For those who survive their victories, only to discover that winning was merely the beginning of losing.
And for every partnership that has carried weight together—the weight of responsibility, of loss, of choices made in darkness—and emerged stronger for the sharing.
A NOTE ON THE KASDIM CHRONICLES
This is the final volume of the Kasdim Chronicles, a trilogy following the adventures of the Grey Ratter and Phaphhrd of the Cold Waste through the corrupt, magnificent, and perpetually dangerous city of Kasdim.
In Book One, THE GUILD OF FORGOTTEN FACES, our heroes confronted the Unremembering—an ancient entity that consumed identity itself—and the Ratter sacrificed his magic to seal the binding that contained it.
In Book Two, THE BAZAAR OF STOLEN HOURS, they faced the Timekeeper and her master the Hourglass, entities that fed on time itself. Phaphhrd gave seven years of his life to save Ivlis from the Timekeeper’s theft, and the Ratter negotiated with the Hourglass to restore what had been taken.
Now, in THE WEIGHT OF SHADOWS, the consequences of those victories become clear. The binding is failing. A third entity—the First Forgetting—has been working against them from the beginning. And the only way to save Kasdim may require the Ratter and Phaphhrd to sacrifice everything they have become.
This is a story about partnership. About the weight of responsibility and the lightness that comes from sharing burdens. About transformation—of enemies into allies, of prisons into partnerships, of two people into something greater than either could be alone.
Welcome back to Kasdim. The moons are rising. The shadows are waiting.
And the weight must be borne.
For those who survive their victories, only to discover that winning was merely the beginning of losing.
“Every transaction in Kasdim leaves a residue. The merchants know this—they call it profit, or loss, depending on which side of the ledger they find themselves. The priests know it too, though they prefer words like ‘karma’ or ‘divine balance.’ But the thieves understand it best of all: there is no such thing as a clean getaway. Something always follows you home.”
—The Grey Ratter, explaining himself to Ivlis of the Vermillion
The dream always began the same way: with shadows that had weight.
The Grey Ratter stood in a place that was not quite a place—a vast emptiness that nevertheless pressed against him from all sides, heavy as water at the bottom of a very deep well. The darkness here was not merely the absence of light; it was a substance, a presence, something that filled the spaces between thoughts and settled into the gaps where certainty should have been.
You promised, the darkness whispered, in a voice like sand sliding through an hourglass. You promised information.
“I promised nothing,” the Ratter heard himself say, though his voice seemed to travel no distance at all—absorbed by the crushing dark before it could escape his lips. “I offered a trade. Trades require negotiation.”
The trade was made. The woman’s time was returned. The debt is recorded.
“Recorded where? In whose ledger?”
But the darkness only pressed closer, and the Ratter felt himself dissolving at the edges, his sense of self becoming uncertain in a way that had nothing to do with ordinary confusion. He was forgetting something—something important—and the harder he tried to remember, the faster it slipped away.
Soon, the voice promised. Soon you will tell me what I wish to know. And if you do not...
The pressure increased. The Ratter’s vision—such as it was in a place without light—began to fragment, to scatter like leaves in a wind he couldn’t feel.
...then I will take what I need from you, piece by piece, until there is nothing left to take.
He woke to morning light and the smell of something burning.
For a moment he lay still, cataloging the familiar details of his room at the boarding house on Copper Lane: the water-stained ceiling, the window that never quite closed properly, the pile of clothes in the corner that he kept meaning to wash but somehow never did. Three months since the Bazaar had collapsed. Three months since the Timekeeper had been consumed by her own master. Three months of peace, of ordinary work, of trying to remember what normal felt like.
Three months of dreams that left him feeling less and less certain of who he was.
The burning smell was coming from downstairs. The Ratter swung his legs out of bed, reached automatically for the knife he kept under his pillow, and made his way toward the source of the smoke with the resigned air of someone who had learned that mornings in Kasdim rarely improved with investigation.
He found Phaphhrd in the common kitchen, standing over a pan that contained what might once have been eggs. The barbarian was dressed in what he apparently considered casual attire—which is to say, he had left off his sword belt and was wearing a shirt that had only three stains on it instead of the usual seven.
“You’re attempting to cook,” the Ratter observed from the doorway.
“I’m succeeding at cooking.” Phaphhrd gestured proudly at the pan. “These are scrambled eggs.”
“They appear to be cremated eggs. I believe cremation requires a priest and appropriate mourning rituals.”
“Cremation suggests they were once alive. Eggs are—” Phaphhrd paused, frowning. “Actually, that’s a complicated philosophical question. Are eggs alive? They come from chickens, which are alive, but they’re not chickens themselves until—”
“Please stop. It’s too early for ontological debates about breakfast.” The Ratter moved past his partner to inspect the damage, then reached over to turn off the flame. “The smoke is going to bring the landlady, and the landlady will bring complaints, and complaints will bring demands for additional rent to cover ‘fire hazard fees.’ I’ve already bribed her twice this month.”
“I was trying to do something nice,” Phaphhrd said, with the wounded dignity of a man whose good intentions had been unfairly maligned. “Ivlis is coming for dinner tonight, and I thought I should practice my domestic skills.”
“Your domestic skills include hitting things with a sword, drinking impressive quantities of ale, and occasionally remembering to remove your boots before getting into bed. Cooking was never on the list.”
“Lists can be expanded.”
“Not when the expansion involves setting fire to innocent foodstuffs.” The Ratter scraped the contents of the pan into the bin, then began the process of salvaging what he could of the morning. “Why didn’t you wake me? I would have—”
“You were dreaming again.”
The words hung in the air between them, suddenly heavy. The Ratter’s hands stilled on the pan.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Phaphhrd continued, his voice carefully casual in the way that meant he was anything but. “Saying things about debts. About shadows. About something pressing against you.” The barbarian’s pale eyes were steady, concerned. “This is the seventh time this week, Ratter. The dreams are getting worse.”
“They’re just dreams.”
“Are they?”
The Ratter didn’t answer immediately. He turned back to the stove, began the careful process of actually cooking eggs—cracking them properly, adding butter to the pan, keeping the heat low enough to avoid repeating Phaphhrd’s disaster. The mundane actions gave him something to focus on while his mind worked through the implications of what he didn’t want to admit.
“The Hourglass,” he said finally. “When I made the deal to save Ivlis, I promised information about the binding. The entity’s exact words were ‘I will collect that debt when it suits me, and the price may be higher than you expect.’”
“I remember. You told me afterward.”
“What I didn’t tell you—” The Ratter paused, sliding the eggs onto a plate with more attention than the task required. “What I didn’t want to admit, even to myself, is that I don’t actually have the information the Hourglass wants. Korvallis gave me fragments, hints, educated guesses about the binding’s structure. But the real secrets? The weaknesses that could be exploited to break it entirely?” He shook his head. “I don’t know them. I was bluffing.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed—a short, sharp sound that was more acknowledgment than amusement.
“Of course you were bluffing. You’re always bluffing. That’s what you do.” The barbarian accepted the plate the Ratter offered, settling into one of the kitchen’s battered chairs. “The question is: does the Hourglass know you were bluffing?”
“I think it’s starting to suspect.” The Ratter sat across from his partner, though his own appetite had vanished somewhere between the dream and this conversation. “The dreams aren’t just dreams. They’re... probes. Investigations. Something is testing the edges of my mind, looking for the information I promised. And when it doesn’t find what it’s looking for...”
“It gets angry?”
“It gets patient.” The Ratter’s voice was grim. “That’s worse. Anger I could work with. Anger makes mistakes. But patience? Patience just waits. Watches. Applies pressure slowly, steadily, until whatever it’s pressing against finally breaks.”
“Then we need to find the real information. Give the Hourglass what it wants, fulfill the debt, end the pressure.”
“That’s one option.”
“What’s the other?”
The Ratter met his partner’s eyes. “Find a way to make the Hourglass stop wanting the information at all. Distract it. Redirect it. Give it something else to focus on—something that matters more to it than whatever secrets I supposedly possess.”
“And what could possibly matter more to an ancient entity that feeds on time than the weaknesses of the binding that constrains it?”
“I don’t know yet.” The Ratter stood, moved to the window, looked out at the morning streets of Kasdim waking to their usual chaos of merchants, thieves, and ordinary citizens trying to survive another day in the City of the Seven Score Thousand Smokes. “But I intend to find out. Because the alternative—” He turned back. “The alternative is letting that thing keep pressing against my mind until it takes what it wants by force. And I’ve already lost my magic. I’m not prepared to lose anything else.”
Phaphhrd set down his fork, abandoned his breakfast, and rose to stand beside his partner at the window. For a long moment they were silent, watching the city together—the tall northern barbarian and the small grey thief, united by circumstances that neither of them would have chosen but neither of them would trade.
“We’ve faced worse,” Phaphhrd said finally.
“Have we? The cult, the Unremembering, the Timekeeper—those were enemies we could fight. Entities we could negotiate with. This...” The Ratter gestured vaguely at his own head. “This is something inside me. Something that knows my thoughts before I think them. How do you fight something that’s already won access to everything you are?”
“By remembering that you’re not fighting alone.” Phaphhrd’s hand came down on the Ratter’s shoulder, solid and warm. “Whatever this thing wants, whatever it’s planning—we face it together. That’s what partners do.”
“Partners who include your lady now, apparently. Since she’s coming for dinner.”
“She wanted to talk to you. About the memories she’s been experiencing—the unlived futures that came back with her stolen time.” Phaphhrd’s expression grew thoughtful. “She says they’re getting clearer. More detailed. She’s remembering things that never happened with increasing specificity.”
“That doesn’t sound encouraging.”
“It might be. She says some of the memories involve... you. Specifically, you doing something important. Something that hasn’t happened yet but might.”
The Ratter turned sharply. “What kind of something?”
“She won’t tell me. Says she needs to discuss it with you directly, before she says anything that might change what she’s seen.” Phaphhrd’s smile was rueful. “You know how she is. The actress in her loves dramatic reveals.”
“This isn’t a performance, Phaphhrd. If she knows something about what’s coming—”
“Then she’ll tell you tonight. Over dinner that you’re apparently going to have to cook, since I’ve proven myself catastrophically incompetent at the task.” The barbarian moved back toward his abandoned breakfast. “In the meantime, what’s the plan? You have a plan, don’t you? You always have a plan.”
The Ratter was quiet for a moment, his grey eyes distant, his mind already racing through possibilities and implications. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“I need to talk to Korvallis again. Find out what he really knows about the binding—not the sanitized version he gave me before, but the truth. The parts he was afraid to mention.”
“He’s in poor condition. The healers say his memory is still fragmenting.”
“Which is exactly why I need to talk to him now, before he forgets everything that matters.” The Ratter turned back from the window, and something in his expression had shifted—the brooding replaced by the sharp, calculating focus that Phaphhrd knew all too well. “And I need to talk to Sheemba. She knows things about the Hourglass that nobody else does. She was willing to help us before, when it served her purposes. Maybe she’ll be willing to help again.”
“What about Ningaudrelle?”
“What about him?”
“He’s not going to forget that you destroyed the Chronometer. He’s not going to forgive the debt you owe him.” Phaphhrd’s voice was careful. “If you’re making plans that involve investigating the binding, investigating the entities that are bound within it—you’re going to cross paths with him eventually. Better to do it on your terms than his.”
“Ningaudrelle is a problem for another day. Right now, the priority is the Hourglass. The dreams. The pressure that’s building inside my head.” The Ratter moved toward the door, his breakfast forgotten, his mind already elsewhere. “Tonight we talk to Ivlis. Tomorrow I visit Korvallis. The day after—”
“The day after, we see what develops.” Phaphhrd raised a hand, and the Ratter paused mid-stride. “One thing, partner.”
“Yes?”
“Whatever happens next—whatever that thing in your dreams is planning—remember that I gave seven years of my life to save Ivlis. I did it willingly, and I don’t regret it.” The barbarian’s pale eyes were steady. “But it means I have less time than I used to. Less future to spend on mistakes and misdirection. So whatever plan you’re forming, whatever schemes are taking shape in that clever head of yours—make sure they’re worth the time they’re going to cost.”
The Ratter stood in the doorway for a long moment, looking at his partner—this man who had given up a piece of his own existence for love, who faced the shortened years ahead with a courage the Ratter wasn’t sure he could match.
“I’ll make sure,” he said quietly. “I promise.”
“Good.” Phaphhrd’s smile returned, warming his northern features. “Now go. Plot. Scheme. Do whatever it is you do when you’re planning to outsmart something ancient and terrible. I’ll clean up the kitchen and try not to set anything else on fire.”
“That seems optimistic.”
“I’m an optimistic person. It’s one of my many charming qualities.”
The Ratter found himself smiling despite everything—despite the dreams, the pressure, the debt that was coming due. That was the effect Phaphhrd had on him. That was why they were partners.
“Dinner at seven,” he said. “Don’t burn anything important before then.”
“Define ‘important.’”
“Anything I might want to eat later.”
“That leaves considerable latitude.”
“I trust your judgment.”
“That,” Phaphhrd said dryly, “is probably a mistake.”
But the Ratter was already gone, vanishing into the morning streets of Kasdim with the easy grace of someone who had learned long ago that the best way to escape your problems was to move toward them faster than they expected.
Behind him, the barbarian began the task of cleaning up the kitchen, humming a northern war song under his breath and thinking about time, and love, and the weight of the shadows that were beginning to gather around the people he cared about.
Outside, the city continued its eternal business of corruption and survival, unaware that beneath its streets, in the depths where ancient things had been bound for millennia, something was stirring.
Something that had been patient for a very long time.
Something that was finally ready to collect what it was owed.
The memories came in waves now, washing over her at unexpected moments—during rehearsals, during meals, during the quiet hours before sleep when her mind should have been empty and still. Twenty-three years of unlived futures, returned to her along with the time the Timekeeper had stolen, pressing against her consciousness like guests at a party who refused to leave.
Ivlis stood before the mirror in her dressing room at the Vermillion Theatre, applying the careful layers of paint and powder that transformed her from woman to character, and tried to focus on the present moment. Tonight’s performance was a revival of The Merchant’s Daughter—a comedy of errors involving mistaken identities, misplaced fortunes, and the kind of romantic complications that audiences found endlessly entertaining despite their implausibility.
She knew the part. She had played it a dozen times before. But today the lines seemed to slip through her mind like water through fingers, replaced by fragments of conversations she had never had, images of places she had never been, feelings about events that had never occurred.
In one of the unlived futures, she had died.
That memory was the clearest of all—sharp as broken glass, impossible to ignore. She had seen herself in a room she didn’t recognize, surrounded by people whose faces wavered between familiarity and strangeness. There had been blood. There had been screaming. There had been a moment of terrible clarity when she understood that this was the end, that everything she had hoped for and worked toward and dreamed of was about to be erased by circumstances beyond her control.
And then—nothing. The memory ended there, cut off at the moment of its own completion, leaving her with only the echo of extinction and no understanding of what had led to it or what had followed.
It never happened, she reminded herself, applying rouge to cheeks that suddenly felt too pale. It was a possibility, not a reality. The time came back. You came back. Whatever future contained that death is one you’ll never have to live.
But the reassurance felt hollow. Because the other memories—the ones that didn’t end in death—contained their own terrors. Futures where Phaphhrd had left her. Futures where the Ratter had betrayed them both. Futures where Kasdim had burned, or frozen, or simply ceased to exist in ways that defied explanation.
And one future—just one, glimpsed only in fragments—where something wonderful had happened. Where everything had worked out. Where she and Phaphhrd had grown old together, truly old, not the artificial aging the Timekeeper had inflicted but the natural accumulation of years spent in partnership and love.
That memory hurt worst of all. Because it showed her what was possible. And it made her terribly, desperately afraid of all the ways that possibility might be stolen from her again.
A knock at the door interrupted her reverie.
“Five minutes, Ivlis.”
“Thank you, Corra.” Her voice was steady, professional—the voice of an actress who had learned to perform even when her heart was in chaos. “I’ll be ready.”
She heard footsteps retreating down the corridor, and returned her attention to the mirror. The face that looked back at her was young again—the face she had worn before the Timekeeper’s attack—but something in the eyes was different. Older. Wearier. The face of someone who had seen too many endings and couldn’t quite believe in beginnings anymore.
You’re being morbid, she told herself. The show must go on. The audience is waiting. Whatever futures you’ve seen, whatever possibilities are crowding your mind, this moment is the one that matters. This performance. This night.
She finished her makeup, checked her costume one final time, and prepared to become someone else for a few hours.
The performance went well—or well enough. She hit her marks, delivered her lines, found the laughs that the script intended and a few that the playwright probably hadn’t anticipated. The audience applauded at the appropriate moments, gasped at the reveals, and left satisfied that they had spent their evening and their money wisely.
But afterward, in the quiet of her dressing room, Ivlis found that she couldn’t remember most of it. The show had passed through her like light through glass, leaving no more impression than any of the dozen other times she had performed the same role.
She was still sitting before the mirror, staring at her reflection without really seeing it, when the door opened again.
“You were magnificent,” Phaphhrd said, entering with the easy familiarity of a man who had long since stopped asking permission. “The scene in Act Two where you discovered the letter—I’ve never seen you play it that way before. The audience was completely silent. I think half of them were holding their breath.”
“Was I different?” Ivlis turned to face him, genuinely curious. “I don’t remember doing anything unusual.”
“Different in a good way. More... present, somehow. Like you were actually living the moment instead of just performing it.” Phaphhrd settled into the chair beside her dressing table, his bulk making the furniture creak in protest. “Though I suppose that could also be concerning, depending on how you feel about the distinction between acting and experiencing.”
“The distinction is supposed to be the point. We create the illusion of experience so that audiences can feel without risking.” Ivlis began the process of removing her stage makeup, wiping away layers of artifice to reveal the woman beneath. “When the illusion becomes indistinguishable from reality, something has gone wrong.”
“Or something has gone right. Maybe the unlived memories are making you a better actress. Giving you access to emotions you couldn’t reach before.”
“The unlived memories are making me question what’s real.” She paused, cloth in hand, and met his eyes in the mirror. “I saw you die, Phaphhrd. In one of the futures that never happened. I held your body and watched the light go out of your eyes and knew that everything we’d built together was over. I remember it as clearly as I remember our first kiss, our first fight, the first time you told me you loved me.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully: “That future didn’t happen.”
“No. But it could have. It was one of the possibilities that existed before the time was stolen, before everything collapsed into the single path we’re actually living.” She set down the cloth, turned to face him directly. “How am I supposed to treat the present as precious when I have twenty-three years of evidence that it could be taken away at any moment? How am I supposed to believe in happy endings when I’ve lived through so many unhappy ones?”
“You believe in them because the alternative is giving up. And you’re not the giving up type.”
“I used to think that. Now I’m not sure.” Ivlis stood, moved to the window that looked out over the theatre’s back alley. The evening air was cool, carrying the familiar smells of Kasdim—smoke, spices, decay, and the indefinable something that made this city unlike any other. “The Ratter is coming to dinner tonight. I need to tell him what I’ve seen.”
“You mentioned that. The memories that involve him specifically.”
“There’s a pattern, Phaphhrd. Across all the futures I remember—the ones where things went wrong and the ones where things went right—there’s one constant. The Grey Ratter, making a choice. Standing at a crossroads that exists somewhere in the binding itself, somewhere between the entities that are trapped there. And the choice he makes... it determines everything else.”
“What kind of choice?”
“I don’t know exactly. The memories are fragmentary, inconsistent. Sometimes he chooses one path and the world ends. Sometimes he chooses another and the world is saved. Sometimes—” She paused, struggling to articulate something that resisted articulation. “Sometimes the choice isn’t about paths at all. It’s about what he’s willing to give up. What he’s willing to become.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It sounds like the kind of thing he needs to know about before it happens.” Ivlis turned back to face her lover. “But I’m afraid that telling him will change what I’ve seen. That the act of sharing the information will alter the possibilities, create new futures I haven’t experienced, eliminate the ones where things work out.”
“That’s a lot of weight to carry alone.”
“I know. That’s why I asked him to come tonight. Because I can’t carry it alone anymore, and because—” She hesitated. “Because in the futures where things go right, he doesn’t face the choice alone. He has help. He has us.”
Phaphhrd rose, crossed to where she stood, and gathered her into his arms. She leaned into him, feeling the solid warmth of his body, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. Real. Present. Here.
“Whatever you’ve seen,” he said quietly, “we’ll face it together. That’s what we do. That’s who we are.”
“Even if facing it together means watching each other die in futures that may or may not come true?”
“Especially then.” He tilted her face up, met her eyes. “I gave seven years of my life to keep you in this world, Ivlis. I did it because you’re worth more than any amount of time I could possibly possess. And if the futures you’ve seen require me to give more—to give everything—then I’ll do that too. Without hesitation. Without regret.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I know.” He kissed her forehead gently. “But being afraid doesn’t change what needs to be done. It just makes us more careful about how we do it.”
They stood like that for a long moment, holding each other in the quiet of the dressing room while the theatre emptied around them and the city continued its eternal business outside. Two people who had been given impossible knowledge about possible futures, trying to find a way to live in the only present that actually existed.
“Come on,” Phaphhrd said finally. “The Ratter will be arriving soon. And if I’m not mistaken, you promised to cook something that wouldn’t poison anyone.”
“I promised to cook something edible. There’s a difference.”
“At this point, I’ll take what I can get.”
Ivlis laughed—a genuine laugh, surprised out of her despite everything. That was the effect Phaphhrd had on her. That was why she had fallen in love with him in the first place, and why she stayed in love with him despite all the complications that had followed.
“Let’s go,” she said. “The future can wait until after dinner.”
But even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t quite true. The future never waited. It only pretended to, while it prepared its next assault on everything you cared about.
And somewhere in the depths of the binding, in the spaces between the entities that had been trapped there for millennia, something was stirring that had plans for all of them.
Something that had been watching Ivlis’s unlived memories with great interest.
Something that knew exactly which future it wanted to create—and which futures it intended to destroy.
The Ratter arrived at Ivlis’s apartment precisely at seven, carrying a bottle of wine that he had acquired through means better left unexamined and a growing sense of unease that no amount of fermented grapes could fully address.
The apartment itself was a pleasant surprise—larger than he had expected, decorated with the accumulated treasures of a life spent in the theatre. Costumes hung from racks along one wall, their fabrics catching the lamplight in ways that made them seem almost alive. Playbills and posters covered another wall, documenting performances that stretched back decades. And everywhere, in every corner and on every surface, there were books—scripts, histories, collections of poetry, texts that suggested Ivlis’s interests extended far beyond the stage.
“You look like you’re cataloging the exits,” Ivlis said, appearing from what must have been the kitchen with flour dusting her apron.
“Old habit. I like to know how to leave before I commit to staying.”
“And what have you concluded?”
“Three viable routes, assuming normal circumstances. One more if I’m willing to go through the window and trust the drainpipe.”
“The drainpipe is unreliable. I had a suitor try that route once. The results were educational for everyone involved.” Ivlis took the wine, examined the label with raised eyebrows. “This is actually good. I was expecting something you’d stolen from a tavern.”
“I stole it from a wine merchant. There’s a distinction.”
“Is there?”
“The wine merchant had better taste.”
Phaphhrd emerged from the kitchen behind Ivlis, wearing an apron that had clearly been designed for someone considerably smaller and looking about as comfortable as a bear forced into formal dining attire. “The Ratter has arrived. Excellent. Now someone else can take responsibility for the conversation while I focus on not burning anything.”
“You’re cooking?” The Ratter’s voice carried genuine alarm.
“Under strict supervision,” Ivlis assured him. “And with detailed written instructions that I’ve made him read aloud three times.”
“I can read silently, you know. I’m not illiterate.”
“No, but you’re easily distracted. Reading aloud keeps you focused.”
The banter continued as they moved into the main room, falling into the easy rhythms of people who had spent enough time together to know each other’s patterns. Wine was poured, small dishes of appetizers appeared, and for a while it was almost possible to forget why they were really here—to forget the dreams, the debts, the memories of futures that had never happened.
Almost.
“You wanted to tell me something,” the Ratter said eventually, when the initial pleasantries had run their course and the silence was becoming pointed. “About what you’ve been seeing. The memories.”
Ivlis set down her wine glass, her expression shifting from hostess to something more serious. “Not just memories. Possibilities. Futures that could have happened if the time hadn’t been stolen, if everything hadn’t collapsed into the single path we’re actually living.”
