies too much, not the boy with a spire of memory carved into his head.

  I straighten, exhaling once. This is good. Believable. Controlled.

  Better an eccentric child than a strange one.

  Father leads me through the wide main doors, open for the afternoon shift. The interior is taller and larger than it looks from the street—ceilings high enough to hang a dozen lanterns, rafters being scrubbed by servitors.

  Kara is waiting near one of the central benches. Her braid swings tightly down her back. She watches everything—the movement of tools, the alignment of parts, the posture of every worker in the room. She doesn’t speak until we reach her side.

  “Follow me,” she says. Clipped, precise. Her eyes never stop scanning the depot.

  I nod and fall into step behind her, careful not to stumble.

  “First rule,” she says as we walk, voice low but clear, “nothing leaves this depot. Tools, materials, notes, drawings. You remember what you see. You do not record it.”

  I nod again.

  “Second rule: follow instructions exactly. Do not guess. Ask if you do not understand.”

  She leads me through the depot in a slow loop, pausing at each section long enough for me to take it in. She doesn’t explain more than necessary. She gestures to a row of repair benches where technicians disassemble and mend machinery. A corner where scrap is sorted by type. Racks of disassembled heat sinks, half-gutted devices, tools lined up in precise rows.

  Her steps are brisk. She never looks at me, only at the space and the workers, noting everything they do.

  “Observe carefully,” she says, tone clipped, “and learn the order of things. Where each tool goes, the sequence of assembly, the arrangement of parts. You’ll shadow me, nothing else. Keep pace, keep quiet, keep track.”

  I fall silent, letting my gaze sweep across the benches and materials. Each bolt, each pipe, each panel becomes a mental note. I can already feel the pattern forming, even as I make it look like I’m absorbing it slowly.

  She pauses at a workstation. “Do not touch. Watch. Memorize. Timing, order, movement. You are not here to interfere, only to observe. Understand?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Her eyes flick toward the far end of the depot, then back to me, before she resumes walking. Everything she does is precise. Each gesture communicates instruction without extra words.

  By the time the tour ends at the central bench, I have a complete mental map of the depot: the positions of workstations, the sequence of repairs, the locations of spare parts, the flow of people through the space.

  But what matters isn’t just having the knowledge. It’s making it appear that I am learning through effort. Watching, asking the occasional careful question, tracing the movements of tools with my eyes and fingers—this is how I will show that the knowledge has been earned, and no one suspects me to be smarter than I should be.

  As I follow Kara through the depot, a thought presses itself against the back of my mind: speed matters. The faster I can learn, the more I can prove myself. If I show real skill in building and repairing—if I can anticipate the steps, understand the patterns, and execute without error—the attention I gain won’t just be idle praise. It will push me up through the ranks, closer to the lord technician, closer to real influence. But that speed must be measured. Too fast, and I look like I’m too smart to allow being free. Too slow, and I vanish into the mass of ordinary apprentices.

  The thought stretches further. School. The competition they will hold, the display of intellect—those are arenas, too. If I excel there, I earn notice, not from my peers—they are fleeting—but from the powers that be. But I cannot rely solely on that. Being attached to House Qing-Liang is a chain as much as it is a shield. They will want to profit from every advantage I earn. Every skill I demonstrate, every piece of knowledge I gain, will be weighed against what it can give them. They will want to use me, not let me grow freely.

  I have to rise quickly enough that the house cannot bind me entirely, that the recognition I earn comes with the autonomy to act. I can be loyal, yes, but not blind. Every lesson, every skill, every repair I perform at the depot becomes a kind of insurance. If I prove indispensable through action and competence, the house will not hesitate to control me too tightly, because they will see talent that they lack. And the competition—that’s where I step beyond them.

  Kara steps aside, her eyes flicking once more across the room. “You’ll start here,” she says, gesturing to a bench near the center. “Follow me closely, remember what you see and hear, and keep quiet.”

  I nod. I do.