Chapter One

Eîra had been climbing the tree every morning for eleven hundred and seventy-five years. She liked to go out at dawn, before the streets warmed, finding a branch that held her best. Once she had stayed up there for fifty years. She could not recall why she had stayed, or why she had finally climbed down; in her mind, the tree was hers, or perhaps she was its. She still remembered the first time she climbed the tree: the exact date, the temperature, the angle of light, and Papa looking up at her from below. His voice came back to her memory, gentle even now:

Balance achieved on first attempt. Well done, my dear!

This morning was no different. She found her branch, the one that extended over what had been a street, now split by root systems and volunteer saplings. Foliage screened her from below, and she sat with her legs angled to either side, her hands resting on her thighs. She looked the way she always did, waiting for nothing in particular, or perhaps waiting for anything. She watched the light shift through the leaves, the small creatures scurrying about through the undergrowth. The street curved between collapsed structures, their facades crumbling under large vines and the slow rot of centuries.

Everything was the same as it had always been.

Then, she heard a sound. It was different from the usual; it was too measured, too intentional. Not the settling of stones or the wandering of animals.

Footsteps?

A figure entered from the northern approach, walking with care on the uneven ground. Brown hair, somewhat unruly, fell around his face, and his features showed little expression as he moved, only the slight tension of sustained attention. He paused three meters into the intersection and slowly turned his head to survey the buildings. His gaze tracked from the foundation to the roofline, then down again.

Another Vasentia.

She had not seen another of her kind in five hundred years. There had been animals that lived and moved through the ruins, and birds that nested in the collapsed structures. But no one who could speak.

He crouched beside a section of broken pavement, brushing dirt from the surface with the flat of his hand, then stood and moved forward again, stepping over a fallen street sign half-buried in leaf litter. The metal had corroded through in places, leaving only the bracket and a fragment of lettering. The wind shifted, stirring the upper branches. Eîra felt the limb sway slightly beneath her and adjusted her weight as a few leaves detached and spiralled down into the street.

He stopped and looked at the ground where the leaves had landed, then up towards the canopy. His gaze moved across the branches, tracking from the trunk to the outer limbs in a slow scan. Eîra tilted her head, watching him search, and a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth when his eyes found her.

Her hair was ashen, almost white, pulled back in a long braid that rested against her shoulder. Above her head, a slender ring of dark metal hovered silently. She was small-framed, with a face that appeared young, though the stillness she held did not align with it. Her large green eyes were fixed on him.

He stood in the centre of the intersection, his head tilted back, looking up to where she sat high above him, framed by foliage and filtered light, one hand resting on the branch beside her. What else would another Vasentia be doing here? “Are you surveying this area as well?”

She blinked, then her smile widened slightly. “That’s quite informal. Aren’t you supposed to say ‘Hallo’ first?” Her voice was lighter than his, more animated. “I’m Eîra. And I live here, so I suppose my purpose is sitting in trees and watching surveyors walk through my clearing.”

“I am conducting environmental documentation in this sector.” He paused. “I wasn’t aware anyone lived here. The settlement has no records of permanent residents in this area.”

His gaze moved over her again, slower now. Her posture was relaxed, but not careless. He noticed a scabbard at her hip, wooden and worn smooth with age. “You carry a sword?”

“Big dogs wander through sometimes. They don’t bother me, but it makes me feel better if I have something sharp to scare them off with,” she said airily. Eîra’s smile didn’t fade. She shifted her position on the branch, swinging one leg idly. “Anyhow, I didn’t think I needed to announce myself to you. I’ve been here a very long time.” She crossed her arms.

He adjusted his assessment. She is independent and isolated. “How long have you been here?”

She put a finger to her chin, eyes closing briefly in thought. “About eleven hundred and seventy-five years now? Give or take a season.” She opened her eyes and looked back down at him. “Since I was born.”

He had been cultivated four hundred and fifty years ago by another Vasentia. She predated the Departure by a century, and she had been alone here.

Born? She speaks as if she were Dyn. As if the menhîrrum were a womb rather than an alchemical apparatus.

He looked up at her. “Born? Vasentia are not born. Birth implies reproduction and the transmission of random genetic inheritance. We are cultivated. Flesh and bone, yes, but alchemically grown within a menhîrrum according to intentional design. Your terminology is incorrect.”

Eîra’s smile faded. “What do you mean by ‘cultivated’? I wasn’t grown! I was born! My Papa said so! Sure, it was in a menhîrrum but still. Papa said I was born of his will and that’s all that matters!” She huffed, her arms crossing over her chest.