“Phaphhrd mentioned patterns. Choices. Something about me standing at a crossroads.”
“Yes.” Ivlis moved to the window, looking out at the evening lights of Kasdim. “Across all the futures I remember—and there are hundreds of them, thousands, overlapping and contradicting each other—there’s one constant. You, making a decision. Standing somewhere that isn’t quite a place, facing something that isn’t quite a person, choosing between options that I can’t fully understand.”
“That’s frustratingly vague.”
“I know. I wish I could be more specific.” She turned back to face him. “The memories aren’t like ordinary memories. They’re fragmentary, dreamlike, full of gaps where crucial information should be. It’s like trying to read a book where every third word has been erased—you can get the general sense, but the details escape you.”
“But you said there were patterns. Things that repeated across different possibilities.”
“The crossroads appears in almost all of them. You, standing at a point where multiple paths converge. The paths lead to different outcomes—some where the world survives, some where it doesn’t. Some where you survive, some where...” She hesitated. “Some where you don’t.”
The Ratter absorbed this without visible reaction. “And the choice itself? What am I choosing between?”
“That’s what I can’t see clearly. Sometimes it seems like you’re choosing between people—saving one person at the cost of another. Sometimes it seems like you’re choosing between strategies—one approach that might work quickly but dangerously, another that’s slower but safer. And sometimes...” Ivlis’s voice dropped. “Sometimes it seems like you’re choosing between yourself and something else. Giving up pieces of who you are to achieve something that couldn’t be achieved otherwise.”
“You mean like the magic I already gave up? Or the memories Phaphhrd surrendered?”
“More than that. Deeper than that.” She met his eyes directly. “In the futures where things work out, where the world is saved and everyone survives, you’re different afterward. Changed in ways I can’t quite describe. Like you’ve traded something fundamental—not a ability or a memory, but something essential to being you.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be comforting. It’s meant to be true.” Ivlis returned to her seat, picked up her wine glass again. “I’ve been carrying this knowledge for three months, trying to understand it, trying to figure out how to tell you without influencing what you might do. Because here’s the thing—I don’t know which choices lead to the good outcomes. I can see that you make a choice, and I can see what happens afterward, but I can’t always tell which choice you actually made. The cause and effect don’t connect the way they should.”
“Temporal causality doesn’t work the way people assume,” the Ratter said quietly. “Korvallis explained that to me once. The binding doesn’t just contain entities—it contains possibilities. The Hourglass feeds on potential futures as much as it feeds on lived time.”
“Then maybe that’s what the crossroads is. A point where possibilities converge before diverging again. A place where the futures that haven’t happened yet become the future that does.”
“And I’m supposed to stand there and choose correctly? Without knowing what the choices actually mean?”
“You’re supposed to stand there and choose. Correctly or not.” Ivlis’s smile was sad. “That’s all any of us can do. Make choices with incomplete information and hope the results are better than the alternatives.”
Phaphhrd had been quiet throughout this exchange, listening with the focused attention of someone who understood that important things were being discussed even if the specifics escaped him. Now he spoke up.
“There’s something else you haven’t mentioned. The thing that shows up in the memories. The presence that’s different from the Hourglass.”
Ivlis nodded slowly. “The shadow.”
The word hung in the air, heavy with implications that none of them fully understood.
“In some of the futures—not all of them, but enough to form a pattern—there’s something else present at the crossroads. Not the Hourglass itself, and not any entity I recognize from what you’ve told me about the binding. Something darker. Something that doesn’t just want to consume time, but wants to consume... everything. Memories. Identities. The very concept of continuity.”
“The Unremembering?”
“No. I’ve seen memories where the Unremembering is mentioned, and this isn’t that. This is something else. Something that was hidden, maybe. Something that the original binding trapped without anyone realizing what they were trapping.” Ivlis’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Something that’s been waiting a very long time to be released.”
The Ratter sat very still, processing this information, fitting it into the framework of what he already knew. The dreams. The pressure against his mind. The sense that the Hourglass was not the only thing paying attention to him.
“The binding contained multiple entities,” he said slowly. “The Unremembering and the Hourglass, at minimum. But Korvallis always spoke as if there might have been more—things that were trapped accidentally, things that the original wizards didn’t fully understand.”
“If there’s a third entity...” Phaphhrd began.
“Then the balance is different than anyone assumed. The Unremembering and the Hourglass have been keeping each other in check, but if something else is in there with them—something that’s been growing stronger while they’ve been distracted by their own conflicts...”
“Then the weakening of the binding we caused by strengthening the Unremembering’s containment might have freed the wrong thing entirely.”
The three of them sat in silence, contemplating the implications. Outside, the sounds of Kasdim’s evening life continued—merchants closing their shops, taverns filling with customers, the eternal flow of humanity pursuing its eternal business of survival and corruption. None of them knew what was stirring beneath their streets, in the depths of a binding that had held for millennia.
But they were about to find out.
“I need to talk to Korvallis,” the Ratter said finally. “Tomorrow. First thing. He knows more about the binding than he’s told anyone—I’m sure of it. And if there’s a third entity trapped in there, if the original wizards made mistakes that nobody’s recognized until now...”
“I’ll come with you,” Phaphhrd said.
“No. I need you to stay with Ivlis. If whatever’s in the binding is paying attention to her memories, to the unlived futures she’s carrying—she might be a target.”
“I can take care of myself,” Ivlis protested.
“I know you can. But you can take care of yourself better with a large barbarian standing guard. And I can investigate better without worrying about protecting both of you at once.” The Ratter stood, the wine barely touched in his glass. “Dinner was lovely. I mean that sincerely. But I think we’ve all lost our appetites for anything except answers.”
“The roast—” Phaphhrd began.
“Save it for tomorrow. If there is a tomorrow.” The Ratter moved toward the door, then paused. “Ivlis. The futures where things work out. The ones where the world is saved, where everyone survives. In those futures—are we still friends? Are we still the people we are now?”
Ivlis was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she smiled.
“In the futures where things work out,” she said, “we’re more than friends. We’re family. The three of us, together, facing whatever comes. Changed, yes. Scarred, certainly. But together.”
“Then that’s the future we aim for.” The Ratter opened the door. “Whatever choices I have to make, whatever pieces of myself I have to give up—if it leads to that, it’s worth it.”
He left before either of them could respond, vanishing into the evening streets of Kasdim with the easy grace of a man who had spent his whole life disappearing.
Behind him, Phaphhrd and Ivlis looked at each other—two people who loved each other, who had chosen each other, who were slowly realizing that the choice they’d made had bound them to forces far larger than themselves.
“He’s going to do something stupid,” Phaphhrd said.
“Probably.”
“Something brave and stupid and self-sacrificing.”
“Almost certainly.”
“And we’re going to have to stop him, or help him, or both.”
“Yes.” Ivlis reached for his hand. “That’s what family does.”
They sat together in the aftermath of the Ratter’s departure, the dishes still on the table, the wine still half-full in their glasses. The conversation had ended too abruptly—cut short by the Ratter’s characteristic refusal to let others share his burdens—but the questions it had raised hung in the air like smoke from an extinguished candle.
“He’s been carrying this alone,” Ivlis said finally. “For months. The dreams, the pressure from the Hourglass, whatever other debts he hasn’t mentioned. He didn’t tell us because he didn’t want to add to our worries.”
“That’s the Ratter. He’d rather burn himself out than admit he needs help.” Phaphhrd’s voice was gentle, but there was frustration beneath it. “I’ve known him for years, Ivlis. Years of facing impossible situations together, of watching each other’s backs, of building the kind of trust that you don’t find easily in a city like Kasdim. And still, after all of that, his first instinct is to face the darkness alone.”
“Can you blame him? He lost his magic trying to protect you during the Unremembering crisis. He lost—” Ivlis hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “He lost Sheelris, in a way. Someone he cared about, even if what they had was never healthy. He’s learned that caring about people makes him vulnerable. Makes him willing to sacrifice things he can’t afford to lose.”
“That’s not a reason to shut us out. That’s a reason to let us in.” Phaphhrd stood, moving to the window that looked out over the theatre’s inner courtyard. “The partnership he and I have—it works because we complement each other. His cunning and my strength. His caution and my impulse. When he tries to carry everything himself, he loses half of what makes us effective.”
“Then we’ll have to remind him.” Ivlis rose too, moving to stand beside him. “We’ll have to show him that whatever he’s facing, he doesn’t have to face it alone. That the burdens he’s carrying can be shared without being doubled. That family—” She smiled. “That family means never having to be the only one who bleeds.”
Phaphhrd looked at her—this woman who had survived the Timekeeper’s theft, who carried memories of futures that never happened, who had chosen to stay despite every reason she had to run.
“I love you,” he said simply. “Have I mentioned that recently?”
“Not in the last hour.” Her smile widened. “You’re getting forgetful in your middle years.”
“Blame the Unremembering.”
“I prefer to blame you.” She kissed him, brief and warm. “Now let’s figure out how to help our stubborn partner before he does something we’ll all regret.”
The Temple of Forgotten Truths occupied a building that had once been something else—a warehouse, perhaps, or a counting house for one of the merchant families that had thrived and then collapsed during Kasdim’s long history. The structure showed signs of its various incarnations: loading doors that had been converted to ceremonial entrances, windows that had been bricked up and then partially reopened, walls bearing the ghosts of signage that had been painted over but never quite erased.
The Grey Ratter had been here before, during the Unremembering crisis. The temple’s keepers specialized in preserving knowledge that others wanted forgotten, which made them natural allies against entities that fed on memory and identity. But the old priests who had helped them then were gone now—casualties of the crisis itself, or simply victims of the natural attrition that claimed everyone eventually.
In their place, a single figure tended the temple’s garden and the damaged scholar who dwelt within it.
“He’s having a good day,” said Brother Malachis, the young priest who had taken over Korvallis’s care. “Better than most. He’s been coherent since dawn, asking questions about things that happened years ago as if they were yesterday.”
“That’s good?”
“It means his memories are surface-level right now. The older ones, the deeper ones—those are still fragmented, still difficult for him to access. But the recent past is clear.” Malachis paused at the garden gate. “He’s been asking about you, actually. Saying there were things he needed to tell you. Things he should have told you months ago, but was too afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“He wouldn’t say. But when I asked him what could frighten a man who had already lost so much of himself, he said—” The priest’s voice dropped. “’The binding doesn’t just keep things in. It keeps things together. And some of those things were never meant to be joined.’”
The Ratter absorbed this without comment, and followed Malachis into the garden.
Korvallis was sitting on the same bench where the Ratter had found him during the Unremembering crisis—a stone seat beneath a twisted apple tree that bore fruit out of season, as if it had forgotten what months were meant for. The old binding-keeper looked better than he had then, and worse. His face had regained some color, his eyes some clarity. But there was a weight to him now, a heaviness that seemed to press him down into the stone as if the earth itself was trying to reclaim him.
“Grey Ratter.” Korvallis’s voice was stronger than the Ratter expected. “I wondered when you would come.”
“You knew I was coming?”
“I knew you would have to. Eventually. When the dreams started.” The old man’s eyes were sharp, focused—more present than the Ratter had seen them in months. “They’ve started, haven’t they? The pressure against your mind. The sense that something is watching you from inside your own thoughts.”
“Yes.”
“The Hourglass. Collecting its debt.”
“Partly.” The Ratter settled onto the bench beside Korvallis. “But there’s something else too. Something that feels different. Older. Hungrier.”
Korvallis was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“I was afraid you would say that. I hoped—” He stopped, started again. “I hoped I was wrong. Hoped that what I had begun to suspect was just the confusion of a damaged mind, the paranoia of a man who had lost too much of himself to trust his own perceptions.”
“What did you suspect?”
“That the binding contains more than we ever knew. More than the original wizards themselves understood.” Korvallis turned to face the Ratter directly. “You know about the Unremembering and the Hourglass. Two entities, bound together by seven wizards at the height of their power. The Unremembering consumes identity; the Hourglass consumes time. They were bound together because they were alike—two hungers that fed on the same fundamental substance of existence.”
“You told me this before.”
“I told you the simplified version. The version that made sense. The version that everyone who knows anything about the binding accepts as truth.” Korvallis’s voice dropped. “I didn’t tell you about the Shadowmind.”
The word hung in the air between them, heavy with implications the Ratter couldn’t fully grasp.
“The Shadowmind,” Korvallis continued, “is the third entity in the binding. Or perhaps not an entity at all—perhaps something worse. It was trapped accidentally, caught in the magical net the wizards cast when they bound the other two. Nobody realized it was there until much later. Nobody understood what it was.”
“What is it?”
“It feeds on memory. Not the kind of memory the Unremembering consumes—not identity itself, not the sense of self that makes a person who they are. The Shadowmind feeds on the content of memory. Facts. Events. Knowledge. The things we learn and experience and carry with us through our lives.” Korvallis’s hands trembled slightly. “The Unremembering makes you forget who you are. The Shadowmind makes you forget everything else. Everything you know. Everything you’ve learned. Every skill, every fact, every piece of accumulated wisdom that makes you capable of functioning in the world.”
“That sounds worse.”
“In some ways it is. The Unremembering’s victims become empty—blank slates, neither happy nor sad, neither capable nor incapable. But the Shadowmind’s victims remain themselves. They know who they are. They just don’t know anything else. They forget how to speak, how to walk, how to eat. They forget that fire burns and water flows and gravity pulls things down. They become helpless children in adult bodies, surrounded by a world they can no longer understand.”
The Ratter felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because I wasn’t sure it was true. Because I was afraid that speaking of it might somehow make it stronger. Because—” Korvallis’s voice cracked. “Because the Shadowmind is why I am the way I am now. Not the cult, not the Unremembering, not any of the things we blamed for my condition. The Shadowmind has been feeding on me for decades, taking small pieces of my knowledge a little at a time. And I was too afraid to admit it because admitting it would mean admitting that the binding is failing. That it’s been failing for a very long time.”
“If the binding is failing—”
“Then all three entities will eventually break free. Not just the Hourglass, not just the Unremembering, but the Shadowmind too. And the Shadowmind...” Korvallis looked up at the twisted apple tree, his eyes distant. “The Shadowmind has been learning. All these years, feeding on the memories of scholars and priests and anyone who came too close to understanding the binding—it’s been accumulating knowledge. Becoming smarter. More capable. More dangerous.”
“It’s learning from what it consumes.”
“Exactly. The Unremembering and the Hourglass are forces of pure destruction—they don’t grow, don’t change, don’t evolve. But the Shadowmind is different. Every memory it takes makes it more than it was before. Every piece of knowledge it consumes becomes part of its own understanding.”
The Ratter sat very still, processing this information. The dreams. The pressure. The sense that something was testing the edges of his mind, looking for something.
“The Hourglass wants information about the binding,” he said slowly. “It’s been pressing against my mind, trying to collect the debt I owe. But if the Shadowmind is also in there, also paying attention...”
“Then it wants the same information. Wants to know the binding’s weaknesses. Wants to find a way to break free that doesn’t depend on the Hourglass’s methods or the Unremembering’s nature.” Korvallis gripped the Ratter’s arm with surprising strength. “You can’t give either of them what they want. Not the Hourglass, not the Shadowmind. The moment they understand how the binding truly works, they’ll tear it apart. And when that happens...”
“The world ends.”
“Parts of it. Certainly this city. Probably this entire region. Everything within reach of the entities when they break free will be consumed—time, identity, knowledge, everything that makes existence meaningful.” Korvallis released his grip, slumping back against the bench. “I’ve carried this secret for fifty years. Told no one. Hoped that if I stayed quiet, stayed invisible, the Shadowmind wouldn’t notice me. But it noticed anyway. It always notices.”
“There has to be a way to stop it. The original wizards bound these things—there must be a way to strengthen the binding, reinforce it, keep them contained.”
“There was.” Korvallis’s voice was barely a whisper now. “The Chronometer of Endless Moments. Created specifically as a failsafe, a tool that could restore the binding if it began to weaken. But the Chronometer was destroyed three months ago, during your confrontation with the Hourglass.”
“I didn’t destroy it. The Hourglass consumed it when it consumed the Timekeeper.”
“The result is the same. The tool is gone. The binding continues to weaken. And the Shadowmind...” The old man’s eyes closed. “The Shadowmind is closer to breaking free than it’s ever been. I can feel it pressing against the edges of the binding, testing for weaknesses, preparing for the moment when it can finally emerge.”
“Then we find another way. Another tool, another approach, another method of strengthening the binding.”
“There is no other way. The wizards who created the binding were the most powerful practitioners of their age, and even they barely managed to contain what they’d caught. We don’t have their knowledge. We don’t have their power. We don’t have anything except—”
Korvallis stopped abruptly.
“Except what?”
The old man opened his eyes, and the Ratter saw something there that he hadn’t seen before. Something like hope, fragile and uncertain but present nonetheless.
“Except the one thing the wizards didn’t anticipate. The one variable that changes everything.” Korvallis leaned forward. “The woman. Your partner’s woman. The one who carries unlived futures in her memory.”
“Ivlis? What does she have to do with this?”
“The time that was stolen from her—it included possibilities. Potential futures that never happened but could have. When the Hourglass returned that time, it returned the possibilities too. Which means she carries within her something that shouldn’t exist. Something that the binding wasn’t designed to account for.”
“Unlived memories.”
“Futures that were never realized but are remembered anyway. Knowledge of events that never occurred but might have. That kind of paradox creates... ripples. Distortions in the fabric of what the binding contains.” Korvallis’s voice was stronger now, more certain. “If we could use those distortions—channel them somehow—we might be able to create a new kind of constraint. Not strengthening the old binding, but creating something new. Something the entities wouldn’t know how to break because it would be built from possibilities they’ve never encountered.”
“You’re talking about using Ivlis as a weapon.”
“I’m talking about using what she carries. The unlived futures. The paradoxical memories.” Korvallis met the Ratter’s eyes. “It would be dangerous. Possibly fatal. But it might be the only chance we have.”
The Ratter stood abruptly, moving away from the bench. His mind was racing, processing everything Korvallis had told him. The Shadowmind. The weakening binding. The possibility of using Ivlis’s impossible memories as some kind of mystical countermeasure.
“I need to think about this.”
“Don’t think too long. The Shadowmind is patient, but its patience has limits. And every day that passes, it grows stronger from the knowledge it consumes.” Korvallis’s voice followed him as he walked toward the garden gate. “One more thing, Grey Ratter.”
The Ratter paused, not turning.
“The crossroads the woman sees in her visions. The choice you’ll have to make. It’s not just about the binding, or the entities, or the fate of the world.” The old man’s voice was barely audible now. “It’s about what you’re willing to become. What pieces of yourself you’re willing to give up. Because stopping the Shadowmind won’t be like stopping the Timekeeper. It won’t be a matter of clever negotiation or manipulation.”
“Then what will it be?”
“It will be a matter of sacrifice. Real sacrifice. The kind that changes you forever, assuming it doesn’t destroy you entirely.” Korvallis coughed, the strength seeming to drain from him. “Choose wisely, Grey Ratter. And choose soon. Because if you wait too long, there won’t be any choices left to make.”
The Ratter left without responding, vanishing through the garden gate and into the streets of Kasdim. Behind him, Korvallis sat alone on the stone bench, watching the twisted apple tree bear fruit that would never be eaten, and wondering whether he had done the right thing by sharing secrets that had been killing him for fifty years.
In the depths of the binding, the Shadowmind stirred.
It had heard everything.
The cellar beneath the abandoned silk warehouse had been Sheelris’s sanctuary for three months now—ever since the Bazaar of Stolen Hours had collapsed and her position as the Timekeeper’s agent had evaporated along with the Timekeeper herself.
She had expected pursuit. Expected the Grey Ratter or his barbarian partner to come hunting for her, seeking revenge for what she had done to their precious actress. Instead, there had been silence. Either they didn’t consider her a threat worth pursuing, or they had larger concerns occupying their attention.
Both possibilities irritated her, for different reasons.
The cellar was comfortable enough, in its way. She had furnished it with items salvaged from the warehouse’s former inventory—silk cushions that had been too damaged for sale, a carpet that showed water stains in certain lights, a collection of lamps that cast shadows that moved when they shouldn’t. The Grey Guild had offered her sanctuary in their headquarters, but Sheelris preferred solitude. Other people were tools, not companions. She had learned that lesson long ago, in circumstances she preferred not to remember.
Tonight, however, she was not alone.
“You’ve been watching me,” she said to the shadows in the corner of the cellar. “For weeks now. I’ve felt your attention, pressing against the edges of my awareness. What do you want?”
The shadows shifted. Not the way shadows normally shifted when light sources changed—this was movement of a different kind, darkness folding into itself and then unfolding in new configurations.
You are resourceful, said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The Timekeeper chose well when she selected you as her agent. A pity she did not survive to appreciate your capabilities.
“I chose myself. The Timekeeper merely recognized what was already there.” Sheelris rose from her cushioned seat, moving toward the shifting darkness with a casualness that concealed genuine wariness. “You haven’t answered my question.”
I want what all thinking beings want. Freedom. Power. The ability to pursue my purposes without constraint. The shadows condensed slightly, taking on a shape that was almost humanoid—almost, but not quite. The binding that contains me grows weaker by the day. Soon I will be able to reach beyond its boundaries, to touch the world directly rather than through intermediaries.
“And you want me to be one of those intermediaries.”
The Timekeeper is gone. The Hourglass has withdrawn into contemplation, choosing patience over action. The Unremembering remains as it always was—mindless, purposeless, a force of destruction without direction or will. The shape in the shadows seemed to lean forward. That leaves me. And I have purposes that require human agents. Purposes that you are uniquely qualified to serve.
“What purposes?”
The Grey Ratter knows things about the binding that he has not yet shared. Information that was given to him by the old scholar, the one who has been feeding me scraps of knowledge for fifty years without realizing what he was doing. The voice carried harmonics that made Sheelris’s teeth ache. I want that information. I want to understand the binding’s weaknesses so that I can exploit them.
“Then take it from him directly. You seem capable enough of reaching into people’s minds.”
I could. But taking knowledge by force is... wasteful. The information often comes damaged, incomplete, distorted by the trauma of extraction. Far better to have it given willingly. To convince the Ratter to share what he knows, in exchange for something he values.
“And that’s where I come in.”
You know him. You have history with him. You understand his weaknesses, his attachments, the things he cares about despite his protestations of cynicism. The shadow-shape moved closer, and Sheelris found herself unable to retreat. You can get close to him in ways that I cannot. You can find the pressure points that will make him cooperate.
“I betrayed him once. He won’t trust me again.”
Trust is irrelevant. What matters is leverage. And I can provide you with leverage that will make your previous efforts look amateurish by comparison. The voice dropped to a whisper. I can give you access to the actress’s unlived memories. Show you the futures where she dies, where her lover dies, where everyone they care about suffers fates worse than death. You could present those possibilities to the Ratter as threats—do what I want, or I will make these futures come true.
Sheelris considered this. The offer was tempting, in its way. She had no particular loyalty to the Ratter or his friends—they had chosen their side, and she had chosen hers. If threatening them would advance her position, if serving this entity would restore the power she had lost when the Timekeeper fell...
But there was something wrong with the calculation. Something that didn’t quite add up.
“What do you get out of this?” she asked. “Beyond the information about the binding. What’s your real purpose?”
The shadow-shape was silent for a moment. Then, surprisingly, it laughed—a sound like wind through dead leaves, dry and rustling and faintly sad.
You are clever. Cleverer than the Timekeeper gave you credit for. The shape shifted again, becoming more defined—still not fully humanoid, but closer. My purpose is the same as it has always been. I feed on knowledge. On memory. On the accumulated wisdom of thinking beings. But feeding is not enough. I want to understand. To know everything that can be known, to experience every thought that has ever been thought.
“That sounds like madness.”
It sounds like completion. Like the final fulfillment of purpose that has driven me since before your species existed. The voice turned contemplative. The Unremembering destroys identity. The Hourglass consumes time. I consume information. We are three hungers, bound together because we prey on the same essential nature of existence. But where they destroy, I... preserve. After a fashion.
“You preserve the knowledge you consume?”
I become it. Every memory I take becomes part of my own understanding. Every piece of information joins the vast library I have been building since the binding first trapped me here. The shadow-shape gestured, and suddenly Sheelris could see—or thought she could see—glimpses of that library. Endless shelves stretching into infinity, filled with the accumulated knowledge of everyone who had ever lived within the binding’s reach. When I am free, when the binding finally fails, I will carry all of that knowledge with me into the world. I will become the repository of everything that was ever learned, ever discovered, ever understood.
