Inside the deep dark space of the Archive, Sagiri stood on a narrow ledge of black stone. Below him stretched an endless, moving stream of white light and floating memory fragments.
This was the River of Dead Generations, the deep neural current where centuries of Southern history were stored. Every glowing ripple in the current held the thoughts, martial forms, and final moments of past Keepers who had carried the Living Memory before him.
The weight of all those stored memories pressed against his mind like a heavy iron vice. He could feel the mental exhaustion that had broken every Keeper before their eighteenth year, threatening to wipe away his own thoughts.
"Every Keeper before me stood in this exact spot," Sagiri said quietly, keeping his two feet locked in a stable Galka stance. "And every one of them was crushed by the sheer weight of what they tried to carry alone."
