That night, Aiden couldn't sleep.
He lay in the attic above the bookstore, staring at the winding crack in the ceiling, his mind replaying the images he had seen that afternoon. The vast hall, the silver‑white crown, the silver‑skinned figures, and those cheers—they seemed carved into his brain, surfacing whenever he closed his eyes, refusing to fade even when he opened them.
It hadn't been a dream.
He was sure of it.
Aiden turned over, burying his face in the pillow. The attic window was small; moonlight squeezed through its crack, drawing a thin silver line across the floor. The color reminded him of that crown.
"Damn it."
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. Outside, the old district was silent, only the distant bell tower of a church casting a blurred shadow into the night. Tricolor Flag City had over a dozen churches; the largest stood at the edge of the old district—the Holy Light Cathedral. It was so tall that even at night its spire could be seen piercing the sky, a silent sentinel.
Aiden stared at that spire for a long time, then lay back down.
He didn't know when he finally fell asleep. In his dream, he returned to that hall, but this time the image was clearer. He saw the face of the man on the dais—young, with sharp features and dark gray eyes, like the sky before a storm. The man was smiling, but there was something heavy in that smile, as if he carried the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.
And at the edge of the crowd, the silver‑skinned figures bowed their heads.
In the dream, Aiden heard a voice—very low, as if coming from far away:
"Remember us."
He woke with a start.
Outside, the sky was a gray dawn. The church bells rang six times. Aiden sat up and found himself drenched in sweat.
When he went downstairs, old Karl was already behind the counter. A cup of steaming black coffee sat before him, and an open ledger lay beside it, but his gaze was fixed elsewhere—on the locked drawer beneath the counter.
At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Karl quickly looked away.
"You're awake." He took a sip of coffee. "Reorganize the books on the north wall on the second floor today. They've gotten too messy."
Aiden nodded, saying nothing about the day before. But he noticed the deep shadows under Karl's eyes—he hadn't slept well either.
All morning, Aiden worked on the second‑floor shelves. He took each book down, dusted it, and re‑shelved it by category. It was a task he had done countless times; he could have done it with his eyes closed, so his mind was elsewhere.
He was thinking about that book.
The images. The history that contradicted everything in the textbooks.
"Chieftains of the northern ice plains offered white bearskins"—the textbooks said the north had been a wilderness. "Fishermen of the eastern isles offered a pearl crown"—the textbooks said the east had been civilized later. "The nomadic king of the western desert offered a sword of gold"—the textbooks said the west had no civilization at all.
Who was lying?
His hand touched a book's cover. It was an old one—The Chronicle of Tricolor Flag City, published ten years ago. The title page bore the seal of a Church censors. Every officially published history book needed that seal; otherwise it was forbidden.
Aiden opened it and found the chapter on Aldric's coronation.
"Third Year of the Sacred Calendar, the Unifier Aldric was crowned in the capital's Holy Sanctuary by the Pontiff, ushering in a new era for mankind. At that time, the lands were newly pacified and awaited reconstruction; the Unifier, with iron will, laid the foundation for a thousand years of rule."
Exactly the same as the textbooks.
He closed the book, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the cover. The leather was rough, ordinary cowhide, nothing special. But when his fingers traced a worn‑out groove on the spine—
The world exploded again.
This time the vision was even clearer. He didn't see that hall. He saw a street—a street in Tricolor Flag City, but not as it looked now. The buildings were lower, the street narrower, no cobblestones, only muddy earth. A man stumbled and ran, his clothes stained with blood, terror on his face.
Behind him, people were chasing him.
They wore white robes, with the emblem of the Church of the Holy Light embroidered on their chests. Their movements were perfectly synchronized, like puppets pulled by the same string.
The man ran into a dead end.
Aiden heard sounds—not from the vision itself, but something poured directly into his consciousness. The man's voice, young, trembling, desperate:
"They burned… they burned all the records… history… it's all lies…"
White light. Robes. Emblem.
The vision shattered.
Aiden jerked his hand back. The book fell to the floor with a dull thud. He looked down at his hand; his fingers were trembling.
He had touched the worn groove on the spine. That groove wasn't ordinary wear—it had been pressed out by something, perhaps a fingerprint, perhaps the shape of a palm.
In that groove, a memory had been preserved.
A memory from the moment before a man died.
"History is all lies"—the man's voice echoed in Aiden's mind, like the lingering note of a bell. He bent down, picked up the book, and stared at the groove on the spine. His fingers hovered above it, hesitating, before finally pulling back.
He didn't dare touch it again.
Not because he was afraid of the images—but because he was beginning to understand that these images weren't hallucinations, weren't tricks of the eye, weren't dreams.
He could see things others couldn't.
When his fingers touched certain objects, he could see what those objects "remembered." That book's cover had remembered the man's terror, just as the old book yesterday had remembered a coronation three thousand years ago.
This was an ability.
An ability he had never heard of, never read about in any book.
"Aiden!"
Karl's voice from downstairs pulled him back. Aiden put the book back on the shelf, took a deep breath, and went down.
"What is it?"
"Go to the market and buy some bread." Karl put a few copper coins on the counter. "We'll need it for dinner."
Aiden picked up the coins and walked out of the bookshop.
The old district market was close—a ten‑minute walk. It was lively: vegetable sellers, butchers, cloth merchants, junk dealers—their voices mingled into a boiling stew. Aiden made his way through the crowd toward the bakery, but when he reached the central square, he stopped.