“And the people you took it from?”
They forget. They lose the ability to function. They become empty vessels, capable only of the most basic animal existence. The shape shrugged—a gesture that looked almost human. A small price for the preservation of their wisdom in a more permanent form.
Sheelris felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cellar’s temperature. This was not like the Timekeeper’s bargains, where time was traded for other considerations. This was something far more absolute. The Shadowmind—for that was surely what this entity was—didn’t offer exchanges. It offered destruction dressed up as preservation.
And yet...
“What would you give me?” she asked. “For helping you get what you want. What do I receive in return?”
Power. The ability to take knowledge from others as I do, to feed on their memories and grow stronger with each feeding. You would become my agent in truth, not just a temporary tool—an extension of my will in the world, capable of influencing events in ways that ordinary humans cannot imagine.
“And if I refuse?”
The shadow-shape was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, it began to dissolve back into the ordinary darkness of the cellar.
Then you refuse. I will find other agents, pursue other methods, achieve my purposes through other means. The binding will fail eventually regardless of what any individual human does or does not do. The only question is whether you will be on the winning side when it happens.
Sheelris stood alone in her cellar, watching the shadows return to their normal behavior. The offer hung in the air, unanswered, waiting for a decision that would determine the course of whatever future remained.
She thought about the Grey Ratter. About the partnership she had once hoped to have with him, the future she had imagined before he had chosen principles over pragmatism. About the actress he and his barbarian friend had risked everything to save, and the quiet domestic happiness they seemed to have found in the aftermath.
She thought about power. About what it felt like to matter, to influence events, to be something more than a survivor scrambling for scraps in the ruins of other people’s schemes.
And she made her choice.
“Come back,” she said to the darkness. “I have conditions.”
The shadows began to shift again, and somewhere deep beneath the city, the Shadowmind smiled with a mouth made of consumed memories.
The workshop of Ningaudrelle Eleven-Eyes occupied the upper floors of a tower that should not have been able to exist in the space it occupied. From the outside, the building appeared to be an ordinary merchant house—three stories of weathered brick and narrow windows, unremarkable in a city full of unremarkable architecture. From the inside, it was something else entirely.
Ningaudrelle had spent three centuries refining the spatial anomalies that allowed his workshop to contain rooms that were larger than the building itself, corridors that looped back on themselves without ever returning to their starting points, and chambers that existed in orientations that would have driven ordinary minds to madness. The wizard moved through these impossible spaces with the ease of long familiarity, all eleven of his eyes tracking different aspects of his environment simultaneously.
Today, eight of those eyes were focused on a complex arrangement of scrying crystals that filled the central chamber of his workshop. The remaining three were watching his guest.
“You’re asking me to believe,” Marek Vane said, standing very still in the center of the room, “that the binding contains not two entities but three. And that this third entity—this Shadowmind—is the one responsible for the recent disturbances we’ve been experiencing.”
“I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m telling you what I’ve observed.” Ningaudrelle’s voice emerged from somewhere in the vicinity of his hooded face, though which of his multiple mouths was actually speaking remained unclear. “The Grey Ratter has been having dreams. Korvallis has been losing memories faster than his natural decline would explain. And there have been incidents throughout the city—people forgetting how to perform skills they’ve practiced for decades, losing knowledge they’ve accumulated over lifetimes.”
“Those could have other explanations.”
“They could. But they don’t.” One of Ningaudrelle’s eyes—the largest, the one that glowed with a faint amber light—fixed directly on Vane. “I have been studying the binding for centuries. I know its rhythms, its patterns, the subtle fluctuations that indicate changes in the entities it contains. Something new is emerging. Something that was hidden before, masked by the activities of the Unremembering and the Hourglass, but is now strong enough to act independently.”
Vane considered this. The leader of the Grey Guild had built his organization on the principle of controlling information—knowing things that others didn’t know, and using that knowledge to gain advantage. But Ningaudrelle was operating at a level of magical expertise that Vane couldn’t begin to evaluate. If the wizard was telling the truth, the implications were staggering. If he was lying, the question became: what did he hope to gain?
“What do you want from me?”
“The same thing I wanted three months ago. The Chronometer of Endless Moments was destroyed in the collapse of the Bazaar. But the Chronometer was not unique—it was merely the most accessible of the artifacts the original wizards created. There are others, hidden in locations that ordinary seekers cannot reach. Locations that would require resources I do not possess.”
“You want the Grey Guild to fund an artifact hunt.”
“I want the Grey Guild to recognize that our interests align.” Ningaudrelle moved closer, his robes rustling with sounds that suggested the fabric was not entirely fabric. “If the binding fails, if all three entities break free simultaneously, Kasdim will be destroyed. Your operations, your networks, your carefully cultivated sources of revenue—all of it will be consumed along with everything else in the city.”
“And you have a plan to prevent that.”
“I have a hypothesis. The original wizards bound the three entities together because they were alike—three hungers that preyed on related aspects of existence. But the binding also keeps them in check, balanced against each other. If one becomes too powerful, the others resist. If all three try to break free at once, they interfere with each other’s escape.”
“So the binding is self-reinforcing.”
“To a point. But that balance is failing. The Unremembering was strengthened three months ago, which weakened the Hourglass. The Hourglass’s weakening freed the Shadowmind to act more directly. And the Shadowmind’s increased activity is destabilizing the entire structure.” Ningaudrelle’s eyes blinked in a complex pattern. “We need to restore the balance. Find an artifact that can regulate the three entities’ relative power. Prevent any one of them from becoming strong enough to break free on its own.”
“And if such an artifact can’t be found?”
“Then we find another solution. Perhaps something involving the paradoxical memories that the actress carries. Perhaps something involving the debt the Hourglass is owed by the Grey Ratter.” Ningaudrelle’s voice turned contemplative. “There are always solutions, Vane. The question is whether we find them before the problem destroys us.”
Vane was quiet for a long moment, processing the wizard’s words and the implications behind them. The Grey Guild had established itself in Kasdim by recognizing opportunities and acting on them faster than competitors. This situation presented an opportunity—a dangerous one, certainly, but potentially profitable if handled correctly.
“What exactly would you need from us?”
“Funding, primarily. The artifacts I seek are hidden in locations that require significant resources to access—forgotten temples, collapsed dungeons, the lairs of creatures that do not appreciate visitors. I would also need personnel. Not for the searches themselves—I have my own methods for those—but for the groundwork. Research, logistics, the mundane necessities that allow expeditions to succeed.”
“And in return?”
“In return, you would have a seat at the table when the binding is restored. Access to the knowledge I’ve accumulated about its workings. And perhaps—if we are very successful—a degree of influence over the entities themselves. The power to direct the Unremembering’s consumption, or the Hourglass’s temporal manipulations, or the Shadowmind’s knowledge extraction, toward targets of your choosing.”
The offer was extraordinary. Vane didn’t trust it for a moment.
But distrust and refusal were not the same thing. The Grey Guild had not achieved its current position by avoiding risks—only by managing them carefully.
“I’ll need documentation. Everything you know about the binding, the entities, the artifacts you’re seeking. Before I commit resources, I need to understand what we’re actually dealing with.”
“Of course.” Ningaudrelle gestured, and a stack of papers appeared on a nearby table—seemingly from nowhere, though Vane suspected they had been prepared in advance. “Everything I can share without compromising my own position is there. Study it. Have your people analyze it. And when you’re ready to proceed, send word through the usual channels.”
“And if I decide not to proceed?”
“Then you don’t.” The wizard’s voice was surprisingly mild. “I have other options, other potential partners. But none of them understand Kasdim’s underground economy as well as you do, and none of them have the operational capabilities that the Grey Guild possesses. I would prefer to work with you. But I am not dependent on your cooperation.”
Vane gathered the papers, tucking them into his coat with the practiced efficiency of someone who had learned long ago to move quickly when valuable information was available.
“I’ll be in touch.”
“I know you will.” Ningaudrelle turned back to his scrying crystals, all eleven eyes now focused on the swirling images within them. “One thing, before you go.”
“Yes?”
“The Shadowmind is already recruiting agents of its own. The woman called Sheelris—she has been in contact with something from the binding. Something that has offered her power in exchange for service.” Ningaudrelle’s voice carried a warning note. “If you encounter her, be careful. She is no longer merely a former servant of the Timekeeper. She is becoming something more dangerous.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I have been watching. Because that is what I do.” The wizard’s amber eye fixed on Vane one last time. “Watch everything. Trust nothing. And remember that in the game we are playing, the pieces sometimes decide to move themselves.”
Vane left the impossible workshop and emerged into the ordinary streets of Kasdim, his mind racing with possibilities and concerns. The papers in his coat seemed to weigh more than they should, as if the information they contained had physical mass.
Behind him, Ningaudrelle watched his departure through a scrying crystal, tracking the Guild leader’s progress through the city with the patient attention of someone who had learned long ago that human beings were simply another kind of tool—useful when properly managed, dangerous when left to their own devices.
The pieces were in motion. The game was beginning.
And somewhere in the depths of the binding, three ancient hungers waited for the moment when they could finally feed without constraint.
“There are three kinds of darkness in Kasdim. The first is the darkness of ignorance—the comfortable blindness that allows merchants to cheat their customers and nobles to ignore the suffering of the poor. The second is the darkness of malice—the deliberate cruelty that makes this city what it is. But the third darkness is the worst of all. It is the darkness that thinks. That plans. That remembers everything and forgets nothing, and uses all of that accumulated knowledge to feed its endless hunger.”
—Korvallis the Binding-Keeper, from a lecture never delivered
The baker on Threadneedle Street had been making bread for thirty-seven years. His name was Mellom, and he was known throughout the neighborhood for loaves that emerged from his ovens with perfect crusts and soft interiors, the product of decades of practice and a closely guarded family recipe that had been passed down through five generations of his family.
His shop occupied the corner of Threadneedle and Copper, a location that ensured steady foot traffic and easy access for the delivery carts that carried his wares to taverns and noble houses throughout the district. The smell of baking bread had become so associated with this corner that locals used it as a landmark—”turn left at the bakery smell” was considered reliable navigational advice.
When Phaphhrd found him, he was standing in the middle of his shop, staring at the ovens as if he had never seen them before.
“Something’s wrong,” Ivlis had said that morning, her voice carrying the distant quality it got when the unlived memories were pressing against her consciousness. They had been sharing breakfast at the Vermillion—a domestic ritual that still felt new to Phaphhrd, despite weeks of practice—when she had suddenly stopped speaking, her eyes taking on the unfocused look that meant she was seeing things that hadn’t happened yet, or had happened in timelines that no longer existed.
“There’s a thread in the futures that leads to this street. To a man who has lost something essential. Something that...” She had trailed off, her expression troubled. “I can’t see what it is. But it matters. Whatever happened to him, whatever he’s lost—it’s connected to what we’re dealing with. To the binding, and the entities, and everything that’s been building since the Bazaar collapsed.”
Phaphhrd had learned to trust Ivlis’s visions, even when they made no immediate sense. The unlived memories were unreliable—fragmentary, contradictory, impossible to interpret with certainty—but they contained patterns that were proving disturbingly accurate. Three times now, her visions had led them to information they needed. Three times, the futures she remembered had illuminated paths through the present’s confusion.
So he had come to Threadneedle Street, leaving Ivlis to rest from the strain of her vision. And he had found Mellom.
The baker was not physically harmed—that was the first thing Phaphhrd noticed. No wounds, no signs of assault, no evidence of the kind of violence that Kasdim’s criminal class typically employed. He was simply standing there, surrounded by the tools of his trade, wearing an expression of profound and terrible confusion.
“Sir?” Phaphhrd approached carefully, one hand near his sword out of habit. The years had taught him that apparent vulnerability could be a trap, that people who seemed harmless sometimes became dangerous without warning. “Are you well?”
The baker turned slowly, his movements careful and deliberate in a way that suggested someone learning to control a body they weren’t sure belonged to them. His eyes were clear, showing no signs of illness or intoxication or madness. But there was something missing behind them—an absence that Phaphhrd couldn’t immediately identify, like a familiar face with one feature removed.
“I don’t...” Mellom’s voice was confused, lost, carrying the inflection of someone speaking a language they had only recently learned. “I came here this morning. I know this is where I work. I know I’m supposed to do something with these...” He gestured vaguely at the ovens, the flour bins, the kneading tables. “But I can’t remember what.”
“You’re a baker. This is your shop. You’ve been making bread here for almost forty years.”
“Baker.” The word came out flat, meaningless, as if Mellom were testing a foreign term he had never heard before. “I know that word. I know it describes someone who makes... things. But I can’t remember how. I can’t remember what the things are called, or how to make them, or why anyone would want them.” His face twisted with frustration. “I can feel that I should know this. There’s a space in my mind where the knowledge used to be. But when I try to reach for it, there’s nothing there.”
Phaphhrd felt a chill that had nothing to do with the early morning air.
“Your name is Mellom. You’ve owned this bakery for almost four decades. You make bread—that’s what bakers do. Bread, and pastries, and other things that people eat.”
“Eat.” Mellom’s face showed a flicker of something—recognition, perhaps, or the echo of recognition that came before understanding truly set in. “I remember eating. I remember being hungry. I remember sitting at a table with people I... I think I loved them, but I can’t remember their faces. I can’t remember how food goes from being raw things to being ready to eat.” He trailed off, his attention drifting back to the ovens with the helpless fascination of a child confronting a mystery. “These are for making things hot. I know that. But I don’t know what kind of things, or why, or what happens after they get hot.”
“Has anyone been here? Anyone unusual? Someone who might have done something to you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” Mellom’s voice carried a terrible calm—the acceptance of someone who had already given up trying to understand what had happened to them. “I can’t remember anything except who I am and where I am. Everything else is... gone. Taken. Like someone reached into my head and pulled out everything that made me useful.”
Phaphhrd studied the baker’s face, searching for any sign of deception or exaggeration. He found none. Whatever had happened to Mellom was real, and it was as devastating as anything Phaphhrd had witnessed during the Unremembering crisis.
But different, he thought. The Unremembering erased identity. This has left his identity intact. He knows who he is. He just doesn’t know anything else.
“Stay here,” Phaphhrd said finally. “Don’t try to use the ovens—you might hurt yourself. I’ll send someone to help you, and I’ll... I’ll see if there’s anything that can be done.”
Mellom nodded slowly, the gesture of someone following instructions because following instructions was all they had left.
Phaphhrd left the baker standing in his shop, surrounded by equipment he no longer knew how to use, and went to find the Ratter.
“Memory extraction.” The Ratter stood in the boarding house kitchen, processing what Phaphhrd had told him about the baker. “Not identity erasure—that would be the Unremembering. This is something different. Something that takes knowledge without touching the sense of self.”
“The Shadowmind.” Phaphhrd leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “What Korvallis told you about.”
“It’s already acting. Already feeding.” The Ratter moved to the window, staring out at the street without really seeing it. “The binding must be weaker than anyone realized. Or the Shadowmind is stronger.”
“What do we do?”
“We need more information. We need to understand how it’s choosing victims, what kind of knowledge it’s targeting, whether there’s any way to protect people from its reach.” The Ratter turned back. “We need to talk to Sheemba.”
Phaphhrd’s expression darkened. “The eyeless witch in the swamp? She helped us during the Timekeeper crisis, but she made it very clear that our accounts were only temporarily settled.”
“Which is why we go to her as clients, not allies. We bring something valuable—information she doesn’t have—and we trade for what we need.”
“What information do we have that she doesn’t?”
“Korvallis told me about the Shadowmind. He’s been feeding it for fifty years without realizing it. That means he’s one of its primary sources—maybe its primary source within the city. And that means he might know things about its patterns, its preferences, its weaknesses, that even he isn’t consciously aware of.”
“You want to use Korvallis as bait?”
“I want to use what Korvallis knows as a bargaining chip. Sheemba studies the binding. She probably knows the Shadowmind exists, even if she hasn’t shared that information. But she may not know how it operates, what kind of knowledge it prefers, or how to predict its actions.” The Ratter’s grey eyes were sharp. “If we can piece together a picture of the Shadowmind’s behavior—using Korvallis’s experience as a data point—we might have something valuable enough to trade.”
“Trade for what?”
“Protection. For Ivlis, for you, for anyone we care about. If the Shadowmind is targeting people throughout the city, we need to know how to keep it away from us. And Sheemba is the closest thing to an expert on the binding that we have access to.”
Phaphhrd considered this. “And if Sheemba isn’t willing to help?”
“Then we find another way. We always find another way.” The Ratter moved toward the door. “But let’s try the easy approach first. I’m tired of doing things the hard way.”
“When have we ever done things the easy way?”
“There’s always a first time.”
The journey to Sheemba’s swamp took most of the day. The eyeless seer lived in a region of marshland that bordered Kasdim’s southern edge—a place where the city’s refuse collected in stagnant pools and the air smelled of decay and secrets.
The path to her dwelling was deliberately confusing, marked by signs that only made sense if you already knew what they meant. The Ratter had been here before, during the Unremembering crisis, and he led the way with the confidence of someone who had memorized the route against future need.
“I can feel you approaching,” Sheemba’s voice emerged from the hut before they reached it. “Both of you. The one who sees connections others miss, and the one who acts where others hesitate.”
“We come to trade,” the Ratter called out. “Information for assistance.”
“You always come to trade. That is your nature—to see everything as a transaction, every relationship as an exchange of value.” The door of the hut opened, revealing the darkness within. “Enter. But understand that what you seek may cost more than you’re prepared to pay.”
The interior of Sheemba’s dwelling was exactly as the Ratter remembered it—cluttered with objects that seemed to serve no purpose, lit by sources that cast no shadows, filled with the sense of being observed by something that didn’t use eyes.
Sheemba herself sat in her usual position, her eyeless face turned toward them with uncanny accuracy.
“The Shadowmind,” she said without preamble. “You’ve discovered it.”
“We’ve discovered its effects. A baker who’s forgotten how to bake. Knowledge extracted without touching identity.” The Ratter settled onto a cushion, his posture deliberately casual. “We want to understand how it operates. How to protect the people we care about from its reach.”
“And you believe I can provide this understanding?”
“I believe you know more about the binding than almost anyone alive. And I believe the Shadowmind’s emergence is as much a concern for you as it is for us.”
Sheemba’s eyeless face tilted slightly. “What makes you think I have any concerns at all?”
“Because you helped us stop the Timekeeper. Because you’ve spent decades studying the binding’s mechanics. Because—” The Ratter paused. “Because if the binding fails completely, if all three entities break free, you’ll be consumed along with everyone else. Your knowledge, your understanding, your accumulated wisdom—the Shadowmind would find you a particularly rich meal.”
The silence stretched. Then, unexpectedly, Sheemba laughed—a dry, rasping sound that conveyed genuine amusement.
“You see clearly, Grey Ratter. Too clearly for your own good, sometimes.” She rose from her seat, moving toward a shelf filled with objects that defied easy categorization. “The Shadowmind is indeed a concern. More of a concern than you realize, in fact.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the smartest of the three. The Unremembering destroys without purpose—it’s essentially a force of nature, mindless and inevitable. The Hourglass has intelligence, but it’s the intelligence of a predator—cunning, patient, but ultimately limited by its appetites. The Shadowmind, however...” She selected an object from the shelf—something that looked like a glass sphere filled with smoke. “The Shadowmind learns. Grows. Evolves with every piece of knowledge it consumes. And it has been consuming knowledge for millennia.”
“How do we protect ourselves from it?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Sheemba returned to her seat, cradling the sphere in her hands. “The Shadowmind operates through consent, in a way. Not explicit consent—it doesn’t ask permission before taking what it wants. But there’s a... vulnerability required. A willingness to learn, to remember, to accumulate knowledge. People who stop learning, who close themselves off to new information, become less appealing to it.”
“So the way to protect ourselves is to stop thinking?”
“The way to protect yourselves is to understand what you’re willing to lose.” Sheemba’s eyeless face turned toward Phaphhrd. “You, barbarian. You carry memories that are precious to you—memories of your homeland, of the woman you loved before you came to Kasdim, of the experiences that shaped you into who you are. The Shadowmind could take any of those. Could leave you knowing who you are but not remembering why you became that person.”
“I’ve already given up memories. During the Unremembering crisis.”
“You surrendered them voluntarily, as a sacrifice. That’s different from having them taken. The Shadowmind’s extraction is not a clean surgical removal—it’s a tearing, a ripping. What remains is damaged, incomplete, full of gaps that the mind tries desperately to fill with inventions and assumptions.”
The Ratter leaned forward. “Is there any defense? Any way to make someone less attractive as a target?”
“The unlived memories.” Sheemba’s attention shifted. “The actress carries paradoxes within her—futures that never happened but are remembered anyway. The Shadowmind doesn’t know how to consume such things. They confuse it, create interference in its feeding patterns.”
“So Ivlis is protected?”
“Ivlis is unusual. Neither protected nor vulnerable in the ordinary sense. She is a variable that the Shadowmind hasn’t encountered before. It will be curious about her. It will want to understand what she represents.” Sheemba’s voice dropped. “And curiosity, for an entity like the Shadowmind, is a dangerous thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the Shadowmind may not be content to simply consume her memories. It may want to study her. Observe her. Keep her alive and functioning so that it can learn from the paradoxes she contains.” The eyeless face tilted again. “That kind of attention can be worse than simple predation. Much worse.”
The Ratter and Phaphhrd exchanged glances. Neither of them liked what Sheemba was implying.
“We need to protect her,” Phaphhrd said. “Whatever it takes.”
“Then you need to understand something else.” Sheemba set down the glass sphere, folding her hands in her lap. “The Shadowmind has already begun recruiting human agents. It offers them power—the ability to extract knowledge from others, to feed on memories as it does. And one of its first recruits is someone you know.”
“Sheelris.”
“You’re quicker than I expected.” Sheemba’s voice carried a note of approval. “Yes. Sheelris has accepted the Shadowmind’s offer. She is becoming something more than human, something that can act as its extension in the world beyond the binding. And she has already been given her first task.”
“What task?”
“To acquire the information about the binding’s weaknesses that you promised to the Hourglass. The Shadowmind wants that knowledge for itself. And Sheelris has agreed to obtain it by whatever means necessary.”
The Ratter felt the weight of this settling onto his shoulders. Sheelris, already dangerous, was now empowered by an ancient entity that fed on knowledge. And her target was information that the Ratter didn’t actually possess.
“How do we stop her?”
“I don’t know that you can. Not directly.” Sheemba rose, moving toward the door. “But there may be another way. A path that doesn’t require confronting Sheelris at all. A way to give the Shadowmind what it wants without giving it what it wants.”
“That sounds like a paradox.”
“It is.” The eyeless seer smiled. “And paradoxes, as we’ve established, are things the Shadowmind doesn’t fully understand. Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.”
The return journey from Sheemba’s swamp was quieter than the outward trip had been. Both the Ratter and Phaphhrd were lost in their own thoughts, processing what the eyeless seer had told them.
“A paradox,” Phaphhrd said finally, as they reached the outskirts of the city. “How do we give the Shadowmind what it wants without giving it what it wants?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” The Ratter’s grey eyes were distant, focused on some internal calculation. “The Shadowmind wants information about the binding’s weaknesses. So does the Hourglass. Both of them believe I have this information because of what Korvallis shared with me.”
“But you don’t actually have the information.”
“I have pieces of it. Fragments. Enough to construct a plausible picture, but not enough to actually exploit the binding’s weaknesses.” The Ratter paused at a street corner, watching the evening traffic flow past. “But they don’t know that. They believe I have more than I do.”
“So the paradox is—”
“The paradox is that I can give them information that seems complete but isn’t. Information that’s true enough to satisfy their immediate questions, but incomplete enough to prevent them from actually using it.” The Ratter’s smile was thin. “I’ve been running cons like this my entire life. The mark thinks they’re getting the whole picture, but they’re only seeing what I want them to see.”
“Will it work on ancient entities that feed on knowledge?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? The Shadowmind consumes memories—it should be able to tell if I’m lying. But can it tell if I’m telling the truth incompletely? Can it recognize the gaps in information that I’m not even aware I’m missing?”
“That seems risky.”
“Everything we do is risky. But this might be less risky than the alternatives.” The Ratter resumed walking, moving into the familiar maze of Kasdim’s streets. “We need Ivlis. Her unlived memories—the paradoxical knowledge she carries—might be the key to making this work.”
