Silas's smile was a razor blade. He stood completely at ease in the heart of his enemy's fortress, his gloved hands held loosely at his sides. The crackling energy around them was the only sign of his power.
"Business?" Kaelen repeated, the word tasting like ash. Around him, he felt the tension of his people—Roric's grip tightening on his pipe, Valeria's hand hovering near her weapon, Lyssa's fearful intake of breath.
"Of course," Silas said, his gaze sweeping over the chamber with a merchant's appraisal. "You've toppled a stagnant regime and created a… novel resource. The Aetherium Syndicate specializes in the distribution of novel resources. We can make this transition orderly. Profitable."
"These are not resources," Kaelen said, his voice low. The golden light in his eyes pulsed with his anger. "They are people. Their memories are their lives."
"Semantics." Silas waved a dismissive hand. "Life, memory, it's all energy. The Council was foolish to simply burn it. We understand its true value. Imagine a world where a man can sell a painful memory to afford a new home. Where a grieving widow can purchase the memory of a happy marriage to ease her loneliness. We're not monsters, Librarian. We're liberators."
Lyssa stepped forward, her voice shaking with outrage. "You're talking about turning the best and worst moments of our lives into… into products!"
"I'm talking about choice," Silas countered smoothly, his eyes locking onto hers. "Something the Council never gave you. The choice to be free of a trauma. The choice to experience joy you never had. The free market is the purest form of democracy."
"It's a nightmare," Valeria stated coldly. "You'd create a class of memory-debtors, selling pieces of themselves until they're Hollow again."
Silas's smile finally faded, replaced by a look of cold impatience. He focused on Kaelen. "This idealism is a luxury you cannot afford. The city is in chaos. The Council's infrastructure is crumbling. People are scared and hungry. They will sell, Librarian. With or without your blessing. The only question is whether you control the exchange or we do."
He took a step closer, his voice dropping, meant for Kaelen alone, though it echoed in the silent chamber.
"Join us. Be the face of this new era. The Syndicate will provide security, stability, distribution. You provide the source. We can build an empire."
Kaelen could feel the temptation like a physical pull. It would be so easy. To let someone else handle the logistics, the violence, the ugly decisions. To just be the keeper of the library and let a ruthless efficiency manage the rest. He could protect the memories, even as they were traded. Couldn't he?
He looked past Silas, at the faces of the people he had freed. He saw Roric, who remembered his brother. He saw the scribe who remembered her daughter. He saw Lyssa, who remembered him.
He saw the ghost of Joren's shattered mind, a warning of what happened when memories became weapons.
"No," Kaelen said. The word was simple, final.
Silas's face went blank. "A pity. That is not the correct answer."
"It's the only one," Kaelen said. "The Library is a sanctuary. It is not a marketplace. You will leave now, and you will tell your Syndicate that their trade ends at our gates."
For a moment, Silas didn't move. The air grew thick. Then, he chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. "You misunderstand. That wasn't a request. It was a courtesy."
His gaze shifted to Lyssa. "She's important to you, isn't she? The friend from the old life." His gloved hand twitched.
Kaelen felt it before he saw it—a psychic probe, sharp and invasive, targeting Lyssa's mind. It wasn't an attack to destroy, but to extract. Silas was going to steal a core memory of her and Kaelen together, right in front of him, to prove his point.
Rage, cold and absolute, washed over Kaelen.
He didn't block the probe. He redirected it.
As Silas's mental tendril reached for Lyssa, Kaelen wrapped it in his own will and channeled it away from her—not back at Silas, but into the memory network. He didn't send a random memory. He sent the memory Silas himself had just created: the memory of his own arrogant overreach, his cold proposition, his casual threat.
He forced Silas to relive his own failure, his own miscalculation, on a loop.
The Syndicate agent gasped, stumbling back a step. His cool composure shattered, replaced by a flicker of stunned confusion as the memory of his own defeat assaulted him.
"You see?" Kaelen's voice was quiet, but it filled the chamber. "That is a memory. It belongs to you now. It is yours to keep. I will not take it, and I will not let you sell it. That is the only 'business' I offer."
He gestured to the door, which hissed open. "Get out."
Silas stared at him, his face a mask of fury and something else—a sliver of fear. He had come to deal with an asset, a powerful but naive boy. He had found something else entirely.
Without another word, he turned and strode out, the door sealing shut behind him.
The chamber was silent for a moment, and then a cheer erupted, raw and relieved.
But Kaelen didn't cheer. He looked at Valeria, whose face was grim.
"He wasn't the real threat," she said. "He was just the salesman. The ones who sent him… they won't take no for an answer."
Kaelen nodded, the weight of the world settling back onto his shoulders. He had won the negotiation.
But he had just started a war with the most ruthless corporation in Aethelgard.