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Chapter 7: The Ghost in the Glass
The Shadow Treasury didn't look like a dungeon. It looked like a library of nightmares. Tall, obsidian shelves stretched into the darkness, lined with jars of preserved organs and scrolls written in the blood of "traitors." The air was dry and smelled of old parchment and copper.
I hauled Yan inside, my boots clicking on the cold marble. He was a dead weight now, his silver hair dragging against the floor. I felt a sharp, pulsing ache in my teeth—the "Chain" was vibrating, reacting to the room.
[Environment Recognized: The Hall of Records.]
[Sync Status: 85%. Memory Fragment 'The First Year' is available.]
I collapsed against a heavy stone table, sliding Yan down beside me. His breathing was shallow, a ragged sound that made my own chest tighten. Even unconscious, his hand was curled into a fist, his knuckles white and scarred. He wasn't giving up; his body was just failing the spirit inside.
"I need to fix this," I whispered, my voice echoing in the empty hall.
I reached out to touch the "Dragon-Slaying" scars on his collarbone, hoping to use my Rank 2 power to dull his pain. The moment my skin touched the scar, the world shattered.
[Sync Initialized. Warning: You are experiencing 'Shared Trauma.']
Suddenly, I wasn't Arthur, the janitor from Earth. I was looking through the eyes of the
Original Wei An
.
I was standing in this exact room, ten years younger. I was holding a set of surgical tools, their silver edges gleaming in the candlelight. And there, chained to the wall in front of me, was Yan. He was younger then, his silver hair long and shining, his eyes full of a fire that could burn down an empire.
"Don't do it, little prince," the memory-Yan said, his voice deep and steady even as blood dripped from his wrists. "Kill me if you must, but do not steal my sight. A warrior deserves to see his end."
The "me" in the memory laughed. It was a high, thin sound—the sound of a spoiled child breaking a toy. "If you can see, Yan, you can still hope. And the High Council doesn't want you to hope. They want you to be a chair. A footstool. A ghost."
I watched, paralyzed in the memory, as my own hands—the hands I now occupied—picked up the black blindfold. I watched as I personally drove the iron spikes into his collarbones.
Yan didn't scream. That was the part that broke me. He gritted his teeth until they cracked, his body jerking with every strike of the hammer, but he kept his eyes locked on mine. In those silver depths, there was a spark of defiance so bright it made the Original Wei An flinch. Even as he was being turned into a "hound," he looked at his torturer with nothing but pity.
"You will always be small, Wei An," memory-Yan whispered, his voice a jagged edge of pride. "No matter how many gods you chain."
The memory snapped. I was back in the cold, dark Treasury, gasping for air. I pulled my hand away from Yan as if he were made of fire. My stomach turned, and I retched, the black bile of the poison hitting the floor.
I looked at him—the man lying in the dirt beside me. I realized now why he hated me so much. It wasn't just the betrayal of the High Council. It was the fact that
I
—this body—was the architect of his living hell.
Yan’s eyes flickered open. They were cloudy, the silver dim and fractured. He looked at me, and I saw the recognition of that ten-year-old memory in his gaze.
"You... saw it," he rasped. He tried to move his arm, but it wouldn't obey him.
Instead of begging for help or crying out, Yan did something that left me speechless. He bit his own lip until it bled, using the sharp shock of pain to force his body to move. With a slow, agonizing effort, he dragged his hand across the floor and grabbed the hem of my silk robe.
He didn't pull himself up. He used his last ounce of strength to
tear
the fabric away, a small act of resistance that said he would rather touch the cold stone floor than my "royal" clothes.
"Don't... look at me... with pity," Yan hissed, his voice a thread of steel. "I am not... your record. I am not... your victim."
He began to crawl. It was a pathetic, slow movement, his fingers digging into the gaps between the marble tiles. He was trying to move away from me, even if it was only an inch. Even at his absolute lowest point, he refused to let me be his savior.
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