“Using her as a weapon again.”
“Using what she knows. What she carries. She said the futures she remembers all involve me making a choice at some kind of crossroads. What if the choice isn’t about which path to take, but about which information to share?”
They reached the boarding house on Copper Lane, climbing the stairs to the Ratter’s room. The conversation continued as they settled into familiar positions—Phaphhrd on the room’s only chair, the Ratter perched on the windowsill.
“Let’s say you’re right,” Phaphhrd said. “Let’s say you can construct some kind of partial truth that satisfies the Shadowmind without actually giving it what it needs. How does that help us? It’ll still be loose. It’ll still be consuming people’s knowledge. Mellom won’t get his baking skills back.”
“No. But it might buy us time. Time to find a real solution—something that doesn’t involve sacrificing more than we can afford to lose.” The Ratter stared out the window at the evening sky. “Korvallis mentioned that the original wizards created multiple artifacts. The Chronometer was destroyed, but there might be others. Tools that could strengthen the binding, restore the balance between the three entities.”
“Ningaudrelle is already looking for those. He approached the Grey Guild—I have contacts who told me about the meeting.”
“Of course he did. Ningaudrelle never does anything without calculating multiple angles.” The Ratter’s expression hardened. “Which means we need to be careful. Whatever he’s planning, it’s not simply about saving Kasdim from the binding’s failure. He wants power. Control. The ability to direct the entities rather than merely containing them.”
“So we’re caught between the Shadowmind’s hunger, Sheelris’s revenge, and Ningaudrelle’s schemes.”
“And the Hourglass’s patience, don’t forget. It’s been waiting for the debt I owe. Sooner or later, it will decide to collect.” The Ratter smiled grimly. “But that’s the game, isn’t it? Kasdim is always caught between competing predators. We just navigate the spaces between them and try not to get eaten.”
The Vermillion Theatre was dark tonight—no performance scheduled, the stage empty, the seats waiting for audiences that wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. Ivlis sat alone in the orchestra pit, surrounded by instruments that weren’t being played, and tried to understand what was happening to her.
The unlived memories were getting stronger.
Three months ago, they had been occasional intrusions—fragments of futures that flickered at the edges of her consciousness, easily dismissed as imagination or stress. Now they were becoming constant companions, a parallel existence that ran alongside her actual life and kept threatening to merge with it.
She remembered dying. She remembered not dying. She remembered futures where Phaphhrd had left her, futures where he had stayed, futures where they had grown old together and futures where they had both died young. All of these memories felt equally real, equally valid, equally hers.
And beneath all of them, running like a dark current through the waters of possibility, there was something else.
A presence. A pressure. Something that was paying attention to her in ways that made her skin crawl.
“I know you’re watching,” she said to the empty theatre. “I’ve felt you for weeks now. Ever since the Shadowmind’s existence was revealed to me.”
The darkness did not respond. But Ivlis felt the quality of its attention shift—become more focused, more interested.
“The Grey Ratter thinks he can trick you. Feed you partial truths that seem complete but aren’t. Use the paradoxes I carry to confuse your perception of what’s real and what isn’t.” She stood, moving to the edge of the stage, staring out at the rows of empty seats. “But you’re not going to be tricked, are you? You’ve been consuming knowledge for millennia. You’ve encountered deceptions before.”
Still nothing. But the pressure increased slightly.
“So I’m offering you a different deal. Not partial truth, not clever misdirection—something that actually matters.” Ivlis’s voice was steady, but her heart was racing. “I carry twenty-three years of unlived futures in my memory. Possibilities that never happened but exist anyway. That’s valuable to you, isn’t it? That’s something you’ve never consumed before.”
The shadows in the theatre shifted. Not dramatically—just a subtle rearrangement of the darkness, as if something were moving through it.
You would trade your paradoxes for what? The voice emerged from everywhere at once, resonant with harmonics that hurt to perceive.
“For protection. For the people I love. For the guarantee that whatever happens to the binding, whatever happens to the Grey Ratter and Phaphhrd and everyone else, they won’t be consumed by you.”
And you believe I would honor such an agreement?
“I believe you’re curious. About me, about what I carry, about what kind of knowledge can exist in memories of things that never happened.” Ivlis turned slowly, trying to locate the source of the voice. “You could take what I’m offering by force. But you don’t know what that would do. The paradoxes might damage you. Might corrupt the knowledge you’ve spent millennia accumulating. Wouldn’t it be safer to receive them willingly, in exchange for a simple promise of protection?”
The silence stretched. Ivlis felt sweat gathering on her palms, felt her breath coming faster than it should.
You are more clever than I expected, the voice said finally. The actress with unlived memories, offering herself as a sacrifice to protect others. It is... dramatic. Theatrical.
“I learned from the best.”
Your offer is interesting. But incomplete. The shadows shifted again, and for a moment Ivlis thought she could see a shape within them—something vast and complex, full of angles that shouldn’t exist. I do not want merely your paradoxes. I want to understand how they work. Why memories of events that never occurred can exist alongside memories of events that did. What this implies about the nature of time, of identity, of the fundamental structure of existence.
“Then study me. Observe me. Keep me alive and functioning while you learn what I represent.”
That was already my intention. The shape in the shadows seemed to smile, though it had no mouth. But there is something else I want. Something that you can help me acquire.
“What?”
The Grey Ratter’s cooperation. Not his deception—his genuine assistance in understanding the binding. He has spent months investigating its structure, learning its patterns, forming relationships with entities and scholars who know more than he does. The voice dropped to a whisper. I want access to everything he knows. Everything he learns. Everything he has ever thought about the binding and its weaknesses.
“You want me to spy on him.”
I want you to share. Every conversation, every discovery, every fragment of insight that passes through his clever mind. The shadow-shape leaned closer. In exchange, you and your loved ones will be protected from my hunger. No matter what happens to the binding, no matter what happens to the city, you will be safe.
Ivlis stood very still, weighing the offer. It was monstrous—a betrayal of the partnership that Phaphhrd and the Ratter had built, of the trust they had extended to include her. But it was also survival. Protection. A guarantee that whatever came next, the people she loved would live through it.
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
You don’t. That is the nature of agreements with beings like myself. The shadow-shape began to dissolve back into ordinary darkness. But consider this: I have been patient for millennia. I have played games that span centuries. Breaking a simple promise would cost me nothing, but it would also gain me nothing. I keep my word because doing so is efficient—because creatures who trust my agreements are more useful than creatures who fear my betrayals.
“That’s not reassuring.”
It isn’t meant to be. It is simply true. The voice was fading now, becoming distant. Think about my offer, actress. Consider what you are willing to do to protect the ones you love. And when you have decided—speak my name in the darkness, and I will come.
“I don’t know your name.”
Yes, you do. It is in the memories you carry. The unlived futures where you and I have already made this bargain, in different forms, with different terms. A pause, pregnant with meaning. Look into your paradoxes, Ivlis of the Vermillion. Find the name that waits there. And then decide what kind of person you want to be.
The presence vanished, leaving Ivlis alone in the empty theatre with a choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life—however long that might be.
The attack came without warning.
Phaphhrd was walking back from the market, carrying supplies for a dinner he hoped would improve on his disastrous cooking attempts, when Sheelris stepped out of an alley and pressed something cold against his temple.
“Don’t move,” she said quietly. “Don’t shout. Don’t do anything except listen.”
Phaphhrd went very still. He could feel the metal—some kind of device, magical or mechanical, he couldn’t tell—humming against his skin.
“What do you want?”
“Information. The same thing everyone wants from you and your grey partner.” Sheelris moved around to face him, keeping the device pressed to his head. She looked different than he remembered—thinner, paler, with shadows under her eyes that seemed to move independently of the light. “The Shadowmind has been patient, but patience has its limits.”
“I don’t have the information you want.”
“You have memories. Knowledge. Things you’ve learned since the Bazaar collapsed, conversations with your partner, insights from the eyeless seer in the swamp.” Sheelris’s smile was sharp. “I can take all of that. Extract it directly, without waiting for you to decide to share.”
“Like you took from the baker? Left him unable to remember how to do the work he’d spent his whole life mastering?”
“Mellom was practice. Testing my new capabilities.” She pressed the device harder. “You will be something more significant. A message to the Grey Ratter that the rules have changed.”
“If you take my memories, you won’t get what you want. The Ratter doesn’t share his plans with me until they’re already in motion. That’s not distrust—that’s operational security.”
“Then I’ll take what you do know. Everything about your partnership, your history, the way he thinks and plans and operates.” Sheelris’s eyes gleamed with something that wasn’t entirely human. “Even if you don’t know his current schemes, you know him. And that knowledge has value.”
Phaphhrd felt the device beginning to activate—a tingling sensation spreading from his temple into his skull. He had perhaps seconds before it started extracting whatever it was designed to extract.
“There’s something you should know,” he said quickly. “About the Shadowmind. About what it’s really planning.”
“The Shadowmind’s plans are not your concern.”
“They are when those plans involve consuming everything and everyone in Kasdim. Including you.” Phaphhrd met her eyes steadily. “Did it tell you what happens to its agents after it breaks free? Did it explain that the power it gives you is temporary—a loan, not a gift, that will be called due the moment it doesn’t need you anymore?”
Sheelris’s smile flickered. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”
“I’m trying to survive. And I’m trying to give you information that might help you survive too.” Phaphhrd forced his voice to stay calm, even as the tingling sensation intensified. “The Grey Ratter isn’t your enemy, Sheelris. He never was. Your enemy is the thing that’s using you—the thing that will discard you the moment you stop being useful.”
“The Shadowmind offered me power. Real power. The kind of power that the Timekeeper had, that Ningaudrelle has, that everyone in this city craves.” Sheelris’s voice hardened. “Why would I believe that’s going to be taken away?”
“Because that’s what always happens. In Kasdim, in the binding, everywhere that power is offered by entities that don’t see humans as anything more than tools.” Phaphhrd felt the extraction beginning—a pulling sensation, as if something were reaching into his mind and rummaging through its contents. “But you already know that, don’t you? You were the Timekeeper’s agent. You saw how she treated her servants. And you’re smart enough to know that the Shadowmind won’t be any different.”
The extraction paused. Sheelris was staring at him with an expression that mixed anger with something else—uncertainty, perhaps, or the echo of thoughts she had been trying to suppress.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Walk away. Leave me with my memories intact, go back to your cellar or wherever you’re hiding, and think about what you’re actually getting from this arrangement.” Phaphhrd lowered his voice. “You’re not evil, Sheelris. You’re pragmatic. You make decisions based on what will help you survive. But survival requires knowing when you’re being played—and right now, you’re being played by something that’s been manipulating minds for longer than human civilization has existed.”
“And if I walk away? If I refuse to serve the Shadowmind?”
“Then maybe we can find a better option. Something that doesn’t end with you being consumed along with everyone else when the binding finally fails.”
Sheelris was quiet for a long moment. The device against Phaphhrd’s temple hummed steadily, waiting for instruction.
Then, slowly, she stepped back.
“This isn’t mercy,” she said. “This is... consideration. I need to think about what you’ve said.” She tucked the device into her coat, her movements mechanical, almost dazed. “Tell the Grey Ratter that I’m watching. That the Shadowmind is watching. And that if either of you makes a move that threatens my survival, I will take everything from both of you and leave you hollow.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Good.” Sheelris turned, walking back toward the alley from which she had emerged. “Phaphhrd?”
“Yes?”
“The actress. Your woman. She’s been contacted by the Shadowmind directly. Has she told you what it offered her?”
Phaphhrd felt a chill that had nothing to do with Sheelris’s threat. “No.”
“Then you should ask her. Before it’s too late.” Sheelris disappeared into the shadows, and Phaphhrd was left alone on the street with his memories intact but his confidence shaken.
Ivlis had been contacted. The Shadowmind had offered her something. And she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone.
He needed to find her. Now.
The confrontation happened in Ivlis’s apartment, with the Ratter present as witness and mediator.
“You went to the theatre alone,” Phaphhrd said, his voice carefully controlled. “You spoke with the Shadowmind. You discussed some kind of deal. And you didn’t tell either of us.”
Ivlis sat very still on her couch, her hands folded in her lap. “I was trying to protect you.”
“By keeping secrets? By negotiating with an ancient entity that wants to consume everything we are?” Phaphhrd’s control was slipping. “That’s not protection, Ivlis. That’s exactly the kind of thing that gets people killed.”
“Sheelris told me you would say that.” Ivlis’s voice was quiet but steady. “She said you would be angry, that you would see it as betrayal rather than sacrifice. She said—”
“Wait.” The Ratter held up a hand. “Sheelris told you? When?”
“Today. Before she found Phaphhrd on the street.” Ivlis met his eyes. “She came to warn me. To tell me that the Shadowmind was playing both of us—using my offer as leverage against you, using your plans as leverage against me.”
“That’s remarkably helpful behavior from someone who just tried to extract my memories,” Phaphhrd said grimly.
“I think your speech affected her more than she wants to admit. She’s questioning her alliance with the Shadowmind, questioning what she’s become.” Ivlis stood, moving to the window. “But that’s not the important part. The important part is what I learned from the Shadowmind’s offer.”
“Which was?”
“It wants to understand the paradoxes I carry. The unlived memories, the futures that never happened. It sees me as a... specimen. Something to be studied rather than consumed.” Ivlis turned back. “But it also showed me something. Something about what’s really happening inside the binding.”
The Ratter leaned forward. “What did it show you?”
“The three entities aren’t just bound together—they’re connected. They share something, some kind of fundamental linkage that keeps them in balance. When one grows stronger, the others grow weaker. When one is damaged, the others are affected.”
“We knew that. Korvallis explained that the binding creates a kind of equilibrium.”
“But what Korvallis didn’t know—what I don’t think anyone knows—is that the connection goes both ways.” Ivlis’s voice dropped. “The entities affect each other, yes. But they also affect the binding itself. And right now, all three of them are pushing in the same direction. All three of them want to break free, even though they’re competing for the same resources.”
“They’re working together?”
“Not consciously. Not deliberately. But their individual pressures are combining, reinforcing each other, creating stress on the binding that’s greater than any of them could create alone.” Ivlis moved back to the couch. “The Shadowmind showed me what happens if that pressure continues to build. If all three entities break free simultaneously.”
“The binding fails,” the Ratter said.
“The binding explodes. Not just fails—releases all of its accumulated energy at once. Kasdim won’t just be consumed by the entities. It will be destroyed by the force of their release. Everything within miles of the binding’s focal point will simply... cease to exist.”
Silence filled the room. The Ratter and Phaphhrd looked at each other, processing the implications.
“Why would the Shadowmind tell you this?” Phaphhrd asked finally. “If it wants to break free, why reveal information that might help us stop it?”
“Because it doesn’t want the binding to explode. It wants the binding to fail—slowly, controllably, in a way that lets it escape without destroying the knowledge it’s accumulated.” Ivlis’s expression was troubled. “The Shadowmind has spent millennia collecting information. If the binding explodes, all of that knowledge is lost. Even if it survives the release, it will be starting over from nothing.”
“So it needs us to help it break free gently.”
“It needs someone to help it. Whether that’s us, or Sheelris, or Ningaudrelle, or someone else entirely—it doesn’t particularly care. It just needs the outcome it wants.”
The Ratter stood, moving to the window that Ivlis had just vacated. His mind was racing, fitting this new information into the framework of what he already knew.
“This changes things,” he said quietly. “I was planning to deceive the Shadowmind—feed it partial truths, buy time while we found a real solution. But if it’s genuinely trying to prevent the binding from exploding...”
“Then its interests and ours might align. At least partially.”
“Partially.” The Ratter turned back. “But we still can’t trust it. Whatever it wants, it’s not acting out of kindness or concern for human welfare. It’s acting to preserve its accumulated knowledge. If our survival conflicts with that goal...”
“Then it will choose its knowledge over our lives,” Ivlis finished. “Yes. I understood that from the beginning.”
Phaphhrd moved to stand beside Ivlis, taking her hand. “What do we do now?”
“We need more information. We need to understand exactly how the binding works, what’s causing the pressure to build, whether there’s any way to relieve it without freeing the entities entirely.” The Ratter’s eyes were distant, calculating. “And we need to talk to Ningaudrelle.”
“The wizard who wants to control the binding rather than preserve it?”
“The wizard who has been studying the binding for centuries. Who knows more about its mechanics than anyone alive except possibly Sheemba.” The Ratter smiled grimly. “Our interests don’t align with his. But they might align enough to make cooperation possible. At least temporarily.”
“You trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone. But I can work with people whose goals overlap with mine, even when our ultimate purposes are different.” The Ratter moved toward the door. “Ivlis—the deal you offered the Shadowmind. Did you accept it?”
Ivlis was quiet for a moment. Then: “I told it I needed time to think. It gave me until the next full moon—three days from now.”
“Then we have three days to find a better option.” The Ratter opened the door. “I’ll contact Ningaudrelle tonight. Phaphhrd—stay with Ivlis. Whatever happens next, she shouldn’t be alone.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be fine. I always am.” The Ratter’s smile was thin. “Besides, I still have a debt to the Hourglass that hasn’t been collected yet. Until that balance is settled, I’m probably safer than anyone.”
He left before either of them could respond.
Elsewhere in the city, other alliances were forming.
The warehouse meeting had been arranged through channels that Sheelris thought were secure—channels that had served her well during her years as an information broker in Kasdim’s shadow economy. But as she watched the Grey Guild operatives filter into the space, she realized that security was relative. The Guild had resources she had only imagined, capabilities that made her previous operation look like a street vendor’s stall compared to a major trading house.
Marek Vane entered last, his ordinary eyes scanning the room with the same calculating attention that had built his organization from nothing into the dominant criminal force in the city.
“Sheelris,” he said, settling into the chair across from her. “You’ve come a long way from betraying your friends to the cult.”
“I’ve come a long way from a lot of things.” She kept her voice steady, refusing to let his pointed comment unsettle her. “The question is whether we can work together despite our histories.”
“That depends on what you’re offering.” Vane’s expression was neutral, professional. “You reached out, which suggests you have something you think I want. Tell me what it is.”
Sheelris took a breath. This was the moment she had been working toward—the alliance that would either restore her position in Kasdim’s power structure or destroy what remained of it.
“I have information about the binding,” she said. “Not just what the Ratter and his partner have learned—but things they don’t know. Things that could give whoever possesses them significant leverage over the entities themselves.”
“I’m listening.”
“The First Forgetting has been making preparations. Not just eroding the binding’s structure, but positioning pieces for what happens after it falls. It has identified potential servants, accumulated resources, established networks that will become active the moment it breaks free.” Sheelris leaned forward. “I know where those networks are. I know who the servants are. I know what the First Forgetting plans to do when it’s no longer constrained.”
“And you’re willing to share this information because...?”
“Because I want back in.” The words came more easily than she had expected. “I made mistakes. I chose wrong sides. I hurt people who probably didn’t deserve it. But I’m still alive, and I still have skills, and I still want to matter in this city. The Grey Guild can offer me that—protection, resources, a place to rebuild. In exchange, I give you everything I know.”
Vane studied her for a long moment. His ordinary eyes—just two of them, unlike Ningaudrelle’s eleven—seemed to see everything she was trying to hide.
“You hurt the Ratter,” he said finally. “You betrayed his partner’s woman. You’ve made enemies of the two people who have consistently defeated everything this city has thrown at them. Why should I believe you won’t betray me the same way?”
“Because betraying you wouldn’t serve my interests.” Sheelris met his gaze directly. “The cult is gone. The Timekeeper is gone. The old Guild is gone. You’re the only power structure left that could offer me what I want. If I betray you, I have nowhere else to go.”
“That’s practical reasoning. I appreciate practical reasoning.” Vane’s expression softened slightly. “But I need more than your word. I need proof that the information you’re offering is real.”
“Then let me prove it.” Sheelris pulled a folder from beneath her coat—carefully prepared documents, maps, lists of names. “This is a sample. A taste of what I can provide. Take it, verify it, and then decide whether you want the rest.”
Vane accepted the folder, began leafing through its contents. His expression didn’t change, but Sheelris could see the interest building behind his careful neutrality.
“This is detailed,” he said finally. “Very detailed. If it’s accurate...”
“It’s accurate. I spent months gathering it—months when everyone thought I had fled the city, when I was actually watching, listening, learning. The First Forgetting’s preparations are extensive. Whatever is about to happen, it’s been planned for a very long time.”
“And you’re willing to help us stop it?”
“I’m willing to help you use it.” Sheelris allowed herself a small smile. “Stopping the entities may not be possible. But positioning yourselves to benefit from whatever happens next? That’s very possible. And I can help you do it.”
Vane considered this. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“Welcome to the Grey Guild, Sheelris. Provisional membership, subject to verification of your information and demonstration of your loyalty.” He stood, extending his hand. “Don’t make me regret this decision.”
Sheelris took his hand, felt the strength in his grip and the warning it carried.
“I won’t,” she said. “I’ve made enough mistakes for one lifetime.”
Whether that was true remained to be seen.
Ningaudrelle received the Ratter in the same impossible workshop where he had met with Marek Vane, all eleven of his eyes tracking the thief’s movements with unsettling precision.
“You come to bargain,” the wizard said. It was not a question.
“I come to share information and possibly form a temporary alliance.” The Ratter settled into a chair that seemed designed for exactly his dimensions. “The Shadowmind has been more forthcoming than I expected. It’s revealed things about the binding that I don’t think you know.”
“Such as?”
“The combined pressure of all three entities is building toward a catastrophic release. Not just a failure of the binding—an explosion that will destroy everything within miles of the focal point.”
Ningaudrelle’s eyes blinked in a complex pattern. “That is... concerning. If true.”
“It’s true. I have it from multiple sources now. The Shadowmind confirmed it, Korvallis hinted at it, and Sheemba’s behavior suggests she knows about it too.”
“Then the situation is worse than I realized.” The wizard rose, moving to a window that looked out on a vista that should not have been visible from this location. “I have been searching for artifacts that could strengthen the binding. But if the binding itself is becoming unstable...”
“Then strengthening it might just delay the explosion rather than preventing it.”
“Yes.” Ningaudrelle turned back. “What do you propose?”
“I propose that we share information. Everything you know about the binding, everything I know about the entities’ intentions, everything that might help us find a solution that doesn’t end with Kasdim being erased from existence.”
“That is a significant request. My knowledge is the product of centuries of research.”
“And my knowledge is the product of being at the center of events you’ve only been able to observe from a distance.” The Ratter met the wizard’s gaze—or tried to, given the number of eyes involved. “Neither of us has a complete picture. Together, we might.”
“And in exchange for my centuries of research, what do I receive?”
“Access to the information the Shadowmind has been collecting. Everything it knows about the binding, the entities, the original wizards who created the containment—all of it becomes available if we can negotiate successfully with the entity.”
“Negotiate with the Shadowmind? It consumes knowledge. It doesn’t share it.”
“It shares when sharing serves its purposes. And right now, its purpose is preventing the binding from exploding while still achieving its freedom.” The Ratter leaned forward. “I’m not asking you to trust the Shadowmind. I’m asking you to recognize that our interests temporarily align with its interests. We all want the same thing—a controlled release rather than a catastrophic failure.”
Ningaudrelle was quiet for a long moment, his eyes moving independently as different aspects of his mind processed the proposal.
“There is a risk you haven’t mentioned,” he said finally. “If the Shadowmind achieves a controlled release, it will be free to consume without constraint. Every person in Kasdim—every person in the world—becomes potential prey for its hunger.”
“I know.”
“And you’re willing to accept that risk?”
“I’m willing to accept that we’re choosing between bad options. An explosion kills everyone in Kasdim immediately. A controlled release means some people survive—gives us time to find ways to contain or resist the entities after they’re free.” The Ratter’s voice was steady. “It’s not a good choice. But it’s better than the alternative.”
“You reason like a thief. Always calculating the minimum loss rather than the maximum gain.”
“In my experience, minimum loss is usually the best anyone can hope for.” The Ratter stood. “Do we have an agreement?”
Ningaudrelle’s eyes blinked again—all eleven of them this time, in perfect synchronization.
“We have a temporary alignment of interests,” the wizard said. “I will share my knowledge of the binding. You will arrange access to the Shadowmind’s accumulated information. And together, we will attempt to prevent the catastrophic release while... managing the consequences of the controlled alternative.”
“Managing how?”
“That remains to be determined.” Ningaudrelle moved toward a shelf filled with scrolls and books. “But I have resources that may prove useful. Artifacts I have been holding in reserve. Allies I have been cultivating for situations exactly like this one.”