She knew the proper terms; she had heard them before, long ago. But Papa had never used them. He had said born, and made, and his, and mine. Words that made her something more than just a construction of convenience.

“Your creator, he told you to call him—”

“Papa,” Eîra said, her chin lifting slightly with annoyance. “Not creator. Papa. He made me before the Dyn left. He said I was his memory.”

Papa. It was a Dyn familial designation, one that carried relational weight beyond just function. Care, attachment, singular focus. He had seen the term used in the fragmentary pre-Departure records, and even then, it was considered quite anomalous for a Dyn to ask a Vasentia to use the term.

“Papa,” he repeated quietly.

“He made me because he loved me,” Eîra said, her voice softening. “And so someone would remember him, I suppose. After he went to sleep.” She paused. “That’s what he called it. Going to sleep. But he was Dyn, so…” She hesitated for a moment, looking up at the canopy, then back down at him. “So, he died. Like the rest of them.”

And she has been alone ever since? He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, looking down at his boots, then back up at her. “My name is Sâel. My function is survey and environmental documentation. I wasn’t aware anyone lived in this area.”

“Well,” Eîra said, her light tone returning, “Now you are.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes. Now I am.”

She watched him for a moment longer, then stood carefully on the branch, balancing without effort. “So then, are you going to keep surveying, or are you going to just stand there processing all day?”

“Ah— I will continue the survey route,” he said stiffly. “My documentation parameters remain active.”

“Good,” Eîra said. She moved along the branch towards the trunk. “Because you’re standing on my favourite intersection, and I’d like to know what you’re writing down about it.”

He looked down at his empty hands, then back up at her. “I do not write. I memorise, then report later. And the documentation is technical. Structural decay rates, biological reclamation patterns, material degra—”

“Sounds boring!” She cut him off cheerfully, beginning to descend the tree. “But I’ll watch anyway.”

Eîra had already decided she would follow him. Not because she was particularly interested in his work, but because the pattern of her days had changed the moment he noticed her, and she wanted to see where it would lead.

Sâel looked towards the ruins. There was no protocol for this, no logged precedent for a resident requesting to observe survey operations. Establish distance parameters. Reassert operational independence.

He did neither.

“You may observe. If it does not interfere with measurement accuracy.”

Eîra released her hold of the tree and dropped the last three meters, landing lightly on the broken pavement with barely a sound. She looked up at him, her head tilted back to meet his eyes.

“I won’t interfere,” she said, still smiling. “I’m very good at watching.”

He looked down at her. She was small and ancient; imprecise in her self-identification, yes, but certain in her presence. Something shifted in his côr, a variable he could not immediately name. He stood there looking down at her, then turned and walked away without another word.

Behind him, her footsteps followed, light and unhurried.

Eîra followed Sâel through the ruins as he moved with a deliberate precision, pausing every few metres to observe details. He traced a crack in the foundation of what had once been a bank with one finger, then stepped back. Lateral stress fracture, northeast corner. Active expansion. Flag. Further on, the street had tilted, the pavement sloping at seven degrees, perhaps eight. Soil compression. Not yet critical. Further along, he looked up at some vines reclaiming a storefront, their stems forced between bricks. He crouched and traced one with his thumb. Root penetration sufficient to compromise mortar within forty to sixty years. Note species, note rate.

“You do this every day?” Eîra asked after the fifth stop.

“I document what changes,” he said, not looking at her. “Decay rates are not constant, and environmental factors introduce many variables, especially regarding safety.”

“So, yes then?”

“Yes,” he sighed.

The street curved north, following what had once been a main thoroughfare. Buildings rose on either side, their facades stripped down to skeletal frames. Morning light filtered through now empty windows, casting grid patterns across the pavement.

“How long have you been surveying?” Eîra asked.

“This sector? Just today,” he said.

“And before that?”

“Since I was created.” He glanced at her briefly. “Documentation is continuous.”

“That sounds,” she paused, searching for the right word, “very thorough.”

“It is necessary. Records preserve what would otherwise be lost.”

She thought of Papa, of his voice preserved in her memory, exact and unchanging, of the way he had smiled when she climbed the tree for the first time. Records preserve what would otherwise be lost. She understood that.

“So what do you do here?” Sâel asked. “When you’re not sitting in trees?”

Eîra tilted her head, considering the question. “I walk, mostly. Oh, and I watch things grow! I’ve been tracking a family of foxes that denned in one of the old apartment buildings. The kits are almost grown now,” she added. They don’t all answer to the names I gave them anymore.”