In the middle of the square stood a statue.
It was the statue of "Hero Karl Drak." Karl Drak, a figure from three hundred years ago. According to the textbooks, he was the "Defender of Tricolor Flag City," who single‑handedly held the city gates during the "barbarian invasion" and saved the entire populace. His statues were everywhere in the old district, but this one was the largest, carved from white marble, with a line at its base: "The hero lives on; his loyal spirit will never die."
Aiden had known this statue since he was a child. When he had wandered the streets, he used to shelter from the wind behind its pedestal in winter. Back then, he thought the statue was huge, that the mounted man raising his sword was a real hero.
But now, staring at it, a sudden thought crossed his mind.
Could he see it?
Could he see what this statue "remembered"?
Aiden glanced around. The market was busy; no one was paying him any attention. He hesitated, then slowly approached the statue and reached out to touch the marble base.
The marble was cool, its surface rough, eroded over centuries into countless tiny pits. His fingers pressed into those pits, and he felt a faint tremor, as if something slept deep within the stone.
Then the vision came.
He saw fire.
Not just a fire—an entire city in flames. Houses collapsed, streets stained red with blood, screams and weeping everywhere. The city wall had been breached, but not by "barbarians"—the soldiers breaking through wore the uniforms of Tricolor Flag City. They were the city's own soldiers.
And Karl Drak, the man called a hero, stood on the wall, waving to the enemy outside.
He was opening the gates.
He was letting the enemy in.
At the end of the vision, Aiden saw Karl Drak standing in the burning city, his face showing neither fear nor guilt, only a strange satisfaction. Behind him stood several men in white robes—priests of the Church of the Holy Light. One of them placed a laurel crown on Karl Drak's head and said something.
Aiden heard it clearly.
"From this day forward, you are a hero. History will remember you as one."
The vision shattered.
Aiden snatched his hand back, retreating two steps. His heart was pounding so hard he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He looked up at the statue—the mounted man raising his sword, the "hero," the inscription at the base: "The hero lives on; his loyal spirit will never die."
A traitor.
The so‑called hero was a traitor. He had betrayed his own city, opened the gates to the enemy, and the Church of the Holy Light had given him a new identity—a hero.
They had rewritten history.
They had dressed a traitor as a hero and made the whole city venerate him for three hundred years.
The true history was buried in the marble of this statue, like a corpse waiting to be unearthed.
Aiden's hands began to tremble. Not from fear—from anger. A cold, burning anger he had never felt before. He had grown up in an orphanage, wandered the streets, done hard labor in an old bookstore; he thought he had seen all the injustices this world had to offer. But now he understood: the greatest injustice wasn't hunger, wasn't cold, wasn't abandonment—
It was being denied the truth.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
A vegetable vendor shouted at him. Aiden came back to himself, realizing he had been standing before the statue for a long time. He shook his head, turned, and left the square, forgetting to buy the bread.
He walked all the way back to the bookstore, his mind a tangled mess. When he pushed open the door, Karl was behind the counter, smoking a pipe. In the haze of smoke, the old man's face looked older than ever.
"Where's the bread?"
Aiden didn't answer. He stood before the counter, staring into Karl's eyes. The old man's brow furrowed slightly under his gaze.
"What's wrong?"
"Mr. Karl." Aiden's voice was calm, so calm it sounded strange even to himself. "That statue. The statue of Karl Drak in the market square."
Karl's hand paused. A pinch of ash from his pipe fell onto the counter.
"He wasn't a hero," Aiden said. "He was a traitor. He opened the gates and let the enemy in. Then the Church made him a hero."
Silence.
Karl stared at him for a long time, so long that Aiden thought the old man would deny it, would tell him he was talking nonsense, would tell him to "go rest" as usual. But Karl didn't. Slowly, he set down his pipe, removed his glasses, and looked at Aiden with an expression Aiden had never seen before.
Surprise, wariness, and something deep, something old, something sorrowful.
"How do you know?" Karl asked.
Not "What nonsense are you spouting?" Not "Where did you hear such rumors?"
But "How do you know?"
Aiden's heart gave a violent lurch.
"I can see it," he said. "When I touch certain things, I can see what they remember. That book, that statue… I can see the true history."
Karl was silent for a very long time. Sunlight fell across his face, casting half of it in shadow, making his expression hard to read. Finally, he stood, walked to the door, and slid the bolt shut. Then he returned to the counter and took a key from his apron pocket.
He opened the drawer he had locked the day before.
From it, he took out the old book.
"Sit down," Karl said.
Aiden sat in an old chair. Karl placed the book on the counter, not opening it, just resting his hand lightly on its cover. His fingers trembled slightly—from age, or from something else, Aiden couldn't tell.
"My wife had the same ability as you," Karl said, his voice very low, like a secret that shouldn't be spoken aloud. "She could see the history hidden in objects. She called it the Eye of History."
Aiden's breath caught.
"She started with an old book too." Karl's gaze fell on the book, his eyes going distant. "She saw more than you. She saw the Church's secret—they didn't rewrite history just to glorify a hero. They did it to hide a truth."
"What truth?"
Karl raised his head and looked into his eyes. There was a weight in that look, as if a whole mountain was pressing down on the old man's back.
"They are not the scribes of this world," Karl said. "They are thieves."
Outside, the church bells rang.
Six times.
The same as every day. The same as every evening. The same as for the last three hundred years.
But this time, they sounded different.
Aiden heard something he had never noticed before.
Fear.