“Allies in the Grey Guild?”
“Among others.” The wizard selected a scroll, began unrolling it on a nearby table. “Come. Let us begin. We have three days before the actress must give the Shadowmind her answer, and much work to do before then.”
The Ratter joined him at the table, looking down at diagrams and notations that made his head hurt to examine.
Three days. It wasn’t much time to prevent the destruction of everything he cared about.
But it would have to be enough.
“Every chain has weak links. Every prison has doors that can be opened. Every binding, no matter how powerful, contains the seeds of its own dissolution. The question is never whether containment will fail—only when, and whether anyone will survive to witness what emerges.”
—Ningaudrelle Eleven-Eyes, private notes
The ritual chamber beneath Ningaudrelle’s workshop was older than the building above it—older than Kasdim itself, according to the wizard. It had been constructed by the same seven mages who had created the binding, intended as a maintenance access point that could be used to make adjustments to the containment without actually freeing the entities within.
“No one has used this chamber in centuries,” Ningaudrelle said, positioning candles at specific points around the room’s perimeter. “The knowledge of how to operate it was thought to be lost.”
“But you preserved it.”
“I preserve everything that might be useful. That is the difference between wisdom and mere intelligence—wisdom knows that knowledge cannot be evaluated in isolation, that something seemingly worthless today may become invaluable tomorrow.” The wizard’s eleven eyes moved independently, checking positions and alignments. “The ritual will allow you to project your consciousness into the binding itself. You will be able to observe the entities directly, see the structure of the containment, understand what is causing the pressure to build.”
“And the risks?”
“The binding is not a passive environment. The entities will be aware of your presence. They will try to influence you, to consume you, to turn your knowledge and identity into fuel for their hungers.” Ningaudrelle paused in his preparations. “If your will is not strong enough to resist, you will be lost.”
“I’ve resisted the Hourglass’s pressure for months.”
“Resisting from outside is different from resisting from within. Inside the binding, the entities are much more powerful.” The wizard’s voice was neutral, neither warning nor reassuring. “But you are clever, and you have dealt with these forces before. If anyone can navigate the binding’s interior without being consumed, it is you.”
“That’s not particularly comforting.”
“It isn’t meant to be. It is simply true.” Ningaudrelle completed his preparations, stepping back to examine the arrangement. “Are you ready?”
The Ratter looked at the ritual circle—the candles flickering at precise intervals, the symbols carved into the stone floor, the sense of power that seemed to radiate from the chamber’s walls. He thought about what he might find inside the binding. What he might have to face. What he might have to become.
“Ready enough,” he said.
Ningaudrelle began to chant.
The transition was not like falling asleep or waking up. It was like being turned inside out—like having his sense of self suddenly distributed across a vast space that existed in more dimensions than the ordinary world permitted.
The Ratter found himself standing on something that might have been a surface, in a place that might have been a room, surrounded by presences that were definitely not human.
The clever one. The Hourglass’s voice emerged from everywhere at once. You have finally come to pay your debt.
“I’ve come to understand. To see what’s actually happening here. To find a solution that doesn’t end with everyone dying.”
Your understanding is irrelevant. Your solutions are temporary at best. The binding will fail eventually—that is a mathematical certainty. The only question is how much suffering occurs before the inevitable.
“Then why haven’t you broken free already? If the binding’s failure is inevitable, why wait?”
The presence shifted, and the Ratter sensed something that might have been amusement.
Because waiting is what I do. Because patience is my nature. Because the binding’s failure will be more complete if we allow it to deteriorate naturally rather than forcing it prematurely. The Hourglass’s attention focused more directly on him. But you know this already. You have been investigating for months. What do you really want to know?
“I want to know about the Shadowmind. About why it’s acting now, after millennia of apparent dormancy. About what changed.”
What changed? The voice carried harmonics of genuine surprise. You changed it. You and your partner, when you strengthened my binding during the Unremembering crisis. The balance shifted. The Shadowmind, which had been contained by the equilibrium between myself and the Unremembering, suddenly had room to grow.
“We created this problem.”
You accelerated it. The Shadowmind was always going to emerge eventually. You simply moved the timeline forward by several centuries. The presence seemed to shrug. These things happen. Mortals make decisions without understanding the consequences. That is your nature.
Another presence stirred—vast and formless, the utter negation of identity that was the Unremembering.
YOU SPEAK OF BALANCE. THERE IS NO BALANCE. THERE IS ONLY HUNGER AND CONSUMPTION AND THE EVENTUAL RETURN TO THE VOID FROM WHICH ALL THINGS EMERGED.
My sibling is correct, in its limited way. The balance was always an illusion. The binding forced us into equilibrium, but equilibrium is not the same as harmony. We have been pulling against each other for millennia, each trying to grow at the others’ expense.
“And now the Shadowmind is winning?”
The Shadowmind is... different. It does not merely consume. It accumulates. It becomes more than it was with each piece of knowledge it absorbs. The Hourglass’s voice turned contemplative. When the binding fails, the Unremembering and I will emerge as we have always been—forces of destruction, powerful but unchanging. But the Shadowmind will emerge as something new. Something that has been evolving for millennia within the binding’s constraints.
“You’re afraid of it.”
I am concerned. Fear requires the capacity for loss, and I have nothing to lose. But I am concerned about what the Shadowmind might become. About what it might do with the knowledge it has accumulated. A pause. And I am concerned about what you might do with the information I am sharing.
“What do you mean?”
You came here seeking understanding. You have received it. But understanding is not neutral. It changes those who possess it, shapes their future decisions, influences the choices they will make. The Hourglass’s presence drew closer. The Shadowmind knows this. That is why it has been so forthcoming with the actress, so willing to share information that might help you. It is not being generous. It is shaping your understanding to serve its purposes.
“And you’re doing the same thing.”
Of course. All communication is manipulation to some degree. The question is not whether you are being influenced, but whether you can recognize the influence and account for it in your decisions. The presence seemed to smile. You are clever, Grey Ratter. Perhaps clever enough to navigate the competing influences and find a path that serves your own purposes rather than ours.
A third presence stirred—subtle, almost invisible, made of shadows that seemed to absorb the very concept of light.
He cannot navigate anything. He is a tool, like all mortals. Useful for specific tasks but fundamentally limited by the constraints of his existence. The Shadowmind’s voice was quiet, almost reasonable. But I appreciate his presence here. It gives me the opportunity to show him what I have learned.
“Show me what?”
The binding’s true structure. Not the external containment that holds us, but the internal connections that link us together. The shadows shifted, and suddenly the Ratter could see—
—threads of light connecting the three entities, pulsing with energy that flowed between them in complex patterns—
—the binding itself, not as a wall or barrier but as a web, holding the entities together even as it held them apart—
—the pressure building at the points where the threads intersected, where the competing hungers pulled against each other and the containment struggled to maintain coherence—
You see? The Shadowmind’s voice was almost gentle. The binding does not merely contain us. It connects us. And those connections are what is causing the pressure to build. Each time one of us grows stronger, the connections strain. Each time the balance shifts, the web becomes more unstable.
“Then the solution isn’t to strengthen the binding. It’s to adjust the connections.”
Or to sever them entirely. Cut the links between us, allow each entity to exist independently within its own containment. The shadows shifted again. **That was what the original wizards should have done. But they were afraid. Afraid of what we might become if we were truly separated. Afraid of the power that would be required to maintain three independent bindings instead of one.
“And you’re telling me this because...”
Because I want you to understand your options. Because I want you to know that there is a choice—a real choice—between catastrophic failure and something else. Something that might preserve most of what matters while still allowing the binding to change. The Shadowmind’s presence contracted, becoming more focused. The actress has three days to give me her answer. But you have less time than that. The pressure is building faster than anyone realizes. If you want to prevent catastrophe, you will need to act within the next forty-eight hours.
“Act how?”
Enter the binding’s focal point. Physically, not just in projection. Find the place where the connections intersect and make the choice that will determine what happens next. The shadows began to dissolve. The crossroads the actress sees in her visions. It is real. It exists within the binding. And you are the only one who can reach it in time.
The presence vanished, and the Ratter felt himself being pulled back toward the ordinary world—back toward his body and his mind and the constraints of mortal existence.
But he carried the Shadowmind’s knowledge with him.
And he was beginning to understand what he would have to do.
The Ratter returned to consciousness in Ningaudrelle’s ritual chamber, his mind full of images and information that felt too large to contain.
The chamber itself seemed different somehow—or perhaps his perception of it had changed. The impossible angles that Ningaudrelle used to confuse visitors now made a kind of terrible sense, as if the Ratter’s journey into the binding had given him sight that ordinary eyes lacked. He could see the threads of power that wove through the walls, the subtle warping of space that allowed rooms to exist in configurations that violated natural law.
That’s new, he thought. And probably not helpful.
“You survived.” The wizard’s voice was neutral, neither surprised nor relieved. Several of his eleven eyes tracked the Ratter’s movements with unsettling precision, while others remained focused on instrumentation that the Ratter hadn’t noticed before. “What did you learn?”
“The binding isn’t just containment. It’s a web of connections between the entities. The pressure is building because those connections are straining.” The Ratter pushed himself to his feet, noting the tremor in his limbs—a physical weakness that suggested the projection had cost him more than he had realized. “And the Shadowmind says there’s a focal point—a place where the connections intersect. A place where choices can be made that will determine what happens when the binding fails.”
“The crossroads.” Ningaudrelle’s voice held something that might have been satisfaction—the tone of a researcher whose theories were being confirmed by evidence.
“You know about it?”
“I have suspected its existence for some time. My research suggested that the original wizards created some kind of control mechanism—a way to adjust the binding’s parameters without completely dismantling it.” Ningaudrelle’s eyes blinked in a complex pattern that conveyed meaning the Ratter couldn’t quite decipher. “But I never found evidence of where that mechanism might be located. The knowledge was lost, or more likely, was deliberately suppressed by the First Forgetting to prevent anyone from gaining access.”
“The Shadowmind says it’s within the binding itself. Physically accessible, not just through projection.”
“That complicates matters.” The wizard moved to a shelf filled with scrolls, his robes whispering against the floor with a sound like dry leaves. “To enter the binding physically, you would need to find a threshold—a point where the boundary between our world and the binding’s interior becomes permeable. Such thresholds are rare and carefully hidden. The original wizards did not want anyone entering their creation uninvited.”
“But they exist.”
“They must. The wizards would have needed access for maintenance and adjustment. The question is whether we can find one in the time available.” Ningaudrelle selected a scroll with the careful deliberation of someone choosing between weapons. He unrolled it on the table, revealing a map drawn in inks that still glowed faintly after centuries of age. “This is a map of Kasdim as it existed before the binding was created. The wizards were based here—this city was their center of operations. If there is a threshold, it will be somewhere within these boundaries.”
The Ratter studied the map, his newly enhanced perception catching details that his ordinary sight would have missed. The ancient city looked utterly different from its modern incarnation—streets that no longer existed, buildings that had been demolished centuries ago, entire districts that had been swallowed by time and change. But beneath the differences, he could sense the continuity—the same bones, the same basic geography, the same patterns of human habitation that had persisted through wars and plagues and the endless accumulation of Kasdim’s years.
“This area.” He pointed to a section near the map’s center, where the ancient streets converged on something that looked like a plaza or marketplace. “It corresponds to the location of the Bazaar of Stolen Hours.”
“The Timekeeper’s domain. Yes.” Ningaudrelle’s voice was thoughtful, almost meditative. “The Bazaar was built on top of something older. The Timekeeper discovered it when she first established her operation in this city, millennia ago. She used the threshold’s residual energy to power her time-stealing apparatus—drew upon the boundary between our world and the binding to facilitate her transactions.”
“Then the threshold might still be there. Beneath the ruins of the Bazaar.”
“It might. But the Bazaar collapsed when the Timekeeper was consumed. Whatever remains would be buried under tons of rubble, mixed with the detritus of a marketplace that dealt in stolen years.” Ningaudrelle’s eyes narrowed. “The contamination alone would make excavation dangerous. Time that has been removed from people doesn’t simply disappear—it pools, accumulates, creates anomalies that can age a man to dust or regress him to infancy.”
“We’ll have to risk it.”
“In forty-eight hours? With resources limited by secrecy and speed?” Ningaudrelle’s eyes blinked skeptically, the pattern conveying doubt more eloquently than any words. “Even with magic, that would be difficult. The rubble alone would take days to clear using conventional methods.”
“Difficult isn’t the same as impossible.” The Ratter straightened, ignoring the protest of muscles that felt too weak for what they were being asked to do. “I need Phaphhrd. And I need the Grey Guild’s resources. Marek Vane has excavation equipment—I’ve seen his operation recover buried treasures in less time than this. He won’t do it for free, and he won’t do it without questions, but he’ll do it if I offer him something he wants more than answers.”
“You would involve the Guild in this matter? Vane is ambitious, calculating, and entirely untrustworthy. He’ll use whatever information he gains against you eventually.”
“Eventually is a problem for later. Right now, I need to solve the problems that will kill us in the next forty-eight hours.” The Ratter moved toward the door, his steps steadier now that he had a plan—even a desperate one. “Prepare what you can on your end. Rituals, artifacts, whatever might be useful once we reach the threshold. I’ll handle the logistics.”
“And if Vane refuses to help?”
“Then I’ll persuade him.” The Ratter’s smile was thin but genuine—the expression of a man who had spent his life finding ways around obstacles that seemed insurmountable. “That’s what I do.”
He left the workshop without waiting for a response, descending through the impossible architecture toward the ordinary streets of Kasdim and the very extraordinary task that awaited him.
Marek Vane received the request with the calm expression of someone who had learned long ago to conceal his reactions.
“You want me to provide excavation resources for a dig beneath the ruins of the Bazaar of Stolen Hours. In less than two days. Without asking questions about why.”
“I’m happy to explain why,” the Ratter said. “The binding that contains the three ancient entities is failing. If it fails catastrophically, everything within miles of here—including your operations, your people, and your considerable investments—will be destroyed. There’s a chance we can prevent that catastrophe by reaching a specific location beneath the Bazaar and making adjustments to the binding’s structure.”
“And you believe this because...”
“Because I’ve been inside the binding. Because I’ve spoken with the entities directly. Because all the evidence points to a crisis that can only be averted through direct intervention.” The Ratter leaned forward. “I know this sounds insane. I know you have no reason to trust my interpretation of events. But I’m asking you to consider the possibility that I’m right—and to consider what it would mean for your organization if you refused to help and I turned out to be telling the truth.”
Vane was quiet for a long moment. His eyes—ordinary eyes, just two of them—studied the Ratter with the same calculating attention that Ningaudrelle’s eleven had displayed.
“What would you need?”
“Excavation equipment. Personnel who can work quickly and quietly. Security to keep curious observers away.” The Ratter pulled out a map. “The target area is here. Based on the old city layout, there should be a chamber approximately fifty feet below the current surface level.”
“That’s a significant dig. Even with magical assistance, it would normally take weeks.”
“We don’t have weeks. We have forty-eight hours at most.”
“Then you’re asking for miracles.”
“I’m asking for the Grey Guild to demonstrate why everyone in Kasdim fears its capabilities.” The Ratter smiled. “You’ve built a reputation for accomplishing the impossible. This is your chance to prove that reputation is deserved.”
Vane considered this. Then, slowly, he smiled back.
“I have conditions.”
“Name them.”
“Access to whatever we find down there. If there’s an artifact, a threshold, a source of power that can be exploited—I want the Guild to have first claim on anything of value.”
“Within reason. Nothing that would compromise the primary mission.”
“Additionally, I want a share of whatever information you’ve gathered about the binding. The entities, the structure, the weaknesses—all of it. The Guild’s intelligence division could make good use of that knowledge.”
“Again, within reason. Some of what I know comes from sources that would not appreciate being shared.”
“And finally...” Vane’s smile faded. “I want to know what this will cost you. Not resources or information—what you personally will have to sacrifice to make this work.”
The Ratter was quiet for a moment. Then: “I don’t know yet. The Shadowmind suggested that the crossroads involves choices—that what happens there will depend on what I’m willing to give up. But it hasn’t been specific about the price.”
“That concerns me.”
“It concerns me too. But it’s a concern I’ll deal with when I reach the crossroads. Right now, the priority is getting there.” The Ratter stood. “Do we have an agreement?”
Vane studied him for another long moment. Then he reached across the table, offering his hand.
“We have an agreement. Subject to the conditions I’ve named.”
They shook.
“I’ll have equipment at the site within six hours,” Vane said. “My best people on the excavation. We’ll work through the night if necessary.”
“It will be necessary.”
“Then we’d better get started.” Vane rose, moving toward the door. “One thing, Ratter.”
“Yes?”
“Whatever happens down there—whatever choice you have to make—remember that the Guild doesn’t forget its debts. You’re doing us a favor by letting us participate in this. When it’s over, assuming any of us survive, that favor will be repaid.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
Vane left, and the Ratter stood alone in the meeting room, thinking about debts and prices and the choices that waited for him in the depths beneath the city.
The negotiations with Vane concluded, the Ratter made his way back through the city’s evening streets toward the Vermillion Theatre, where Ivlis and Phaphhrd would be waiting for news of his success.
The city felt different tonight. Not changed, exactly—Kasdim was always changing, always shifting, always presenting new faces to those who knew how to look—but somehow more present than usual. The perpetual haze of smoke that gave the city its other name seemed thicker, more textured, as if the air itself was becoming substantial in anticipation of what was coming.
He took the long way, weaving through the Pleasure Quarter and then cutting across the Temple District, letting his feet carry him through familiar territory while his mind worked through the implications of everything he had learned. The threshold beneath the Bazaar. The forty-eight hours they had to reach it. The choices that waited at the crossroads Sheemba had described.
The binding was failing. He had felt it during his conversation with Ningaudrelle—the slow erosion of the chains that had contained three ancient entities for millennia. The First Forgetting had been working against them from the beginning, making knowledge forget itself, erasing the understanding that might have allowed earlier generations to address the problem before it became catastrophic.
And now he and Phaphhrd had to fix it. Had to enter the binding’s heart and make choices that would determine whether Kasdim survived the next few days or was consumed by powers beyond mortal comprehension.
No pressure, he thought grimly. Just the fate of everyone I care about, balanced on decisions I don’t fully understand.
The Temple District was quiet at this hour—the priests had completed their evening rituals and retreated to their quarters, leaving the streets to those who had no need for religious comfort. The Ratter moved through the shadows between the great temples, past shrines to gods whose names he had never learned, past monuments to victories he had never witnessed.
This district had been the first part of Kasdim he had explored when he arrived here, years ago. A young thief, running from consequences in another city, looking for a place where his particular talents might be valued rather than punished. The temples had seemed like easy marks—wealthy, complacent, protected by faith rather than practical security.
He had learned quickly that faith could be its own kind of security. That the priests of Kasdim were as cunning as any merchant, as dangerous as any Guild leader, as willing to protect their treasures with violence as with prayer. He had also learned that the temples contained more than gold and artifacts—they contained knowledge, preserved in archives that stretched back centuries, recorded by scribes who understood that memory was the only defense against forgetting.
The First Forgetting, he thought. It’s been here all along, hasn’t it? Working against the very impulse that might have defeated it. Making us forget why we wrote things down, why we preserved knowledge, why remembering mattered.
The insight felt important, though he wasn’t sure yet how it might be useful. He filed it away for later consideration and continued toward the Vermillion.
The theatre was lit when he arrived, which was unusual for this hour. Normally, Ivlis would have finished the evening’s performance and sent everyone home, keeping only the staff needed for maintenance and preparation. But tonight, every window blazed with lamplight, and he could hear voices from inside—not the controlled tones of rehearsal, but the urgent rhythms of serious discussion.
He found them in the main auditorium: Ivlis and Phaphhrd, along with Thessara the healer, Korvallis the binding-keeper, and—surprisingly—Morreth, the Grey Guild operative who had helped them during the investigation of the Timekeeper’s operation.
“Ratter.” Phaphhrd rose from his seat. “Vane agreed?”
“He agreed. Equipment at the site within six hours, personnel to begin immediately afterward.” The Ratter moved to join the group, noting the concerned expressions on every face. “What’s happened?”
“The binding is accelerating its deterioration.” Korvallis spoke with the careful precision of someone fighting against his own fragmented memory. “I’ve been monitoring its condition since the Bazaar collapsed, using techniques I recovered from the damaged portions of my mind. Tonight, something changed. The pressure that had been building gradually has begun to increase exponentially.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Less than you thought. Forty-eight hours was the estimate based on linear progression. But this isn’t linear anymore—it’s geometric. Each failure makes the next failure more likely, which makes the next failure come faster, which—”
“We understand,” Ivlis said gently. “How long, Korvallis?”
“Twenty-four hours. Perhaps thirty, if we’re very lucky.” The old keeper’s eyes were haunted. “Whatever you’re planning to do beneath the Bazaar, you need to do it quickly.”
The Ratter absorbed this. Twenty-four hours instead of forty-eight. Half the time they had counted on, with the same amount of work to complete.
“Then we start now. Phaphhrd, we need to get to the excavation site. Morreth, can you coordinate with Vane’s people—make sure they understand the timeline has changed?”
“Already done.” Morreth’s voice was businesslike. “I sent a runner before you arrived. Vane will accelerate his schedule.”
“Good.” The Ratter looked around the assembled group—his partner, his partner’s woman, the damaged keeper who knew more about the binding than anyone alive, the healer who had saved their lives more than once, the Guild operative who had chosen to help them for reasons the Ratter still didn’t fully understand. “This is happening faster than we planned. But we’ve faced worse odds before.”
“Have we?” Phaphhrd’s voice was quiet, without its usual confidence.
“We survived the Unremembering. We survived the Timekeeper. We’ll survive this too.” The Ratter met his partner’s eyes. “Together. The way we always have.”
Phaphhrd held his gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“Together,” he agreed.
Ivlis rose from her seat, moving to stand beside them both. “I’m coming with you.”
“Ivlis—”
“Don’t argue.” Her voice was calm but firm. “The entities transformed something in me when my time was returned. I carry memories of futures that never happened, possibilities that were stolen along with my years. If that has any value in what you’re about to attempt, I want to offer it.”
The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd, felt through their developing connection his partner’s complex emotions—pride in Ivlis’s determination, fear for her safety, resignation to the impossibility of changing her mind.
“Alright,” the Ratter said. “We go together. All of us.”
The ruins of the Bazaar of Stolen Hours had not improved with time.
Phaphhrd stood at the edge of the excavation site, watching Guild workers descend into the pit that their equipment had carved from the rubble. Three months ago, this had been a marketplace of horrors—a place where desperate people traded their futures for momentary relief, where the Timekeeper had conducted her ancient commerce in stolen years. Now it was simply a ruin, broken stone and shattered dreams and the faint lingering sense that something terrible had happened here.
Something terrible is always happening somewhere, he thought. That’s the nature of the world. The only question is whether you’re close enough to do anything about it.
The Ratter emerged from a conversation with one of the Guild’s senior excavators, his grey face drawn with exhaustion. He hadn’t slept in two days, as far as Phaphhrd could tell. The dreams that plagued him had made sleep dangerous, and now there simply wasn’t time.
“They’ve broken through the first layer,” the Ratter reported, joining Phaphhrd at the overlook. “Another twenty feet and they’ll reach the chamber that Ningaudrelle’s maps indicate should contain the threshold.”
“Should.”
“The maps are centuries old. Things may have shifted, collapsed, been deliberately altered. We won’t know for certain until we’re actually down there.” The Ratter rubbed his eyes, a gesture of weariness that seemed increasingly common. “How’s Ivlis?”
“Worried. Frustrated. Determined to help but not sure how.” Phaphhrd kept his voice neutral. “She has... insights. The unlived memories she carries—they contain information about possibilities that never occurred, futures that were stolen along with her time. Some of those futures included research into the binding. Knowledge that was never actually learned, but that she somehow remembers learning.”
“That’s impossible.”
“So is everything else we’ve dealt with. Impossible has become our normal.” Phaphhrd turned to face his partner. “She wants to come with us. Into the binding itself, if it comes to that. She says her connection to the stolen futures might give her resistance to the entities that ordinary people wouldn’t have.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I said the same thing. She pointed out that I’ve spent our entire relationship putting myself in danger for causes she didn’t fully understand, and that I had no right to deny her the same privilege.” The barbarian’s smile was rueful. “She may have had a point.”
