The chamber was colder than the plains where Wind had first drawn her map of memories. Here, the silence was not reverent but suffocating, as if the walls themselves feared to echo what was about to unfold. I had come to watch, though every part of me wished to turn away.
The Experiment
At the center of the room stood a single being—once a simple child of some forgotten world, brought forth as subject to Wind’s design. The followers of Wind surrounded the platform with solemn devotion, their hands poised above glowing instruments that shimmered with pale light.
“This,” one of them declared, “is the proof of liberation.”
A thread of light was drawn from the child’s essence, shimmering like spun glass. I recognized it instantly as memory—fragile, radiant, alive. The device pulsed, and the strand trembled, then vanished into nothingness.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Hollowed Existence
The child blinked, eyes wide but vacant. The laughter that had once spilled from him was gone. The weight of fear, joy, or sorrow—none of it remained. He stood as though waiting for someone to wind the gears of his soul.
“See?” the Custodian who had converted whispered with reverence. “No grief. No scars. Only freedom.”
But I saw nothing of freedom in him. What stood before me was not a soul released from pain but a body emptied of self. The boy was alive in flesh alone, a husk animated by breath but stripped of spirit.
The crowd murmured with awe, but my stomach twisted as though I had witnessed a desecration.
The Cost of Liberation
Wind’s voice cut through the silence, carrying both serenity and command.
“This is the dawn we offer. No hunger gnaws, no sorrow lingers. A reality where suffering is erased. To achieve it, we must choose what is worth remembering and what must be cast aside.”
The followers bowed, entranced. They saw mercy where I saw theft. For in erasing memory, they had erased the very thread that defined the child. He was not healed—he was hollow.
It struck me then with terrible clarity: this liberation they promised was not deliverance, but deprivation. To unmake a memory was to unmake a being.
Doubt Grows
I could not tear my eyes from the boy. His gaze passed through me as though I were air, as though every bond he might have carried—family, love, the laughter of friends—had dissolved.
I shivered, my doubt swelling into dread.
Was this the utopia Wind had promised? A world of hollowed lives, where peace was purchased at the cost of identity? Was freedom truly found in forgetting, or was it nothing more than another prison—one built not of pain, but of absence?
The crowd clapped softly in reverence, but the sound echoed like a dirge in my ears.
The Shadow of Selection
I understood now why Wind’s faction called it selection. It was not the choice of what to keep—it was the shadow of what was erased. With every memory cut, a life was dimmed, a soul unmade.
The question roared in my chest though I dared not speak it aloud: If liberation requires the death of memory, is it not the death of life itself?
And in that moment, standing in the cold glow of the ritual chamber, I realized that my fear was no longer only of Wind’s promise, but of the silence that would come after.