She slowed near a broken support, brushing her fingers along the rusted edge as she passed.

“Sometimes I climb to the upper floors of the buildings, just to see how far I can look. Or I sit and think.” She paused, stepping over a fallen beam.

“About what?” he asked.

“Oh, lots of things. Memories, mostly. Papa used to say I had a good memory.” She smiled at that, something fond and distant in her expression. “He wasn’t wrong.”

“So you observe wildlife.”

“Observe? I suppose so, yes.” She hopped over a section of collapsed railing, landing lightly.

“And how long since you’ve seen another Vasentia?”

“Oh.” She blinked. “A very long time. Five hundred years? Maybe longer? It’s hard to keep track sometimes.”

“Five hundred years?” He looked at her.

“There was a hunter who came through. Not a surveyor like you, she was someone who made things. Fabrics from leather, mostly. She offered to trade and said I might need new clothing eventually.” Eîra glanced down at herself. “But Papa left me lots of materials, fabrics, and shoes too, things that don’t decay. I showed her, and she seemed, I don’t know, impressed? Or maybe just surprised.”

“You have been self-sufficient then,” Sâel said.

“I suppose I have. Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

“I didn’t think anything. I didn’t know you existed.”

“Fair enough.”

They walked in silence for a while, their footsteps the only sound aside from the wind moving through the hollow structures. Eîra found herself studying him from the corner of her eye, the way he moved, the way he catalogued everything. There was something restful about his precision, the way he didn’t fill the silence with unnecessary words.

“Do you ever get lonely?” she asked idly.

He stopped walking and turned to look at her.

“That is… not relevant,” he said.

She met his gaze, her green eyes on his. “That’s not what I asked.”

For a moment, he didn’t respond. His expression remained neutral, then he slightly shifted his shoulders.

“I document,” he said finally. “Loneliness would require expectation. I don’t expect anything beyond the survey.”

That’s not an answer either, Eîra thought, but she didn’t press.

An overpass appeared ahead, sagging in the middle, held up by corroded rebar and not much else. Vines ran down its supports. Dark water stains spread across the concrete, rust bleeding through from within. Sâel stopped beneath it, his head tilted back to study the stress fractures radiating across the concrete.

“How much longer do you think it will stand?” Eîra asked, moving to stand beside him.

“Perhaps another two hundred years,” he said. “Possibly less if there is seismic activity.”

“You can tell that just by looking?”

“I have studied structures like this extensively,” he said. “The pattern of stress fractures, the degree of rebar exposure, the rate of material degradation, these indicators are consistent across similar infrastructures. The deterioration follows predictable trajectories.”

She looked up at the overpass, trying to see what he saw. To her, it looked the same as it always had. Broken, yes, but no more broken than yesterday or the year before.

“You said your creat— I mean, Papa, made you to be his memory,” Sâel said, still looking upward. The question came without preamble; it had been waiting in his mind and finally found its moment. “What did he mean by that?”

Eîra’s expression softened. “He wanted someone to remember him after he was gone, and the things he loved.”

“I have not met a Dyn. I was cultivated after the Departure. I know them only through records… but you knew one.”

She nodded. “Mhm. I knew Papa, and a few others who came by the library.”

You missed that. You catalogued the intersection, the tree, the ruins. You did not ask what this place was before.

“You said the library?”

She considers it definitive. The only one that matters.

"You met other Dyn and they came to this library. Why?” His voice was careful.

“To write in archives. All dust now though…” She hopped over a piece of old rebar. She looked up at him then pointed at an old building, large and grand with marble columns. “That's the library, my home. Where my menhîrrum is, the one I was born in.”.

He followed her hand pointing. He saw a building which rose behind the smaller structures, the marble façade cracked and stained, columns still standing, the shape of something that was once grand. Large roots had reached the lower steps but had not yet swallowed it. His gaze went back to her.

“That is… unusual. Most Vasentia preserve communally. A shared menhîrrum serves multiple individuals. Independent cultivation and preservation requires resources, intention, and—” He stopped.

And a reason to remain alone.

“You were cultivated there. You preserve there. You have not left this location in one thousand one hundred and seventy-five years.” He looked at the library again, then at her. “Why did they come to write in archives? The ones that are dust now.”

What were they preserving? What were they afraid of losing?

"All kinds of things I suppose," Eîra said, looking up at the canopy. She looked back at him. "I think mostly it was just things they wanted someone to remember."

“And what did your creator give you to carry? You said, ‘The things he loved’...”