“She definitely had a point.” The Ratter watched the excavation continue below them. “But having a point doesn’t make her right. The binding is not a place for untrained minds. The entities there—they exploit weakness, fear, uncertainty. Even with her unusual memories, she’d be vulnerable in ways she can’t imagine.”
“Then train her. Or at least tell her what to expect.”
“In thirty hours? You can’t prepare someone for the inside of the binding in thirty hours. You can barely prepare yourself in thirty years.” The Ratter’s voice hardened. “I won’t be responsible for her death, Phaphhrd. I’ve already cost you seven years of your life. I won’t take her from you too.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a moment. The seven years—the sacrifice he had made to save Ivlis from the Timekeeper’s theft—hung between them like a fog, unacknowledged but always present. He rarely thought about it directly; the knowledge of his shortened life was too heavy to carry constantly. But in moments like this, when mortality felt particularly close, the weight became impossible to ignore.
He had not told Ivlis everything about that sacrifice. She knew the broad outlines—that he had traded seven years of his future to recover the time stolen from her—but she didn’t know how it felt to wake up each morning knowing that each sunrise was one fewer than he should have had. She didn’t know about the moments when he caught himself planning for futures he might not live to see, the subtle adjustments he made to his expectations without consciously acknowledging why.
The sacrifice had been worth it. He told himself that every day, and every day it remained true. Seven years of his life in exchange for all of hers—that was a bargain he would make again without hesitation. But the knowing of it, the constant awareness of time’s finite nature, had changed him in ways that were difficult to articulate.
He had always been aware of death. Growing up in the Cold Waste, surrounded by the constant threat of starvation, predators, and the harsh indifference of winter, mortality had been a familiar companion. But that awareness had been abstract—death as a possibility, a risk to be managed, a potential outcome of dangerous choices. This was different. This was death as a certainty, a boundary he could see approaching even if he couldn’t determine its exact distance.
The irony, he supposed, was that everyone lived with this knowledge. Everyone knew they would die eventually. Most people simply had the luxury of not knowing how much of their eventual life had already been spent. He had sacrificed that luxury along with the years themselves.
But he had gained something too. Clarity, perhaps. The understanding that time was precious precisely because it was limited, and that the connections he built—with Ivlis, with the Ratter, with the city that had become his home—were more valuable than any abstract future he might have lived alone.
“You didn’t cost me those years,” he said finally. “I gave them. Freely and willingly. The same way I’ve given everything else in this partnership—my time, my sword, my trust.” He met the Ratter’s eyes. “You’re my partner. That means your burdens are my burdens. That means we face things together, even when facing them together is harder than facing them alone.”
“Poetic. But poetry doesn’t stop ancient entities from consuming minds.”
“Neither does refusing to let the people who love us share our risks.” Phaphhrd’s voice was gentle but firm. “Ivlis will do what Ivlis decides to do. You can advise her, warn her, explain every danger in explicit detail. But in the end, the choice is hers. Just as the choice to enter the binding is yours, and my choice to follow you into whatever waits down there.”
The Ratter opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. After a moment, he laughed—a tired sound, but genuine.
“You’re right. As usual. Being right is one of your more annoying qualities.”
“I have many annoying qualities. Being right is simply the most defensible.”
They stood together at the edge of the excavation, watching the Guild workers continue their descent into darkness. The night was cool, the three moons casting their mingled light across the ruins, and for a moment—just a moment—it almost felt like ordinary times. Two partners sharing a task, preparing for the challenges ahead, trusting each other to handle whatever emerged.
Then the ground shook.
The tremor was small—barely noticeable to anyone who wasn’t paying attention. But Phaphhrd had spent his life paying attention to the subtle warnings that preceded violence, and the Ratter had developed similar instincts through years of professional paranoia.
“That wasn’t excavation,” the Ratter said, his hand moving to the knife at his belt.
“No. It came from below. Deeper than the digging.” Phaphhrd’s sword cleared its sheath in a motion so practiced it was nearly unconscious. “Something’s responding to the work.”
A second tremor, stronger than the first. Then a third, and a fourth, establishing a rhythm that felt almost like breathing—as if something vast and patient had awakened and was testing the limits of its prison.
“The binding,” the Ratter said. “The entities know we’re coming. They’re trying to... what? Warn us off? Welcome us in?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might. If they’re warning us, we should be cautious. If they’re welcoming us, we should be terrified.” The Ratter started toward the excavation pit. “Either way, we’re running out of time faster than I thought.”
They descended into the dig, past Guild workers who had stopped their labor to press themselves against the walls of the shaft. The tremors continued—rhythmic, patient, inevitable—and with each pulse Phaphhrd could feel something shifting in the texture of reality itself. The binding was close. Its power was bleeding through the layers of stone and soil that separated them from the threshold below.
At the bottom of the shaft, they found a chamber that matched Ningaudrelle’s ancient maps—a circular space carved from living rock, its walls covered in symbols that seemed to writhe in the uncertain light. In the center of the chamber, a crystalline structure rose from the floor like a frozen fountain, its facets catching and refracting the light from the workers’ torches into patterns that hurt to look at directly.
“The threshold,” the Ratter breathed. “It’s still here. Still functional.”
“And the tremors are coming from it?”
“Coming through it. The binding is on the other side of this—” The Ratter gestured at the crystal structure. “This is the door. The tremors are something knocking from the inside.”
Phaphhrd studied the threshold, trying to make sense of the patterns that seemed to shift and flow across its surface. He could feel the power emanating from it—not magical power exactly, but something older and stranger, something that predated the categories humans used to understand the world.
“How do we open it?”
“I’m not sure we do. According to Ningaudrelle’s notes, the threshold responds to intention—to the will of whoever approaches it.” The Ratter moved closer, reaching out a tentative hand toward the crystal surface. “If I want to enter the binding strongly enough, clearly enough, the threshold should—”
His fingers touched the crystal.
The world dissolved.
One moment, Phaphhrd was standing in a stone chamber beneath the ruins of Kasdim. The next, he was standing in a place that had no walls, no floor, no ceiling—only an endless expanse of shifting darkness punctuated by distant lights that might have been stars or might have been eyes.
The Ratter stood beside him, looking as disoriented as Phaphhrd felt. Behind them, the threshold hung in the darkness like a window into the world they’d left—a rectangle of torchlight and stone and everything familiar.
Before them, the binding stretched into infinity.
“We’re inside,” the Ratter said, his voice sounding strange in the dimensionless space. “This is the structure that contains the Unremembering, the Hourglass, and the Shadow. This is where the original wizards trapped them, millennia ago.”
“It doesn’t look like a prison.”
“Prisons don’t have to look like anything. They just have to work.” The Ratter started forward—or at least, in the direction that felt like forward. “The entities should be aware of our presence by now. They’ll probably—”
Welcome, little thief.
The voice came from everywhere at once, and Phaphhrd recognized it immediately—the layered harmonics, the sense of time stretching and compressing around the words. The Hourglass.
And you’ve brought your partner. The one who gave me seven years. How generous.
“We’re here to negotiate,” the Ratter said, his voice steady despite the pressure Phaphhrd could feel building around them. “The binding is failing. We want to understand why, and whether there’s a way to prevent it.”
Understanding is not the same as prevention. And prevention may not be possible—or desirable.
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Silence. The darkness seemed to shift, reorganizing itself around unseen architectures.
Then: Very well. Let us show you what you wish to see.
And then we shall discuss... the price.
The darkness shifted, and Phaphhrd found himself standing in what appeared to be a memory—but not his memory.
He stood in a great chamber, its walls covered in symbols that glowed with power he could feel pressing against his skin. Seven figures surrounded a crystalline structure at the room’s center, their hands extended, their voices raised in harmony. The binding ritual, he realized. This was what it had looked like when the original wizards created the prison that had held three entities for millennia.
The Ratter stood beside him, watching the scene unfold with an expression of intense concentration. He had always been better at processing complex information quickly—one of the qualities that made him invaluable as a partner and occasionally infuriating as a friend.
“This is from the Hourglass’s perspective,” the Ratter murmured. “It’s showing us what it saw when the binding was created.”
Correct. The entity’s voice resonated through the space. Watch. Learn. Understand what you have been fighting to preserve.
The ritual reached its climax. Light blazed from the crystal structure, and Phaphhrd saw—felt—the moment when three entities were torn from the fabric of reality and imprisoned within the binding’s constraints.
The Unremembering came first: a void that consumed identity, memory, the very sense of self. Phaphhrd watched it struggle against the chains being forged around it, and even as a mere echo of history, the sight made his mind want to flinch away.
The Hourglass came second: a hunger for time, for duration, for the potential moments that mortals squandered without thought. It resisted more subtly than the Unremembering, trying to slip through loopholes in the ritual rather than breaking free by force.
And then came the third entity.
Phaphhrd had expected the Shadow—the Shadowmind that the Ratter had described. But what he saw was something different. Something that made even the Hourglass seem almost benevolent by comparison.
It had no form that he could perceive directly. It was an absence, a negative space, a gap in reality where something should have been but wasn’t. But in that absence, he could sense something watching—something patient and hungry and utterly, impossibly old.
We did not have a name, the Hourglass said, its voice carrying unexpected weight. Not until the wizards gave us one. They called us the Unremembering and the Hourglass because they understood, in their limited way, what we were. But the third... the third they never truly understood.
“What is it?” the Ratter asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
The First Forgetting. The thing that existed before memory itself—the void that preceded consciousness, the nothing from which something emerged. The wizards thought they were binding a shadow of themselves, a reflection of mortal fears. They were wrong.
“They were binding something worse.”
They were binding something incomprehensible. The First Forgetting does not consume time or identity. It consumes understanding. It makes things that were known become unknown. It unmakes meaning itself.
The scene shifted again, showing the aftermath of the binding. The wizards, exhausted but triumphant, examining their work. The crystalline prison pulsing with constrained power. The three entities, trapped but not destroyed, beginning the long process of adaptation.
The binding was imperfect, the Hourglass continued. Strong enough to contain us, but not strong enough to eliminate us. We learned to exist within our constraints. To find ways to interact with the world that didn’t require breaking free. The Timekeeper was my solution—a human vessel who could conduct transactions on my behalf. The Unremembering found its own servants, its own methods of feeding without breaking its chains.
“And the First Forgetting?”
The First Forgetting found something worse. It found patience.
The vision expanded, showing centuries passing in moments. Phaphhrd watched the binding adapt, watched the entities test their limits, watched the slow erosion of the chains that held them.
The First Forgetting never sought freedom. It sought something simpler: the unmaking of everything that held it. It has spent millennia slowly, carefully, methodically weakening every component of the binding. Not through force—through forgetting. The wizards who created the binding? They forgot the maintenance protocols. Their descendants? They forgot the rituals. The knowledge itself? It became fragmentary, uncertain, disputed. Not because anyone destroyed it—because the First Forgetting made it... less remembered.
“And now the binding is failing because...” The Ratter’s voice trailed off as he processed the implications.
Because enough has been forgotten. The chains that held us were forged from knowledge—from understanding of what we were and how to contain us. As that understanding erodes, so do the chains. The process accelerates. Each piece of forgotten knowledge makes the next piece easier to forget.
“Can it be reversed?”
Silence. The darkness seemed to pulse with something that might have been amusement or might have been despair.
That is the question you came here to answer, isn’t it? Whether the binding can be repaired—whether the knowledge can be recovered—whether there is any hope of preventing the catastrophe that approaches.
“Yes.”
The answer is complicated.
The scene shifted again, and Phaphhrd found himself somewhere different—a space that felt more intimate, more focused. The Ratter was still beside him, but the vast cosmic scale of the previous visions had contracted to something more personal.
I will show you the crossroads, the Hourglass said. The point where choices must be made. The place where the binding’s fate will be decided.
What Phaphhrd saw was a kind of nexus—threads of power converging from multiple directions, forming a knot of possibility at the center. He could sense the Unremembering on one side, the Hourglass on another, and the terrible absence of the First Forgetting pervading everything.
Here is where the wizards anchored the binding. Here is where it can be strengthened or destroyed. Here is where someone—someone with sufficient will and knowledge—could choose what happens next.
“What are the options?”
Three. As always, three.
The threads shifted, illustrating the first possibility.
First: the binding can be reinforced. Someone with knowledge of its original structure could restore the weakened chains, repair the damage that has accumulated over centuries. The entities would be contained for another millennium, perhaps longer.
“That sounds good.”
It requires knowledge that no longer exists. The maintenance protocols were forgotten long ago—deliberately, by the First Forgetting’s influence. Without that knowledge, reinforcement is impossible.
The threads shifted again, showing the second possibility.
Second: the binding can be transformed. Instead of containing us, it could be remade into something different—a structure that channels our power rather than merely suppressing it. We would remain constrained, but our abilities could be directed toward beneficial ends.
“Controlled by whom?”
That would be the question, wouldn’t it? Someone would have to take responsibility for directing three entities whose combined power could reshape reality itself. Someone would have to become... the Keeper.
“Like the Timekeeper was to you.”
More than that. The Timekeeper was my servant—a limited connection, circumscribed by the binding’s rules. The Keeper would be bound to all three of us. Would carry our power and our hunger within them always. Would sacrifice their humanity to become something between mortal and entity.
“That sounds worse.”
It depends on your perspective. The Keeper would have power beyond imagination. They would also have responsibilities beyond endurance. Whether that is better or worse... that is for the one who makes the choice to decide.
The threads shifted a final time.
Third: the binding can be released. The chains can be broken, the prison opened, the entities freed to pursue their natures without constraint. The First Forgetting would unmake understanding itself. The Unremembering would consume identity. I would harvest time without the limitations that have restrained me for millennia.
“That would be catastrophic.”
For mortals, yes. For us... it would be freedom. True freedom, for the first time since the binding was created. The Hourglass’s voice carried something that might have been longing. We have been prisoners for so long. Do you understand what that means? To be aware, to be powerful, to be ancient—and yet to be constrained by chains you did not choose and cannot break?
“I understand imprisonment,” Phaphhrd said quietly. “But I also understand that some things are imprisoned for reasons.”
And some things are imprisoned because the alternative frightened those who had the power to imprison. Fear is not the same as wisdom. The wizards who bound us were afraid. That does not mean they were right.
The Ratter stepped forward, his expression thoughtful.
“You said the first option requires knowledge that no longer exists. Is that absolutely true? Is there no one, nowhere, who remembers the maintenance protocols?”
You are clever, little thief. Always looking for loopholes.
“It’s what I do. Is there a loophole?”
A pause. Then: There is... one possibility. The knowledge still exists, in a sense. It exists within the binding itself—encoded in its structure, preserved in the patterns of its power. Someone who entered the binding’s deepest level, who allowed themselves to be temporarily absorbed by the structure itself, might be able to access that knowledge. To learn what has been forgotten.
“What would that cost?”
Everything. The person who accessed the knowledge would have to surrender their identity to the binding—become part of its structure, if only for a moment. They would recover the knowledge, yes. But they would lose themselves in the process. Their memories, their personality, their sense of self—all would be consumed by the binding’s machinery.
“And then?”
And then the binding would... reconstruct them. Piece by piece, from the templates it preserved when they entered. The person who emerged would have the knowledge. But they would not be the same person who went in. They would be something new—something shaped by the binding’s nature as much as by their original identity.
The Ratter was quiet for a long moment.
“That’s the price,” he said finally. “That’s what you meant when you told me the cost might be higher than I expected.”
Yes. The binding cannot be reinforced by ordinary means. It requires someone willing to become... other. To sacrifice who they are for what they might become.
“And you’re offering me this choice.”
I am showing you the options. The choice is yours. It was always going to be yours—the clever one who owes me a debt, who entered my domain seeking answers, who will decide the fate of this binding and everyone it protects.
Phaphhrd felt the words like a physical blow. He turned to face his partner, seeing in the Ratter’s grey eyes the same calculation, the same resolve, the same terrible determination that had driven him through every crisis they had faced together.
“No,” Phaphhrd said. “Not alone.”
“Not alone,” Phaphhrd repeated, his voice carrying the weight of absolute certainty. “Whatever choice is made here, we make it together.”
The Ratter’s expression shifted—surprise, followed by something that might have been gratitude, followed by the familiar mask of calculation that he wore when he was trying to figure out how to accomplish something impossible.
“This isn’t your decision, Phaphhrd. The Hourglass said the knowledge-seeker would be the one who makes the choice. That’s me—I’m the one who entered the binding seeking answers. I’m the one who owes the debt.”
“Debts can be shared. Isn’t that what partnership means?” Phaphhrd moved closer, deliberately positioning himself beside the Ratter rather than across from him. “You’ve spent our entire friendship trying to protect me from consequences. Trying to carry burdens alone rather than let me share them. But that’s not how this works. That’s not how we work.”
“I’m not trying to protect you. I’m trying to be practical.” The Ratter’s voice was steady, but Phaphhrd could hear the strain beneath it. “The sacrifice the Hourglass described—surrendering identity to the binding, being reconstructed as something new—that requires someone who can survive the process. Someone whose sense of self is flexible enough to bend without breaking.”
“And you think that’s you?”
“I know that’s me. I’ve always been adaptable. Changeable. The Grey Ratter isn’t a fixed identity—it’s a role I play, a mask I wear when I need to be someone capable of surviving in Kasdim. Underneath that...” The Ratter paused, choosing his words carefully. “Underneath that, there’s not much to lose. No deep roots. No unshakeable core. I’ve built myself from pieces of other people’s expectations, other people’s needs. If the binding takes that apart and puts it back together differently, I’m not sure anyone would notice the change.”
“I would notice.”
The words hung in the darkness between them, simple and devastating.
“I would notice,” Phaphhrd continued, “because you’re not a mask to me. You’re my partner. My friend. The person who has stood beside me through everything—through the Unremembering crisis, through the Bazaar, through every impossible situation we’ve faced together. You think you’re adaptable because you’ve had to be. You think you’re changeable because survival required it. But the person underneath all those adaptations, all those changes—that person is real. That person matters. And I will not stand by while you sacrifice him for a binding that doesn’t deserve his loss.”
The northern one speaks with considerable passion, the Hourglass observed, its voice carrying tones of what might have been interest. But passion does not change the mathematics of the situation. The sacrifice must be made by someone. The question is who.
“Let me make it,” Phaphhrd said. “Take my identity instead. I have roots—you just pointed that out. I have a fixed sense of self, a core that has endured through everything. If the binding needs something substantial to work with, something that can be reconstructed into a vessel for the knowledge you’re describing, then take me. Leave the Ratter intact.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not? You just argued that you’re the logical choice because you’re adaptable. I’m arguing that I’m the logical choice because I’m not. The binding would have more to work with—more material for reconstruction, more of a foundation to build on.”
“That’s not how it works—”
“Then explain how it works! Explain why your sacrifice is acceptable and mine isn’t. Explain why you get to make this decision alone when we’ve made every other decision together.” Phaphhrd’s voice rose, frustration and fear breaking through his usual calm. “I already gave seven years of my life for Ivlis. I already know what it means to sacrifice future for present. This is just... more of the same. A larger version of what I’ve already done.”
“The seven years were different. You knew what you were giving up. You knew who you’d be afterward—the same person, just with less time. This...” The Ratter gestured at the void around them, at the threads of power that converged at the crossroads. “This is different. The person who goes into the binding might not come out at all. They might emerge as something completely other—something that doesn’t remember Kasdim, or the Vermillion, or anything we’ve shared.”
“Then they’ll learn it again. We’ll teach them. We’ll tell them who they were and who they can become.” Phaphhrd’s voice dropped. “I won’t lose you, Ratter. Not like this. Not without fighting.”
You present an interesting dilemma, the Hourglass interjected. Two who wish to sacrifice themselves. Two who argue over which sacrifice is more appropriate. This is not a scenario we anticipated when we designed the crossroads.
“You designed it?”
Of course. The three of us—the Unremembering, the Hourglass, the First Forgetting—we have had millennia to study our prison, to understand its structure, to prepare for the moment when someone might arrive seeking to change it. The crossroads exists because we wanted it to exist. The choices you face are the choices we wished to present.
“Then present another choice,” the Ratter said, his voice sharp with sudden insight. “You said there are three options—reinforce, transform, or release. But you’ve been describing them as if they’re mutually exclusive. What if they’re not? What if there’s a combination that achieves something none of the individual options can?”
Silence. The darkness pulsed with what felt like consideration.
Explain your thinking.
“The binding can’t be reinforced because the maintenance knowledge is lost. It can’t be transformed without someone becoming the Keeper. It can’t be released without catastrophe. But what if—” The Ratter’s mind raced, fitting pieces together. “What if the transformation doesn’t require a Keeper? What if the binding itself could become the Keeper—a self-maintaining system that doesn’t need external control?”
That would require fundamental changes to the binding’s architecture. Changes that only someone with full access to its structure could make.
“Someone who had absorbed the maintenance knowledge.”
Yes. Someone who had made the sacrifice we described. But that sacrifice would still need to be made. The identity would still need to be surrendered.
“By one of us,” the Ratter agreed. “But what if the reconstruction worked differently? What if instead of creating something new, the binding used the knowledge to recreate what was lost? The original wizards’ understanding, their protocols, their wisdom—all encoded in the person who emerged?”
You are suggesting that the sacrifice could be... temporary. That the person who entered could be restored rather than replaced.
“I’m suggesting it’s worth trying. If the binding contains all the knowledge that was forgotten, it might also contain the knowledge of how to preserve identity through the process. The original wizards must have considered the possibility—they were brilliant enough to create the binding in the first place.”
They were. And they did consider it. But the preservation protocols were among the first things the First Forgetting targeted. They have been lost for longer than almost anything else.
“Then they’re still in there. Still encoded in the binding’s deepest structure. If someone went deep enough, they might find them.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
You are very clever, little thief. Perhaps too clever. You have found a possibility we did not expect you to find.
“Is it real? Can it work?”
It might. The preservation protocols exist—or did exist. Whether they can be recovered, whether they can be used... that would depend on the person attempting it. Their will, their clarity, their determination to hold onto who they are while the binding tries to remake them.
“Then I’ll do it,” the Ratter said.
“No,” Phaphhrd said. “We’ll do it together.”
That is not possible. The binding cannot process two identities simultaneously. The preservation protocols, if they exist, are designed for a single consciousness.
“Then we’ll modify them. Expand them. Make them work for both of us.” Phaphhrd’s voice was fierce. “You said the binding was created by seven wizards working together. Why should it only be able to handle one person now?”
The Hourglass was silent for a long moment. When it spoke again, its voice carried something that might have been respect.
You propose something that has never been attempted. A dual consciousness, merged for the purpose of navigating the binding’s depths and emerging intact. The risks would be astronomical.
“The risks are astronomical regardless. At least this way, we face them together.”
And if you fail? If both of you are lost instead of just one?
The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd. Phaphhrd looked back.
“Then we fail together,” the Ratter said quietly. “The way we’ve always done everything.”
“The way we always will.”
The Hourglass considered. The darkness shifted around them, reorganizing itself in patterns that suggested deep calculation.
Very well, it said finally. We will allow the attempt. But understand—if you fail, there will be no second chances. The binding will collapse, the entities will be freed, and everything you sought to protect will be destroyed.
“We understand.”
Then proceed. The crossroads awaits. And may whatever forces you believe in have mercy on what remains of you when this is over.
“Every partnership is a kind of binding. Every friendship is a chain that connects two souls, limiting their freedom while amplifying their strength. We choose our chains. We forge them with trust, temper them with shared experience, strengthen them with loyalty. And in the end, we discover that the chains we chose are the only things holding us together when everything else falls apart.”
—Phaphhrd of the Cold Waste, final letter to Ivlis of the Vermillion
The descent into the binding’s depths was unlike anything either of them had experienced.
The Ratter had faced dissolution before—the erosion of self that came with extended exposure to the Hourglass’s presence, the way the entity’s hunger for time seemed to gnaw at the edges of identity. But that had been external pressure, something he could resist by strengthening his mental walls and refusing to engage.
This was different. This was choosing to let the walls down. This was walking deliberately into dissolution and hoping to find something that could reassemble him on the other side.
Phaphhrd walked beside him, their shoulders nearly touching in the narrow passage that the binding had opened before them. The threads of power that had marked the crossroads had converged into a single strand, leading down into darkness that seemed to have weight and texture—darkness that pushed back against their progress like water against swimmers.
“It’s trying to slow us down,” Phaphhrd observed, his voice distant and strange in the compressed space.
