In the markets of New Haven, where Kael's armies had brought their strange peace, a merchant argued with a customer over the price of memories. The glass vials caught afternoon light, each containing a different shade of experience—childhood joy shimmered gold, first love gleamed rose-pink, old griefs swirled storm-gray.
"Two silvers for manufactured happiness?" The customer, an elderly woman with void-scars tracing her neck, scoffed. "I remember when authentic memories cost half that."
Dara, the merchant, adjusted her headscarf to better hide her void-marks—spiral patterns that served as a constant reminder of her hubris. Three years ago, she'd been just another market alchemist, fascinated by Kael's soldiers and their strange powers. She'd traded rare reagents for blood samples, convinced she could unlock their secrets through study rather than ritual. The void had taught her otherwise, rewriting her flesh in a language of agony. She'd spent three weeks screaming as the marks spread like poison through her body. The local healers could do nothing. Even Kael's veterans had been surprised she survived at all.
The marks had settled eventually, transforming her natural talent for memory-crafting into something more potent—and more painful. Each memory she captured now burned brighter, cost deeper. Some nights she still woke up choking on phantom agony, but she'd learned to hide it well. In Kael's new world, showing weakness was a luxury none could afford. "That was before the Reality Wars, grandmother. Now every dream must be tested for divine corruption. Even happiness has its price."
Above them, reality rippled like heat waves, the city's new normal since Kael's forces had claimed it. Most citizens had adapted, learning to step around patches where gravity forgot its purpose or time flowed sideways. Children played hopscotch across dimensional boundaries, their laughter echoing seconds before their jumps.
In her workshop behind the stall, Dara's daughter Maya practiced her own memory-crafting. At sixteen, her void-marks were still developing, forming patterns that mixed her mother's spiral artistry with something new—fractals that captured not just memories, but possibilities.
"You're doing it wrong again," Dara called over her shoulder, recognizing the familiar scent of burnt potential. Her void-marks pulsed with warning pain as she spoke. "You can't force the memory to hold more than it wants to contain." She remembered her own hubris in trying to seize power that had never been offered, but kept that bitter wisdom to herself. Some lessons were best learned slowly, if at all.
Maya sighed, setting aside another ruined vial. The memory within—a soldier's last glimpse of home—had shattered when she tried to expand it into all the futures he might have had. "But why not? If we can reshape reality itself, why can't we change the past?"
"Because memories aren't meant to be possibilities," came a new voice, deep and resonant with power that made reality shudder. "They're anchors that keep us human."
Dara and Maya turned to find Lord Varok, one of Kael's generals, standing in their workshop entrance. His void-marks blazed like black lightning across his weathered face, but his eyes held something rarely seen in one so powerful—gentle understanding.
"My lord," Dara bowed slightly, market instincts warring with the new order's disdain for such formalities. "We didn't expect—"
"No bowing," Varok said softly. "I'm here as a customer, nothing more." He produced a small box carved from what appeared to be solidified shadow. "And perhaps... a teacher, if your daughter is willing to learn."
Maya stepped forward, curiosity overcoming caution. "You know about memory-crafting?"
"I know about loss." Varok opened the box, revealing a single vial that seemed to contain pure darkness. "Before the void-marks, before all this power, I was a father. My daughter would have been your age now."
The workshop grew silent save for the strange harmonies of warped reality outside. Even the market's chaos seemed to hold its breath.
"What happened to her?" Maya asked, earning a sharp look from her mother that she ignored.
"Divine purification." Varok's voice carried no rage, only old pain turned to purpose. "They called it mercy, burning away what they deemed impure. I keep this—" he held up the dark vial, "—to remember why we fight. Not for power. Not for revenge. But for all the daughters who deserve to grow up in a world where gods don't decide their fate."
Dara studied the vial with professional interest. "That's not just a memory, is it?"
"No." Varok handed it to Maya, who almost dropped it in surprise. "It's an absence. A void where memories should be. I've spent years learning to craft with such spaces, to work with what's lost rather than what remains."
Maya held the vial up to the light, which seemed to curve around it rather than penetrate. "How is that possible? Mother always taught me we can only work with what was real."
"Reality," Varok smiled sadly, "is more flexible than most imagine. Your mother crafts with what was. You try to craft with what could be. But there's power in crafting with what was taken—if you're willing to learn."
Over the next hour, Varok demonstrated techniques that made Dara's eyes widen and Maya's hands tremble with excitement. He showed them how to weave absence into presence, how to turn loss into something new without diminishing its meaning. Under his guidance, Maya finally managed to stabilize her soldier's memory—not by expanding it into futures that never were, but by honoring the singular power of what had been.
As afternoon bled into evening, more of Kael's soldiers filtered into the market. They came not to enforce order but to trade their own memories, their own losses, their own hopes. Some bore void-marks that twisted reality, yet they haggle over prices like common merchants. Others demonstrated powers that could shatter mountains, yet they were careful holders of fragile memory-vials.
"I don't understand," Maya said finally, watching a veteran with star-dark void-marks trade a lifetime of combat experience for a single childhood laugh. "If you're so powerful, why do you need memories at all?"
Varok's answer was interrupted by a commotion outside. Reality buckled as a divine scout materialized in the market square, wings blazing with celestial fire. Before anyone could react, the scout spotted something that made their divine light flicker—a small girl playing with a ball that ignored gravity.
Time slowed. The scout's hand moved toward a sword of burning light. Varok's void-marks flared with deadly promise.
But it was Dara who moved fastest. She threw a memory-vial that shattered against the divine warrior's face. Gold light erupted—a mother's love for her child, distilled and weaponized. The scout staggered, tears cutting tracks through their celestial radiance.
"That," Varok said quietly, as other defenders moved to contain the threat, "is why we need memories. Power alone doesn't make us stronger than the gods. Remembering our humanity does."
Later, after the scout had been dealt with and the market's strange peace restored, Maya worked late into the night. She crafted not with possibilities or absences, but with something between—the moment when loss becomes strength, when memory becomes purpose, when humanity becomes power.
In her finest vial, she captured the exact instant when a divine warrior wept at the memory of mortal love. Not for sale, she decided. Some memories needed to be kept, to remind them what they were fighting for.
Above the city, reality continued its chaotic dance. But in that small workshop, surrounded by bottles of distilled experience, the future felt a little more human.