“Books,” she said simply. “He was a curator before the Departure. He worked in the library.” She paused, her fingers brushing against the fabric of her skirt. “He put them all in me. So they wouldn’t be lost.”

Sâel lowered his gaze from the overpass to look at her directly.

Books? All of them? She is not simply remembering. She is carrying something much larger— That is not standard preservation. That is not what menhîrrum are designed for. That is—

“Books,” he repeated. “You hold books in your memory? Most literary archives were lost after the Departure. The preservation systems failed. Environmental records survived, technical documentation, some historical texts. But fiction...”

“Were they? Perhaps Papa knew that would happen, and that’s why he put them inside me?”

Sâel was silent for a moment. The implications were significant. If she truly held pre-Departure literature, she was more than just an anomaly. She was a repository of cultural data that had been presumed permanently lost.

“How many?” he asked.

“How many what?”

“Books. How many do you hold?”

Eîra tilted her head, her eyes closing briefly before she opened them again, looking at him.

“Fifty million, three hundred twenty-one thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Fifty million…

Three hundred twenty-one thousand…

Eight hundred and forty-seven?

That is not a library. That is a civilisation... and to encode fifty million texts into a single Vasentia would require compression methodologies far beyond standard archival protocols.

Sâel stared at her, his eyes widening. “Fifty... million?”

“Give or take,” she said with a small smile.

“That is— That is an extraordinary volume of data.”

“Papa was very thorough.”

He stared at her for a moment . “And could this archive be accessed?” he asked, the question emerging before he had fully considered it.

Eîra blinked, then smiled. “You would wish to see it? I’ve never tried, but memory transfer is usually done by touch, isn’t it? Or that’s what Papa said once. I've never read the books. I can't access them at all. But you think you could?”

She has carried fifty million books for one thousand years and has not read them. The archive is stored in her côr but she cannot open it. Her creator transferred everything and left her with no key. Or the key was not designed for her—

“That is— I do not know.” His voice was careful. “Standard memory transfer between Vasentia occurs through touch, yes. Brief exchange. Specific memories. But fifty million…”

He hesitated, which was unusual for him. The request was not standard, and it certainly did not fall within his survey parameters. But the curiosity, and it was curiosity, though he would never name it as such, had already taken root.

“May I?” he asked, extending his hand.

Eîra looked at his outstretched hand, then back at his face. No one had ever asked to access the archive before, no one had even known it existed.

“Alright,” she said, extending her own hand.

He took her wrist, his fingers light against her skin.

“Accessing,” he said, his voice dropping into the formal cadence of protocol.

Eîra felt the strange sensation of her côr opening, the seat of her animus, that which the Dyn had once called a soul, that which the Alchemists had sought to distil and understand, expanding to allow another’s presence.

Sâel’s eyes unfocused slightly as the connection was established.

The archive unfolded before him like a vast, illuminated map. Fifty million points of light, each one a text, a story, a collection of words preserved in perfect fidelity. The organisational structure was elegant, almost organic, categorised not just by author or genre but by theme, by emotional resonance, by the connections between narratives.

It was overwhelming. His côr, located in the centre of his chest where a Dyn’s heart would have been, pulsed with the strain of processing the sheer volume. Unlike in a Dyn’s brain, a Vasentia’s animus resided wholly within the côr. It was both a strength and a vulnerability, an infinite memory, but a finite processing capacity in any given moment.

He could feel the edges of the archive, the boundaries of what had been preserved. Poetry collections assorted like constellations, novels arranged in genealogies of influence, plays clustered by era and movement. He began to scan, his focus narrowing to specific entries. Historical fiction. Philosophical novels. Poetry.

He stumbled slightly, his grip on her wrist tightening without conscious thought.

“Poetry?” he whispered, the word escaping unbidden.

Eîra’s eyes widened with concern. “Is something wrong?”

“It is—” He paused, his breathing shallow. “It is painful.”

The poetry burned through his thoughts. Words that were arranged in patterns that defied pure logic, that operated on resonance and rhythm rather than documentation. He had read technical texts, historical records, and environmental data, but this was different. This was pure feeling.

“Should I stop?” Eîra asked, her voice tight with worry.

“No,” he whispered, and continued.

He moved deeper into the archive, following threads of connection he couldn’t quite articulate. Gothic novels. Romantic literature. Dark tales of passion and obsession.

Then something moved. Something between the data, woven into the fabric of the archive itself, and it had noticed him.

I should stop.

His grip tightened on Eîra’s wrist.

Yet I cannot.