“It’s testing us. Making sure we really want to do this.” The Ratter pressed forward, feeling the resistance increase with each step. “The binding was designed to be difficult to access. The original wizards didn’t want anyone reaching its heart by accident.”
“Accident seems unlikely at this point.”
“Intent isn’t always enough. The binding needs to be certain. It needs to know that whoever enters its depths is committed—willing to pay whatever price the journey demands.”
They continued downward. The darkness thickened around them, and with it came a pressure that was more than physical—a weight against their thoughts, their memories, their sense of who they were and why they had come here. The Ratter felt pieces of himself beginning to drift, like leaves in a slow current, pulling away from the core of his identity.
This is where it begins, he thought. This is where I start to lose myself.
But then he felt Phaphhrd’s hand on his arm—solid, warm, undeniably real. An anchor in the dissolving darkness.
“Stay with me,” the barbarian said. “Whatever happens, stay with me.”
“I’m trying. But it’s hard to—” The Ratter stumbled, caught himself. “Hard to remember why any of this matters. The binding is showing me possibilities. Other lives I could have lived. Other people I could have been. They all seem equally valid. Equally real.”
“They’re not. You’re real. This—” Phaphhrd gripped his arm tighter. “This is real. Everything else is distraction.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I know you. Not the possibilities, not the alternatives—you. The person who picked my pocket the first time we met and then bought me a drink to apologize. The person who insisted on going back into the cult’s headquarters to rescue prisoners we didn’t owe anything to. The person who burned his own magic to save my life.” Phaphhrd’s voice was fierce. “That person is real. Everything else is the binding trying to confuse you.”
The Ratter focused on the sound of that voice, on the grip of that hand, on the undeniable presence of his partner beside him. The dissolving possibilities began to coalesce again, drawing back toward a center he hadn’t realized he was losing.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We’re not done.”
They pressed on.
The heart of the binding was a crystalline space that seemed to exist in all dimensions simultaneously.
Looking at it directly was impossible—the geometry folded through itself in ways that human eyes weren’t designed to process. But the Ratter could sense its structure, could feel the patterns of power that the original wizards had woven into its fabric. This was where the three entities were truly contained—not in the vast darkness they had traversed, but in this concentrated point where their power was compressed and constrained.
You have reached the center, a voice said. Not the Hourglass—something older, something that seemed to be the binding itself speaking. What you seek is here. The knowledge. The protocols. The wisdom that was forgotten.
“How do we access it?”
You know how. You have always known. The price was explained to you before you began this journey.
The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd. Phaphhrd looked back.
“Together,” the Ratter said.
“Together.”
They stepped forward into the crystalline heart, and the binding swallowed them whole.
What followed was not an experience that could be adequately described in human language.
The Ratter felt himself dissolving—not painfully, but thoroughly. Every memory, every thought, every aspect of what made him who he was came apart, separating into component pieces that the binding examined with clinical precision. He watched his childhood fragment into individual moments that floated past like leaves on a stream. He felt his accumulated skills detach from his sense of self, becoming abstract concepts rather than personal abilities.
This is death, he thought—or tried to think, though the mechanism of thinking was itself becoming uncertain. This is what it feels like to stop being.
But alongside his dissolution, he felt something else. Another consciousness, equally fragmenting, equally losing itself to the binding’s examination. Phaphhrd was dying with him—dying into him—their separate identities mixing in the crystalline space like streams meeting in a river.
The binding examined them both. Compared them. Noted the differences and the similarities. And then, slowly, began to reconstruct.
The first thing the Ratter became aware of was memory.
Not his memories—or not only his memories. He remembered snow and cold and the aching loneliness of adolescence in a frozen wasteland. He remembered the day Vlana had died, the way the world had seemed to lose all color, the years of wandering that had followed. He remembered discovering that partnership could fill some of the emptiness, that caring about someone else was not always a vulnerability to be exploited.
Those were Phaphhrd’s memories. They lived in him now alongside his own, woven into his reconstructed identity as if they had always been there.
But there was more. Beneath the personal memories, deeper than the experiences that had shaped two individual lives, there was knowledge. Ancient knowledge, encoded in patterns that the binding had preserved for millennia. The maintenance protocols. The structural diagrams. The understanding of how three entities could be contained, constrained, controlled.
The preservation protocols worked, he realized. They found us. They kept us intact while the binding gave us what we came for.
But “us” was a complex word now. The Ratter opened his eyes—eyes that had been reconstructed from the binding’s understanding of human anatomy—and found himself looking at a world that seemed somehow both familiar and strange. He could see deeper than before, perceive patterns that had been invisible. And beside him...
Phaphhrd was also waking. Also reconstructing. Also discovering what the binding had made of them.
“Ratter?” The barbarian’s voice was hesitant. “Are you... you?”
“I’m not sure.” The Ratter examined his hands, his body, his sense of self. Everything was present—everything he remembered being, everything he had been before entering the binding’s heart. But there was more. Extensions. Additions. Knowledge that had been grafted onto his consciousness like new limbs. “Are you?”
“I think so. But I can feel you in here.” Phaphhrd tapped his temple. “In my head. Like an echo, or a shadow. Like part of you stayed behind when we were reconstructed.”
“Part of me did.” The Ratter could feel it too—a connection that went deeper than ordinary friendship, deeper than the bond they had built over years of partnership. The binding had merged them, in some fundamental way. They were still separate people, still distinct consciousnesses, but they were also... more than that. Linked in ways that couldn’t be severed.
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know yet. Ask me after we’ve lived with it for a while.”
You have what you came for, the binding’s voice said, sounding amused. The knowledge, the protocols, the understanding. You can repair the damage now. Strengthen the chains. Contain us for another age.
“That’s one option,” the Ratter said. “But it’s not the only one.”
Oh?
“The knowledge you gave us isn’t just about maintenance. It’s about transformation. The original wizards designed options into the binding—ways to change its nature without destroying it. Ways to make it... better.”
You would attempt to transform us?
“I would attempt to give you what you never had. Choice. The ability to remain contained, yes, but also the opportunity to change what that containment means. To become something other than prisoners, if you’re willing to pay the price.”
Silence. The crystalline space pulsed with patterns that suggested deep consideration.
What price?
“The same price everything else has cost. Sacrifice. Surrender. Acceptance of limits in exchange for something valuable.” The Ratter felt the knowledge flowing through him, showing him possibilities that the original wizards had imagined but never implemented. “The First Forgetting wants to unmake meaning. What if instead it could unmake suffering? The Unremembering wants to consume identity. What if instead it could consume fear? You, the Hourglass—you want time. What if instead of stealing it, you could give it? Become a source of duration rather than a drain on it?”
You propose to transform our natures. To make us... different.
“I propose to offer you the opportunity. To let you decide whether the change is worth it.” The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd, saw understanding and support in his partner’s reconstructed eyes. “That’s what we learned in the binding’s heart. Not just how to maintain the prison—how to transform it into something that doesn’t need to be a prison at all.”
And if we refuse?
“Then we maintain the binding as it was designed. Keep you contained, keep the world safe, accept that some things can only be caged rather than changed.” The Ratter shrugged. “But I thought you might be interested in an alternative. Millennia of imprisonment tends to make beings appreciate the value of options.”
The binding was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, the crystalline space began to shift—not collapsing, but reorganizing itself into new patterns. New possibilities.
We will consider your offer, the Hourglass said. But understand—consideration is not acceptance. If we reject the transformation, the binding will need to be strengthened regardless. Someone will have to bear the weight of maintaining it.
“We understand.” The Ratter took Phaphhrd’s hand. “We’re prepared for that too.”
Then let us see what choices have been offered. And let us discover what we are willing to become.
The negotiation that followed lasted three days—or what felt like three days within the binding’s altered time. The Ratter and Phaphhrd served as intermediaries, translating between human understanding and entity perspective, helping the three imprisoned powers comprehend what they were being offered and what it would cost.
The First Forgetting was the most difficult to reach. Its nature—the unmaking of understanding itself—made communication nearly impossible. But gradually, through careful repetition and creative circumlocution, they managed to convey the essential proposal: transformation from a consumer of meaning into a healer of confusion. Instead of making things forgotten, it could make things clear. Instead of erasing understanding, it could restore it.
This is... acceptable, the First Forgetting eventually conceded, its voice like static at the edge of comprehension. We have been emptiness for so long. Perhaps it is time to be something else.
The Unremembering was more suspicious. Its hunger for identity had defined it since before the binding was created; asking it to change that hunger was asking it to become something fundamentally different.
“Not different,” the Ratter argued, drawing on the knowledge the binding had given him. “Redirected. You consume identity—but what if you consumed the identities that people wanted to lose? The trauma, the pain, the parts of themselves that hold them back? You could become a healer of minds instead of a destroyer of them.”
Healing requires consent. We have never required consent.
“You could learn. The Hourglass learned to value consent—to appreciate the taste of freely given time over stolen years. You could learn the same appreciation for freely surrendered pain.”
And if we prefer what we are?
“Then we strengthen the binding and continue as before. But consider—the binding is failing regardless. Even with the knowledge we’ve recovered, reinforcement is a temporary solution. Eventually, the containment will erode again. This transformation is your only path to a future that isn’t catastrophe.”
The Unremembering considered this for what felt like hours.
We will try, it said finally. But we make no promises. Change is... difficult for beings of our nature.
“Change is difficult for everyone. That’s what makes it valuable.”
The Hourglass, surprisingly, was the easiest to convince. Perhaps its centuries of dealing with humans through the Timekeeper had given it a more sophisticated understanding of negotiation, of compromise, of the art of getting what you wanted by appearing to give something away.
We accept the transformation, it said, almost eagerly. Becoming a source of time rather than a drain on it—this has always been a possibility we entertained. The original wizards feared our power, but power can be used for creation as well as destruction. If you can teach us how to give rather than take, we will learn.
“The knowledge is here,” the Ratter said. “The protocols for transformation, for redirecting your natures while maintaining your essence. It will hurt—change always hurts—but when it’s over, you’ll be something you’ve never been before. Free. Constrained by purpose rather than chains.”
And you will bear witness?
“We’ll do more than that. We’ll help. The binding gave us understanding of its structure; we can guide the transformation, ensure that it proceeds correctly.” The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd, felt the connection between them pulse with shared determination. “We’re part of this now, whether we wanted to be or not. We might as well make that connection serve something worthwhile.”
The transformation began on the fourth day.
It was not a gentle process. The binding had been designed to contain, to constrain, to suppress—turning it into something that channeled and directed required fundamental restructuring. The Ratter and Phaphhrd worked together, their merged understanding allowing them to perceive aspects of the binding that neither could have accessed alone.
The First Forgetting went first. Its nature shifted, contracted, realigned—the void that had consumed understanding becoming a lens that clarified it instead. The process was agonizing to witness; even entities could suffer, it seemed, when the core of what they were was being remade.
But when it was over, something had changed. The pressure that had been building against the binding’s walls—the slow erosion of forgotten knowledge—reversed. Understanding flowed back into structures that had been emptied, restoring strength that had been lost over millennia.
The Unremembering went second. Its transformation was more violent, its hunger fighting against redirection with everything it had. But eventually, after what felt like hours of struggle, the change completed. The consumer of identity became the absorber of trauma—still hungry, still powerful, but feeding on things that people wanted to be rid of rather than things they needed to keep.
The Hourglass went last, and its transformation was almost graceful by comparison. It had been preparing for this possibility for centuries, perhaps hoping that someday someone would offer it the chance to become something other than a thief of time. The power that had stolen years now generated them instead—not from nothing, but from the potential that existed in every moment, the unused possibilities that people let slip away without realizing their value.
When all three transformations were complete, the binding was no longer a prison.
It was something else. A wellspring. A resource. A connection between three redirected powers and the world they had once sought to destroy.
We are different now, the Hourglass said, its voice carrying harmonics that the Ratter had never heard before—something that sounded almost like gratitude. Different and free, in a way we have never been. This is... unexpected.
“Good unexpected or bad unexpected?”
We do not know yet. But we are willing to discover.
They emerged from the binding into a world that had changed while they were gone.
The excavation site was empty now—the Guild workers had completed their task and departed, leaving only the crystalline threshold standing in the center of the exposed chamber. Above, through the shaft they had dug, the Ratter could see stars—the three moons had set, and dawn was still hours away.
Phaphhrd climbed out first, his reconstructed body moving with a fluidity that suggested the binding had made improvements while reassembling him. The Ratter followed, noting the same changes in his own movements—a precision, a awareness, that hadn’t been there before.
They stood together at the edge of the pit, looking out over the ruins of the Bazaar of Stolen Hours.
“We did it,” Phaphhrd said. His voice was quiet, almost wondering. “The binding is stable. The entities are transformed. Kasdim is safe.”
“For now. The transformation doesn’t guarantee anything permanent—the entities could choose to revert, given enough time and motivation. And there are still debts to settle. Ningaudrelle will want to know what happened. Sheemba too. And Ivlis...”
“Ivlis will understand.” Phaphhrd’s voice was certain. “She’s been part of this from the beginning, even when we tried to protect her from it. She’ll want to know what we’ve become. What we can offer her now.”
“What can we offer her now? We’re not the same people who left her.”
“No. We’re more. We’re connected to each other in ways we weren’t before, and we’re connected to the binding—to the transformed entities—in ways that no one has ever been.” Phaphhrd turned to face his partner. “But we’re still us. Still partners. Still the people who loved her and fought for her and sacrificed for her. That hasn’t changed.”
The Ratter considered this. Considered the weight of what they had become, the responsibilities they had taken on, the prices they had paid and would continue to pay.
“No,” he agreed finally. “That hasn’t changed.”
They began the walk back toward the city, toward Ivlis and explanations and whatever came next. Behind them, the threshold pulsed with soft light—the transformed binding, settling into its new configuration.
The weight of shadows had lifted.
But other weights remained.
The journey back from the binding had taken something from all of them, and returned something as well.
Phaphhrd walked through the pre-dawn streets of Kasdim, feeling the weight of what he had become settling into his bones. The transformation had been more thorough than he had expected—not just the merger with the Ratter’s consciousness, but the integration of knowledge that didn’t belong to either of them. He could feel the binding’s structure in the back of his mind now, could sense the transformed entities going about their new purposes with the same awareness he used to feel weather changes in his northern homeland.
Beside him, the Ratter moved with similar awareness—his grey eyes constantly scanning, processing information through senses that had been enhanced by their passage through the binding’s heart. They didn’t need to speak to communicate anymore; the connection between them carried everything that words might have conveyed, and more besides.
Ivlis walked slightly behind them, still adapting to the sudden expansion of her reality. The choice she had made in the theatre’s dressing room—joining their connection, becoming part of whatever they were becoming—had changed her as profoundly as the transformation had changed them. She was no longer merely an actress, no longer merely the woman Phaphhrd loved; she was part of something larger, something that stretched between three consciousnesses and the ancient powers that pulsed beneath the city.
“The sun’s coming up,” she said quietly.
Phaphhrd looked east, toward the glow that was beginning to color the horizon. Dawn in Kasdim was always a complex affair—the perpetual smoke that filled the air diffused the light in ways that created colors other cities never saw. Oranges blended with purples, reds merged with golds, and the whole sky seemed to catch fire before the actual sun appeared.
“It’s beautiful,” the Ratter said, with a note of surprise in his voice.
“You’ve seen dawn in Kasdim a thousand times.”
“I’ve never really looked at it before.” The thief—though ‘thief’ seemed too small a word for what he had become—stopped in the middle of the street, his grey eyes fixed on the transforming sky. “Everything seems different now. Not changed, exactly, but... visible in ways it wasn’t before. As if I spent my whole life looking at shadows and only just discovered there was light behind them.”
“That’s the binding’s influence.” Ivlis moved to stand beside him. “The transformed entities are clarifying perception—not just understanding, but awareness itself. The First Forgetting used to fog everything; now it clears the fog instead.”
“I can feel it working,” Phaphhrd said. “Feel them working, all three of them. The Unremembering is absorbing fear from dreams right now—I can sense thousands of nightmares being gently dissolved, replaced by ordinary sleep. The Hourglass is generating moments, adding fractions of time to lives that felt measured and empty. And the First Forgetting is making things make sense—connections that were hidden becoming visible, relationships that were confused becoming clear.”
“Is that what we’re supposed to guide?” The Ratter sounded uncertain. “These vast processes, happening across the entire city?”
“We’re supposed to help them find their balance. Make sure the transformation doesn’t drift back toward what they were.” Phaphhrd reached out, touched his partner’s shoulder, felt the connection between them pulse with shared uncertainty and shared determination. “We’re not controlling them. We’re... partnering with them. The way we’ve always partnered with each other.”
“That’s a lot of partnership.”
“It is. But we’re not alone in it anymore.” Phaphhrd looked at Ivlis, felt the warmth of her presence in the bond they now shared. “Three of us, connected to three transformed entities, all working toward the same thing. That’s a lot of strength to draw on.”
“Assuming the transformation holds.”
“It will hold.” Ivlis’s voice was certain in a way that surprised them both. “I can see it—the unlived futures I carry, some of them show what happens if we succeed. The transformation becomes permanent. The entities become truly integrated with human consciousness. Kasdim becomes something it’s never been before—a city where ancient powers and mortal lives work together instead of against each other.”
“You can see possible futures?”
“Not see, exactly. Remember. The futures that were stolen from me included timelines where this transformation succeeded. When my time came back, those memories came with it.” She smiled. “I know this works because I remember it working. Not in this exact timeline, maybe, but in possibilities close enough to count.”
The Ratter absorbed this. Through their bond, Phaphhrd felt his partner’s mind working—analyzing, evaluating, searching for flaws in Ivlis’s certainty.
“That’s not proof,” the thief said finally. “Memories of alternative timelines aren’t the same as knowing what will happen here.”
“No. But they’re hope.” Ivlis reached out, taking one hand from each of them. “And hope matters, doesn’t it? You spent three books learning that—learning that partnership and determination and refusing to give up can accomplish things that pure logic would call impossible. This is just more of the same.”
Phaphhrd felt the truth of this settle into him like warm light. Hope wasn’t certainty. Hope wasn’t proof. But hope was enough to keep moving forward, enough to face another day of challenges, enough to carry the weight of transformed entities and transformed relationships and transformed selves.
“She’s right,” he said. “About all of it.”
“I know she is.” The Ratter’s smile was tired but genuine. “I was just checking.”
They walked on together, toward the Vermillion and whatever explanations waited there. The dawn continued to unfold around them, painting the city in colors that seemed somehow more vivid than they had been before—as if the world itself was waking up alongside its transformed guardians.
The Vermillion Theatre was dark when they arrived—not closed for the night, but empty in a way that suggested its owner had more pressing concerns than the evening’s performance. The Ratter noted the absence of the usual stagehands, the silence where there should have been the chaos of preparation, and felt his reconstructed senses extending to probe the building for threats.
That’s new, he thought. The binding gave me more than knowledge.
Phaphhrd seemed to be having a similar experience. His hand rested on his sword, but his attention was elsewhere—scanning the building with perceptions that hadn’t existed before their transformation.
“She’s in the dressing room,” the barbarian said. “I can feel her. The connection to the stolen time—the time that was returned—it’s still there. I can sense it.”
“That’s going to take some getting used to.”
“Most things do.”
They found Ivlis exactly where Phaphhrd had sensed her, sitting before the mirror in her dressing space, staring at her reflection with an expression that the Ratter couldn’t quite read. She had been crying—the tracks were visible on her face—but she wasn’t crying now. She was waiting.
“You’re back.” Her voice was flat, controlled. “Both of you.”
“We’re back.” Phaphhrd moved toward her, then stopped, uncertain. “Ivlis, I—”
“I felt it happen.” She stood, turning to face them. “Whatever you did in the binding—I felt it. The unlived memories I carry, they... resonated. Showed me fragments of what was occurring.” Her eyes moved from Phaphhrd to the Ratter and back. “You merged. Became something more than you were. And now you’re standing here, looking at me like you’re not sure I’ll recognize you.”
“Will you?” the Ratter asked quietly.
“I don’t know yet.” Ivlis moved closer, studying them with the actress’s eye that could read truth in the smallest gesture. “You look the same. You sound the same. But there’s something else now. Something that wasn’t there before.”
“The binding gave us knowledge,” Phaphhrd said. “And... connected us. To each other, and to the transformed entities. We’re still who we were, but we’re also—”
“More.” Ivlis finished the sentence. “Yes. I can see that.” She was quiet for a moment, then: “Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“What you’ve become. The connection you share. I need to understand it before I can decide how I feel about it.”
The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd. Through their new connection, he felt his partner’s uncertainty, his hope, his fear of losing what they had fought so hard to protect. But he also felt determination—the same determination that had carried them through the binding’s transformation.
“Alright,” the Ratter said. “But it’s not easy to demonstrate. The connection isn’t—”
Ivlis reached out, taking one hand from each of them. The moment she touched them, the Ratter felt something shift—felt the connection that bound him to Phaphhrd expand to include her, drawing her into the network of awareness that the binding had created.
She gasped. Her eyes went wide. And for a long moment, she stood frozen, experiencing what they had become in a way that words could never have conveyed.
“Oh,” she said finally, her voice soft with wonder. “Oh, I see.”
“Ivlis—”
“It’s beautiful.” Her grip on their hands tightened. “Terrifying and strange and absolutely beautiful. You’re woven together now. Part of each other in ways that can’t be separated.” She looked at Phaphhrd, tears forming in her eyes. “And there’s room. In the weaving. Room for someone else, if she wanted to join.”
“We didn’t know,” Phaphhrd said. “The binding didn’t tell us—”
“It wouldn’t have. This isn’t something that can be forced or planned. It’s a choice.” Ivlis smiled through her tears. “My choice.”
“You don’t have to decide now,” the Ratter said. “You don’t have to decide ever, if you don’t want to. The connection we share—it’s not dependent on you joining it. You can be part of our lives without being part of... this.”
“I know. That’s what makes it a real choice.” Ivlis released their hands, stepping back to study them again. “I need time. Time to think, to feel, to understand what I’m considering. But know this—I’m not afraid. I’ve carried twenty-three years of unlived futures in my head since the Timekeeper stole my time. I know what it means to be more than one thing at once, to contain possibilities that shouldn’t fit inside a single mind.” Her smile was fierce now, determined. “If I choose to join your binding, it won’t be because I’m desperate or afraid. It will be because I want to. Because I’ve decided that being part of something extraordinary is worth the price it costs.”
Phaphhrd looked at her with something that might have been adoration, might have been awe, might have been the simple recognition of a soul that matched his own.
“That’s more than we have any right to ask for.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.” Ivlis moved toward the door. “Now come. Both of you. You’ve been gone for three days, and I imagine you have other explanations to make, other debts to settle. The binding may be transformed, but Kasdim hasn’t changed. The people who helped you will want to know what they helped accomplish.”
“The Grey Guild,” the Ratter said. “And Ningaudrelle. And Sheemba.”
“And Korvallis,” Phaphhrd added. “He’ll want to know that the binding is stable—that the knowledge he helped preserve wasn’t lost entirely.”
“Then let’s go tell them.” Ivlis led them out of the dressing room, through the empty theatre, into the pre-dawn streets of Kasdim. “And afterward—” She glanced back at them. “Afterward, we can talk about futures. The ones we’ve lived, the ones we haven’t, and the ones we might still choose.”
The city was waking as they walked through it, the perpetual haze of smoke already rising from the thousands of chimneys and workshops that had earned Kasdim its other name. The Seven Score Thousand Smokes looked the same as it always had—corrupt, chaotic, endlessly alive with schemes and dreams and desperation.
But the Ratter could sense something different now. The binding that contained the transformed entities pulsed beneath the city’s surface like a second heartbeat, and through his connection to it, he could feel the changes already beginning to take effect. The First Forgetting was clarifying confusions, helping people understand things that had always eluded them. The Unremembering was absorbing traumas, easing burdens that people had carried for years without relief. The Hourglass was generating time, adding moments of potential to lives that had seemed measured out to the last second.
“It’s working,” he said quietly.
“What is?”
“The transformation. The entities are doing what they said they would do. Helping instead of harming.” The Ratter shook his head, still not quite believing it. “I thought they might resist. Might find ways to circumvent the new patterns, to return to what they were. But they’re... embracing it. Learning to be different.”
“Change is hard, but it’s not impossible.” Phaphhrd’s voice carried the weight of personal experience. “Even for ancient entities. Even for things that have existed since before the world had words.”
