Fountain of Memory

Ash still clung to him.

Not just to his skin—it had sunk deeper. Behind his eyes, in the creases of his lungs, packed tight in the bruises blooming along his ribs. Memory, burned to soot.

Hatim stirred.

Pain met him first. A dull roar spreading out from his ribs like fire over paper. Cold stone kissed his spine, irregular and ancient, pressed with the weight of centuries. The floor thrummed faintly beneath him—not with sound, but sensation. As though the ground was not stone at all, but something old, listening.

Air brushed his face. Damp. Metallic. Heavy with moss and rust and old breath. Far off, a drip echoed. Slow, methodical. Closer, something exhaled, deep and steady. The silence was never silent here.

Hatim tried to rise.

A hand settled gently on his chest.

"Stay down," said the voice. Calm. Measured. A voice that bent the room to it, like stone yielding to the tide.

The same voice from the alley.

Hatim blinked against shifting torchlight. High above, one flame guttered. Its glow pooled across black walls cut with glyphs so faded they seemed grown, not carved. They pulsed faintly, as if breathing, etched not as decoration but memory—a record of things older than parchment, older than ink.

This chamber was old. Too old. It had survived names and forgotten every one of them.

The Akar here didn't burn. It pulsed. Slow. Sure. Alive.

Hatim turned his head with effort.

The figure beside him sat still, robed in layers the color of bark after storm. The folds of his hood drooped low, masking his face. Yet stillness wrapped him like a cloak, as if the very dust in the chamber deferred to his presence.

"Who are you?" Hatim rasped. His throat felt raw, like he'd swallowed flame.

"Someone who doesn't enjoy watching boys get folded into pavement. And someone who knows what stirred when the Akar touched you."

That word—touched—tightened something in Hatim's chest. It wasn't just memory. It was recognition. And shame.

Then—

a flicker.

The room blinked.

Same chamber, different light. Blood-red radiance spilled from glowing cracks in the walls. Heat shimmered through the air, distorting space. Glyphs flowed like rivers over the stone, not static—shifting, evolving. Alive.

Hatim stood younger.

Barefoot. Bleeding. Nails crusted black. Breathing like a cornered animal.

Across from him, another boy emerged.

Calm. Still. Terrible in his quiet.

Akar pooled at his feet like serpents made of fire and ink. It licked the edges of his toes, drawn inward.

Hatim raised his hands. Not in defense, but reflex.

A shape formed between his fingers. Invisible at first. A pattern. A memory.

Veshan.

A shield. Soft-edged. Curved against force.

The other boy smiled, feral and hollow. "I don't draw," he said. "I bleed."

Dark lines cracked open across his arms. Not carved. Torn. Glyphs screamed as they emerged, twisted like branches broken the wrong way. Akar surged in, frenzied.

He roared.

A pulse of light blasted from his chest.

Hatim's glyph caught it. Flared bright, held—then fractured.

Stone screamed.

Dust shot skyward.

Hatim skidded backward, arms braced. His mind raced, faster than thought.

"You're leaking," he muttered. "Your glyphs collapse as they form."

"I am the glyph," came the reply.

Behind him, a sigil cracked open in the air—jagged, snarling. The boy lunged.

Hatim moved. Not to block—to flow. Sideways. Under.

His palm swept low.

Sen'nari.

It drank the boy's charge. Force unraveled like breath into water.

Hatim struck the ground. Two fingers.

Tharnel.

Golden bars rose from the floor, weaving a cage around the feral glyph-maker.

The boy shrieked. Glyphs swarmed across his body. The cage cracked, groaned.

Hatim didn't flinch.

He dropped, drawing two symbols in tandem: spiral left, triangle right. Glyphs spun from his fingertips, tracing a dance as old as the veins of the world.

Akar leapt.

A spear surged into his hand. Not summoned. Born.

The cage shattered.

He threw.

Impact. Blinding light. A sound like breath being torn from a god.

The boy collapsed.

The glyphs extinguished.

Silence.

A voice emerged from the dark.

"Crude," it said. "But precise. It listened."

The vision collapsed.

Torchlight returned. Stone walls breathed quietly. A drip echoed again, steady and slow.

Hatim gasped.

The hooded man sat beside him, unchanged. Still.

"You remember," he said.

Hatim didn't answer. But the memory seared behind his eyes. That spear. That scream.

"You wonder why it lingers."

Hatim looked at the glyphs now—trailing the walls like veins under skin. Breathing. Remembering.

Below the stone, the Akar stirred. It was always watching. Not with judgment. Not with malice.

With memory.

It had seen his glyphs.

And it had listened.

And it was waiting.

He pressed his hand to the floor.

The hum beneath answered.

Like a whisper in a tongue older than sound.

The Akar was not a tool.

It was a witness.

And now it remembered him.