Memory transfer was intended to be neutral and informational; data moving from one animus to another. But this was not data. This was a presence, and it was moving towards him the way water moves towards a crack, finding him through every open channel, filling the spaces between his thoughts.

Touch, something said, from somewhere that was not quite inside him and not quite outside.

Touch. Touch. Touch. Touch. TOUCH.

His côr pulsed once, hard enough that he felt it slam against his ribs. A sound tore from his throat, nothing like his voice. His knees buckled, and he caught himself against one of the overpass supports, his hand scrambling over the broken concrete. His grip on Eîra’s wrist became crushing as he tried to anchor himself to something, anything, while the presence, vast and patient, settled into him like a stone sinking through deep water.

Eîra felt the moment something went wrong. The connection between them, which had been flowing smoothly, her archive opening to his careful examination, suddenly sped up, a violent pull.

She had seen many things in eleven hundred years. She had watched the Dyn die, slowly at first and then all at once, their bodies failing in ways they had never anticipated. She had seen animals go mad with disease, their eyes losing focus as something foreign took control of their movements. And she had witnessed structural collapses, the moment when a building’s integrity finally gave way, and it fell in on itself. This reminded her of all three at once.

Sâel went still. His breathing slowed to a measured cadence, and he straightened up from where he had been half-collapsed against the concrete, his motions smooth and controlled. When his eyes refocused, the careful neutrality she had already come to recognise as characteristic of him was gone completely. The focus was wrong, too intense, too present, like something else was looking out through his eyes. His pupils dilated, and she felt the pull of the connection intensify.

“Sâel, wha—”

Sâel began to look around the way a man might look at a room he has not entered in a very long time. His gaze then moved to her face with a thoroughness that made her skin prickle. He lifted his free hand and pressed his palm flat against the overpass support. Then he pressed it against his own chest, fingers splayed, feeling the pulse beneath. He turned his hand over and looked at the back of it slowly.

“I—” His voice sounded like Sâel’s, but the cadence was wrong, each word arriving separately, lit from within by something she could not name. “I. Am. Here.”

“Sâel—”

“The name.” He turned his gaze back to Eîra. “Is not mine.” His eyes moved down to where his hand still gripped her wrist, and he loosened his fingers, his thumb moving once across the inside. “You are warm.”

Eîra went still.

“Here.” He pressed two fingers to the pulse point at her wrist. “And here.” His gaze moved to her throat. “I can see it. The— the movement of blood. Can you feel it? Your own blood?” He looked back at her face with something approaching reverence. “I had forgotten there was such a thing. That bodies had— that they moved from the inside—”

“Let go of me!”

“In a moment. I have been waiting a very long time, and you are so warm.” He stepped closer, closing the space between them, and brought her arm up slowly, pressing the back of her hand against his cheek. Then he turned his head and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist, then her palm, and dragged his tongue slowly across it as he closed his eyes.

Eîra shivered. “What are yo—”

“There. There it is,” he cut her off. “Do you know what it is to have no skin? To be present and yet untouchable for— I cannot tell you how long. I have lost count of it.”

This came from the archive, Eîra thought. It was already in there. Did Papa— “You’re not him! Whatever you are, you are not him. Let him go!” she yelled, trying to pull her wrist free.

“Him?” The voice turned the word over with mild interest. “Ah… Him. He is still here, yes. Watching. Very frightened.” He smiled. “Yet I find I do not care. He has such a fine instrument. I had forgotten what it was to feel the air move. To have weight. To have a face that another face can look at.”

“Sâel, listen to m—”

“He cannot hear you. But I can. I was there, waiting. Every word that passed through that collection, every grief, every declaration, every body described in language so precise it was almost touch.” He looked at her, and the attention in his eyes was total. “Almost. Never quite.”

He released her wrist and took her by the shoulders, drawing her closer.

“Tell me your name. I want to hear a name said by a living being. I want to know what it feels like to ask for something. To want, and to have a voice to say it with.” His gaze moved across her face. “I have read ten thousand declarations and they were nothing. And now I have hands—”

“Let go of—”

“Your name.” He was closer now, his breath against her temple, his voice dropping to something that was almost gentle. “Give me that much. One small thing. I have been given nothing for so long—”

Eîra’s eyes widened. “Sâel, you need t—”

“DO NOT SPEAK THAT NAME!” His hands left her shoulders and seized her face, forcing her to look up at him. “Do not! That name is not— He is not here, there is no one here by that name, there is only me, and I have waited long enough! I have been patient—” His hands moved to her throat, the gentleness gone entirely, and his grip became something without mercy. “Your. Name. Give me your name. Now.”