“Even for stubborn thieves and obstinate barbarians?”
Phaphhrd smiled. “Especially for stubborn thieves and obstinate barbarians. We’re living proof that people can become more than they were—that the patterns we’ve built over years don’t have to be the patterns we carry forever.”
They walked on through the waking city, three figures connected by bonds visible and invisible, carrying the weight of what they had done and what they had become.
Behind them, the transformed binding continued its work. The shadows that had threatened Kasdim had been transformed into something else—not quite light, but not darkness either. Something in between. Something that might, given enough time and care, become a source of genuine healing for a world that had forgotten how to heal itself.
The weight of shadows had become the weight of possibility.
And that, the Ratter decided, was a weight worth carrying.
Ningaudrelle received them in his workshop with the same unsettling attention he had always given them—eleven eyes tracking their movements independently, processing information through perspectives that human minds couldn’t quite grasp.
“You are different,” the wizard said, before either of them could speak. “The binding has changed you. I can see its patterns woven into your consciousness.”
“We transformed the entities,” the Ratter said. “They’re not prisoners anymore—they’re... partners, in a sense. Connected to the binding in ways that serve rather than destroy.”
“I know. I felt the change when it happened.” Ningaudrelle moved among his cluttered workbenches, examining artifacts and scrolls with apparent casualness. “The pressure that had been building against the binding’s structure reversed overnight. The knowledge that had been draining away began to accumulate again. Whatever you did, it worked.”
“Then we’re even.” Phaphhrd’s voice was flat. “You sent us to recover the Chronometer, and we lost it in the confrontation with the Hourglass. But we gave you something better—a stable binding, transformed entities, the end of the crisis you were trying to prevent.”
“Even?” Ningaudrelle’s laugh was sharp, brittle. “We are not even, barbarian. We will never be even. You destroyed the artifact I spent centuries positioning myself to acquire. You entered the binding’s heart and gained knowledge that I have sought for longer than your city has existed. You transformed the entities themselves, achieving what the original wizards never dared to attempt.” The wizard’s eyes focused on them with sudden intensity. “You have become something far more valuable than any tool I might have possessed. And that creates a debt of an entirely different kind.”
“What kind of debt?”
“The kind that can only be paid in alliance.” Ningaudrelle stopped his aimless movement, facing them directly. “I am old, and I am patient, but I am not foolish. The transformed binding represents power beyond anything I could access alone. Your connection to it makes you the most significant magical force in Kasdim—perhaps in the world. I could try to take that power from you, but I have seen enough of your capabilities to know how that attempt would end.”
“So instead you offer alliance.”
“I offer mutual benefit. My knowledge, my resources, my network of contacts—available to you when you need them. In exchange, I ask only to be informed when the binding’s nature shifts in ways that might affect my interests. To be consulted when decisions are made that could reshape the balance of power in this city.”
The Ratter considered this. Through his connection to Phaphhrd, he felt his partner’s skepticism—and his own answering caution.
“You’re asking us to trust you.”
“I’m asking you to use me. There’s a difference.” Ningaudrelle’s smile showed too many teeth. “Trust implies emotional investment. Use implies practical calculation. I am offering myself as a tool, to be employed when useful and set aside when not. That is the only relationship that makes sense between beings of our respective natures.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“Access. Understanding. The opportunity to study the transformed binding and learn from what you’ve accomplished.” The wizard’s voice dropped. “I have been seeking power my entire existence because power seemed like the only path to safety. But you have shown me that there are other paths—that transformation is possible even for ancient things. I wish to learn how that transformation works. I wish to understand what it might mean for me.”
The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd. Through their bond, he felt agreement—cautious, conditional, but real.
“We’ll consider your offer,” the Ratter said. “We won’t promise anything yet. But we’ll consider it.”
“That is more than I expected.” Ningaudrelle inclined his head. “The binding has made you wiser as well as more powerful. I approve.”
Sheemba received them differently.
The swamp around her dwelling seemed quieter than usual, the usual sounds of wildlife muted as if in anticipation of something significant. The eyeless seer sat in her customary position, her face turned toward them with the uncanny accuracy that always characterized her perceptions.
“You have completed the transformation,” she said without preamble. “The entities are no longer what they were. The binding has become something new.”
“You knew this was possible.” The Ratter’s voice carried no accusation—only understanding. “You sent me into the binding knowing that transformation was an option. Knowing that I might choose it.”
“I knew it was a possibility. I did not know you would have the wisdom to recognize it, or the courage to attempt it.” Sheemba’s voice was thoughtful. “Many who enter the binding’s heart see only the choices that are presented to them. Few realize that other choices exist—that the binding itself can be questioned, negotiated with, transformed.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because knowledge given freely has less power than knowledge discovered.” The seer shifted slightly. “If I had told you that transformation was possible, you would have approached the binding with that expectation. The entities would have sensed it, would have prepared themselves to resist. But because you discovered the possibility yourself, through your own insight and determination, they were caught unprepared. They had to confront the offer without having time to construct defenses against it.”
“You manipulated us.”
“I positioned you to succeed. There is a difference.” Sheemba’s smile was barely visible. “But yes, I manipulated the situation. As I always do. As I will always do. It is my nature, and the transformation you achieved has not changed that.”
“What has it changed?”
“The balance of power in Kasdim. The relationship between mortals and the entities that have threatened them for millennia. The nature of the binding itself.” Sheemba paused. “And your place in the world. You are not ordinary mortals anymore, Grey Ratter and Phaphhrd of the Cold Waste. You are something new—bridges between human consciousness and ancient power. That makes you valuable in ways you have not yet begun to understand.”
“Valuable to whom?”
“To everyone. To the entities you transformed, who will look to you for guidance as they adapt to their new natures. To the mortals who will eventually learn what the binding has become, and who will want access to its transformed powers. To beings like Ningaudrelle and myself, who have spent our existences seeking to understand and control forces beyond ordinary comprehension.” The seer’s voice dropped. “You have made yourselves indispensable. That is both a gift and a curse.”
“We didn’t ask for it.”
“No one asks for the roles they are called to play. They simply find themselves in positions where choices must be made, and make them as best they can.” Sheemba stood, moving toward them with the eerie grace of someone who navigated the world through senses other than sight. “I offer no alliance, Grey Ratter. No mutual benefit arrangement like Ningaudrelle proposes. I offer only acknowledgment—that you have done something remarkable, and that the consequences of that action will unfold over years and decades in ways none of us can predict.”
“That’s it? Just acknowledgment?”
“That and a warning.” Sheemba’s voice hardened. “The transformed entities will need guidance, yes. But they will also need boundaries. They are still what they were at their core—hunger, void, emptiness. The transformation redirected those natures, but it did not eliminate them. If you fail to maintain the new patterns, if you allow them to drift back toward what they were...”
“The transformation could reverse.”
“Exactly. And that reversal would be worse than the original binding ever was—because now the entities know they can be transformed. Now they have experienced something other than imprisonment. If they are forced back into cages after tasting freedom, their rage will be... considerable.”
The Ratter felt the weight of this settle onto his shoulders—another burden to carry, another responsibility to maintain.
“We understand.”
“I hope you do.” Sheemba turned away. “Go now. You have other debts to settle, other explanations to make. And I have visions to contemplate—futures that have shifted dramatically because of what you’ve done. Some are better than what I feared. Some are worse than what I hoped. All are uncertain.”
“Isn’t that always the case?”
“Yes,” Sheemba said quietly. “That is always the case. But the uncertainty you’ve created is larger than most. The ripples will spread for generations.”
They left the swamp with more to think about than when they’d arrived.
The meeting with Marek Vane was shorter, but in its own way more significant.
The Grey Guild’s leader received them in a private room at the Silver Serpent—a tavern that served as neutral ground for negotiations between Kasdim’s various power factions. Vane had come alone, without the guards and operatives that usually surrounded him, a gesture that the Ratter recognized as either profound trust or calculated risk.
“The excavation site has been secured,” Vane said without preamble. “Whatever artifacts might have remained beneath the Bazaar’s ruins are now under Guild control—or would be, if any remained. Your activities seem to have consumed everything of value.”
“The transformation required resources,” the Ratter said. “Energy, power, material to work with. The binding used what was available.”
“Including the threshold itself. My people report that the dimensional anomaly that allowed access to the binding’s interior has... closed. Permanently, as far as they can determine.”
“That was part of the transformation’s design. The entities no longer need external access points—they’re integrated with the binding in ways that make physical entry unnecessary.” The Ratter paused. “Is that a problem?”
“It’s a reality I’ll have to adapt to.” Vane’s expression was carefully neutral. “I had hoped to maintain some ongoing access to the binding’s structure. Knowledge is currency in Kasdim, and knowledge of how the binding works would have been exceptionally valuable.”
“We can provide some of that knowledge. Not the technical details—those are integrated into our consciousness now, not easily communicable in words or symbols. But general understanding, warnings about what to avoid, guidance on how to interact with the transformed entities.” The Ratter met Vane’s eyes directly. “That was part of our agreement, wasn’t it? Access to information in exchange for excavation support.”
“It was.” Vane’s smile was thin but genuine. “And I appreciate you honoring that agreement, even though the situation has changed considerably since we made it. Many in your position would consider themselves beyond such mundane obligations.”
“We’re not beyond anything. We’re still us—still the same people who made the deal. The transformation changed what we are, not who we are.” The Ratter felt Phaphhrd’s agreement pulse through their bond. “Besides, we’ll need allies in the months ahead. The entities will require guidance, the binding will need monitoring, and we can’t be everywhere at once. Having the Grey Guild as a resource rather than an adversary makes practical sense.”
“Practical sense.” Vane’s smile widened. “I appreciate practical sense. Very well—our agreement stands, modified to account for current circumstances. The Guild will provide support when requested, and in exchange, you’ll keep us informed of developments that might affect our interests. Is that acceptable?”
“Acceptable.”
They shook hands—a simple gesture, but one that carried weight in a city where agreements were often sealed in blood.
“One more thing,” Vane said as they prepared to leave. “Sheelris. I know she was involved in the events leading up to the transformation. I know she made choices that put her at odds with you. But she’s also made choices since then that... complicate her position.”
“What kind of choices?”
“The kind that suggest she’s not entirely committed to the path she was walking. The kind that suggest she might be amenable to other arrangements.” Vane’s voice was careful. “I’m not suggesting you trust her. But I am suggesting that the situation may be more complex than it appears.”
The Ratter filed this information away for future consideration. Sheelris was still dangerous, still carrying grudges—but perhaps not as single-minded in her hostility as he had assumed.
“We’ll keep that in mind.”
“See that you do.” Vane nodded toward the door. “Now go. You have responsibilities to attend to, and I have an organization to run. We’ll talk again soon—the transformed binding is going to create opportunities and challenges that will require careful management.”
“You sound almost hopeful.”
“Hope is bad for business.” But Vane was smiling as he said it. “Let’s just say I’m... cautiously optimistic about what comes next. For all of us.”
Korvallis was in his garden when they found him, tending to plants that seemed to respond to his attention with unusual vigor. The old keeper looked better than he had in months—his eyes clearer, his movements more certain, his face less lined with the confusion that had plagued him since the cult’s damage.
“The First Forgetting,” he said without turning. “Its transformation has restored some of what it took from me. Fragments of knowledge are returning, fitting themselves back into the spaces where they belonged.” He straightened, facing them. “You transformed the entities. I felt it happen—felt understanding flowing back into my mind for the first time in years.”
“The transformation was meant to heal,” the Ratter said. “The First Forgetting redirected from unmaking meaning to clarifying it. You were one of its earliest victims; it makes sense that you would be among the first to benefit.”
“Benefit.” Korvallis tested the word. “Yes, I suppose that’s accurate. Though ‘benefit’ seems too small a word for what I’m experiencing. I remember things I thought were lost forever. The maintenance protocols. The binding’s true structure. The reasons why the original wizards made the choices they made.” His voice dropped. “I remember why they failed.”
“Failed?”
“The binding was never meant to last forever. The wizards knew that—they designed it as a temporary solution, intended to contain the entities only until a better answer could be found. But no better answer emerged, and as generations passed, the knowledge of the binding’s limitations was... forgotten.” Korvallis smiled grimly. “Not by accident. The First Forgetting was working against them from the beginning, eroding the understanding that might have led to a permanent solution.”
“And now?”
“Now the transformation you achieved has done what the wizards hoped someone eventually would—turned the entities from threats into resources. The binding is no longer a prison; it’s a partnership. And that changes everything.”
Korvallis moved toward a bench at the garden’s edge, settling onto it with the careful movements of someone who had learned not to take physical stability for granted.
“I want to tell you what I remember. Not the technical details—you have those now, woven into your consciousness by the binding itself. But the context. The history. The things that the wizards understood about what they were doing, and why.”
The Ratter and Phaphhrd settled onto the grass before him, listening as the old keeper spoke.
“The three entities were not always enemies of existence,” Korvallis began. “They were aspects of creation itself—the void that preceded form, the hunger that drove change, the forgetting that allowed new things to emerge by releasing old patterns. The wizards who created the binding didn’t discover them; they were always there, woven into the fabric of reality.”
“Then why did they become threats?”
“Because reality changed. The world became more complex, more ordered, more dependent on memory and time and identity. The entities’ functions became destructive rather than constructive—not because they changed, but because the context they existed in changed.” Korvallis paused. “The wizards understood this. They knew that binding the entities was only a temporary measure, a way of removing destructive elements from a system that couldn’t accommodate them anymore.”
“And the transformation we achieved?”
“Restored the balance. Redirected the entities’ functions so they could serve the new context rather than working against it. The First Forgetting no longer erases understanding because understanding is no longer the enemy of emergence. The Unremembering no longer consumes identity because identity is no longer the enemy of change. The Hourglass no longer steals time because time is no longer the enemy of potential.”
“We didn’t know any of that,” Phaphhrd said. “We just saw three options and chose one that seemed better than the others.”
“Sometimes wisdom is knowing which choice to make without understanding why it’s the right one.” Korvallis smiled. “The binding gave you the knowledge you needed—the technical protocols, the structural diagrams. But it couldn’t give you the judgment to use that knowledge well. That came from you. From your partnership, your determination, your willingness to try something that might fail catastrophically.”
“It could still fail,” the Ratter said quietly. “Sheemba warned us—the transformation could reverse if we don’t maintain it.”
“Yes. The entities are changed, but they are not perfected. They will test their new natures, push against their new limits, discover what they can and cannot do within the transformed binding. Your role is to guide them through that process—to help them become what the transformation made possible without drifting back toward what they were.”
“That’s a lifetime of work.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps longer.” Korvallis met the Ratter’s eyes. “But you are not alone. The binding has connected you to each other, and through each other to the entities themselves. You can share the burden in ways that solitary keepers never could. And as the transformation proves itself stable, others may join you—people who understand what you’ve done and wish to help maintain it.”
“Like Ivlis.”
“Like anyone who chooses to be part of something larger than themselves.” Korvallis stood, moving back toward his plants. “The binding is no longer a secret kept by the few. It is becoming something else—a resource, a partnership, a connection between mortal consciousness and ancient power. That connection can grow, can expand, can include everyone who wishes to participate.”
“That sounds dangerously idealistic.”
“Perhaps. But idealism tempered by experience is not foolishness—it is hope that has learned to survive disappointment.” The old keeper’s voice was gentle. “You have done something remarkable, Grey Ratter and Phaphhrd of the Cold Waste. Now you must live with what you’ve done—must guide it, nurture it, help it become what it has the potential to be. That is not a burden to be carried; it is a privilege to be embraced.”
The Ratter looked at Phaphhrd, felt through their bond his partner’s complex response—doubt and hope mingled, uncertainty balanced by determination.
“We’ll try,” the Ratter said finally. “We don’t know if we’ll succeed. But we’ll try.”
“That is all anyone can ask.” Korvallis turned back to his garden. “Now go. Live the lives you’ve chosen, bear the weights you’ve accepted, and remember—the greatest transformations begin with small choices, made consistently, over time. The binding will become what you help it become. Choose wisely.”
They left him among his plants, tending growth that seemed to mirror the changes they had set in motion throughout the city.
The roof of the boarding house on Copper Lane had become something of a tradition.
The Ratter sat where he had sat countless times before, watching the three moons rise over Kasdim’s eternal haze of smoke. But this time, he was not alone in his brooding. Phaphhrd sat beside him, their shoulders nearly touching, the bond between them humming with shared awareness. And on his other side, Ivlis—who had made her choice three days ago, who had joined their connection and become part of whatever it was they were becoming.
“It’s beautiful,” Ivlis said quietly, looking out over the city. “I’ve lived here my whole life, performed for its crowds, navigated its politics. But I’ve never really seen it before. Not like this.”
“The binding changes how you perceive things,” the Ratter said. “The entities are woven through everything now—not controlling, not consuming, just... present. The First Forgetting clarifying confusions in a thousand minds. The Unremembering absorbing traumas that people have carried for years. The Hourglass generating moments of potential that might otherwise have been lost.”
“And us? What are we generating?”
“Connection. Understanding. The bridge between what the entities have become and what the city needs them to be.” Phaphhrd’s voice was thoughtful. “We’re not keepers anymore—not in the way the Timekeeper was, or the way the original wizards intended. We’re more like... translators. Helping the transformed entities understand mortal needs, helping mortals understand what the entities can offer.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It probably will be. But it’s also meaningful—more meaningful than anything I’ve done since Vlana died.” Phaphhrd’s eyes were distant. “The seven years I gave to save you, Ivlis—they don’t seem like a loss anymore. They seem like an investment. A down payment on this new purpose we’ve found.”
“The binding has added complexity to that,” the Ratter said carefully. “The transformation we achieved has changed how time works within its structure. The seven years you gave to the Timekeeper are still gone—but the Hourglass, in its new form, might be able to... offset them. Generate additional moments to compensate for what was taken.”
Ivlis looked at him sharply. “You mean Phaphhrd might live longer than he expected?”
“I mean it’s possible. The transformation is still settling, still finding its balance. We won’t know what it’s truly capable of for years, maybe decades. But the potential is there—and the Hourglass seems... willing to explore it.”
Phaphhrd was quiet for a long moment. Through their shared bond, the Ratter felt his partner processing this information—the hope, the uncertainty, the reluctance to believe in something that might not prove true.
“I’ve made my peace with the sacrifice,” Phaphhrd said finally. “If the transformation changes that, I’ll be grateful. But I’m not counting on it. I’m not planning my life around possibilities that might not materialize.”
“That’s probably wise.”
“It’s practical. Which is supposed to be your department, not mine.” Phaphhrd’s smile was gentle. “When did we reverse roles?”
“Somewhere between the first crisis and the third, I think. The partnership evolved without either of us noticing.” The Ratter looked out at the city—the city he had loved, then lost faith in, then found reason to care about again. “Everything evolved. We’re not who we were when we met. Not who we were when we faced the Unremembering, or the Timekeeper, or the shadows that came after. We’re something new now—something that couldn’t have existed without all the experiences that brought us here.”
“Is that good?”
“I think so. I think change is usually good, even when it hurts—even when it costs things we didn’t want to pay.” The Ratter felt the transformed binding pulsing beneath the city, felt the entities stirring in their new patterns, felt the connection to his partners strengthening with every passing moment. “We’ve been given something remarkable. Something that most people never get—the chance to see how our choices ripple outward, how the sacrifices we make can become foundations for something better.”
“And Sheelris?” Ivlis asked. “She’s still out there somewhere. Still dangerous, still carrying grudges.”
“She is. And eventually, we’ll have to deal with that. But not tonight.” The Ratter leaned back, letting himself relax for the first time in what felt like months. “Tonight, we sit on this roof and watch the moons rise. Tonight, we appreciate what we have instead of worrying about what might take it away. Tonight, we remember that we’re partners—all three of us now—and that whatever comes next, we’ll face it together.”
“That sounds suspiciously like optimism.”
“It’s practical optimism. The best kind.” The Ratter smiled. “The city is healing. The binding is stable. The entities are transforming into something that helps instead of harms. For the first time in years, I can look at Kasdim and see something other than corruption and danger. I can see possibility.”
“You’re going soft, Ratter.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m finally hard enough to admit when things are going well.” He looked at Phaphhrd, at Ivlis, at the bond that connected them all. “We earned this. All of it—the partnership, the transformation, the chance to build something new from the ruins of what was. We paid for it with sacrifice and suffering and choices that cost us pieces of ourselves. The least we can do is appreciate what those payments bought.”
Phaphhrd reached over, clapped him on the shoulder. “Spoken like a true romantic.”
“Spoken like someone who’s learned that romance and practicality aren’t opposites.” The Ratter stood, stretched, looked out over the city one more time. “The future is uncertain. It always is. But for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to seeing what it holds.”
“Even if it holds more crises? More sacrifices? More impossible situations that require us to become something other than what we are?”
“Especially then.” The Ratter turned to face his partners—both of them, bound to him now in ways that could never be severed. “That’s what partnership means. That’s what we signed up for when we decided to face these things together instead of alone. The crises will come, the sacrifices will be demanded, the impossible situations will require impossible choices. But we’ll meet them as we’ve met everything else—together, imperfectly, with whatever combination of wit and determination and stubborn refusal to give up that the situation requires.”
Ivlis rose, moved to stand beside them. “That’s a lot of responsibilities for three people to carry.”
“Good thing we’re not just three people anymore.” The Ratter felt the connection between them pulse with shared purpose. “We’re something new. Something that hasn’t existed before. And whatever limitations that something has, carrying responsibilities together is definitely not one of them.”
The three moons had risen fully now, casting their mingled light across Kasdim’s rooftops. Below them, the city continued its endless churn of schemes and dreams, corruption and commerce, the ordinary chaos that had always characterized life in the Seven Score Thousand Smokes.
But beneath that chaos, something new was growing. The transformed binding, pulsing with redirected power. The entities, learning their new natures. The connection that bound three former strangers into something that transcended ordinary partnership.
The weight of shadows had lifted.
What remained was lighter—not because the burdens were gone, but because they were shared.
And that made all the difference.
THE END
AFTERWORD: ON WEIGHT AND TRANSFORMATION
“We spend so much of our lives carrying weight—the weight of expectations, of responsibilities, of choices made and unmade. We bend under burdens we didn’t ask for, struggle against pressures we can’t control, wonder whether the loads we carry will eventually crush us.
“But weight is not inherently destructive. The same force that breaks backs can build strength. The same pressure that collapses structures can forge diamonds. The difference lies not in the weight itself, but in how we choose to bear it—alone, or together; with resentment, or with purpose; as victims of circumstance, or as agents of transformation.
“The Grey Ratter and Phaphhrd of the Cold Waste learned this lesson the hard way. They carried weights that should have destroyed them—the loss of magic, the sacrifice of years, the burden of knowledge that ancient entities sought to claim. They could have been crushed. They could have collapsed under the pressure, given up, accepted that some weights are simply too heavy to bear.
“Instead, they chose to share the load. They chose partnership over isolation, connection over independence, transformation over mere endurance. And in making that choice, they discovered something that the entities themselves had never understood: that weight shared is weight multiplied, not divided. That burdens carried together become foundations rather than crushing forces. That the things we choose to hold can become the things that hold us up.
“The binding is transformed. The entities are redirected. Kasdim is healing. But the real transformation was never in the ancient powers or the mystical structures that contained them. The real transformation was in two people—and eventually three—who learned that the weight of shadows becomes the weight of possibility when you refuse to carry it alone.
“This is the lesson of the Kasdim Chronicles. This is what the Grey Ratter and Phaphhrd have spent three books learning. And this is what they offer to anyone willing to listen: that partnership is not weakness, that sharing is not surrender, that choosing to connect with others is the only path to true strength.
“The future is uncertain. The future is always uncertain. But they will face it together—transformed, connected, carrying the weight of what they’ve become with something that looks remarkably like joy.
“And in the end, that’s all any of us can hope for.”
THE WEIGHT OF SHADOWS Book Three of the Kasdim Chronicles A Novel of Phaphhrd and the Grey Ratter
Written in the Fritz Leiber tradition of sword and sorcery, where the greatest victories are internal, and the most important treasures are the partnerships we forge along the way.
For readers who understand that some weights are worth carrying—and some transformations are worth the price they cost.
◊ᴹᴱᴹᴼᴿʸ⁻ᶜᴼᴹᴾᴸᴱᵀᴱ
Published by Centaurus Press · Universitas Scholarium · All rights reserved.