They were at the edge of darkness, where even the curve of the world broke. No wind blew, no season cycle moved — but rather, a silence so deep it could be mistaken for emptiness. But the Watchers knew.They weren't of this era. Of any, truly. Time didn't accumulate around them as it did with mortals. They'd witnessed the world inhale its first breath of light, and they'd remain here when the final spark went out.From where they were, they could see the presence that humans were now trying to occupy. For the Watchers, it was not surprising — it was the only reality they had known. No desire for what was behind. No stretching toward what was ahead. Only the constant pulse of now.They did not intrude. Intrusion was motion through time, cause to effect. The Watchers did not. They looked. They had the shape of the world in their minds as one might have a pebble in the hand — neither to alter it, nor to hold it, but only to feel its presence.But something had shifted. Even they sensed i

Pilgrims came before dawn, their figures cresting the distant dunes like slow-moving clusters of stars, each step bringing them closer to the city that had been a happenstance of remembrance. Dustlight shimmered on the horizon, a thin aura rising from the desert floor as if the earth itself was respiring. By noon, the air would carry a hint of copper and sunlight, but at these hours, it was nothing but cool sand and the whisper of promise.They arrived barefoot, most of them, with nothing upon them but the clothes they wore on their backs. The law was tacit—unspoken yet unspoken—here, one shed the world. Not just possessions, but memories too. For a day, no names were spoken, no histories were told. In Dustlight, memory floated like dust motes in a sun ray. The past didn't exist, the future was beyond grasp. All that remained was the present.The city itself was changed from the early days. Where there had once been nothing but dispersed debris, there were now tracks delineated by sun

They said it was not written, but grown. That in the unadorned middle of the northern plateau, a generation of silent makers had attracted a codex into being—not of paper or ink, but of sensation itself. Nobody knew where work began. Some claimed the Rememberless Book had been there always, hidden in pleats of perception finer than eyes or hands. Others called it a response to the era, to the flood of memory and history choking the world's air.It appeared one morning in a discourteous manner. There was no caravan that carried it, no messenger that warned of its coming. It simply appeared, on the low stone altar beside the well that had dried up within three generations. Its face was neither cover nor page, but halfway between the heat of skin and the slickness of rock ground smooth by river waters. When pressed, it yielded, as in greeting, but without leaving a mark. There were no curves, no lines, no symbols. And yet the people who rested their hand upon it swore they had been given

At the valley's middle, where the Echo Bloom's song swirled most energetically, stood a monument. It was not marble-cut nor engraved with her name. Instead, it was a ring of upright stones which caught the wind and reshaped the blooms' songs into something more rich.They did not travel here to recall Claire as someone—they traveled here to experience what she lived for: openness, courage, the soft gravity of a life devoted to connection. When standing inside the circle, one did not so much recall her as become her, at least for a breath.The stones themselves were uneven—dark granite plates, pale limestone, and streaked basalt, transported from different corners of the world. They were not all of equal height. They sloped inward a little, like friends engaged in a reflective conversation. Moss grew on their dark surfaces, and in spring small white flowers established themselves in the cracks.No sign explained this place to you. You knew, or you didn't. That was how Claire would have

It began on a night so still that even the Echo Bloom stopped. There wasn't any wind tugging at their flowers. The perpetual thrum of the sky threads had mellowed to a barely audible rhythm, like a heartbeat echoing through a thick wall. The stars above the valley shone with that odd clarity that makes them seem close enough to touch and impossibly far away.At the center of Claire's Monument, the standing stones held back the starlight in shattered gleams. Their crests were jagged in the moonlight, and their faces puffed with an evanescent shimmer—delicate, as if they were remembering something. There, at the instant when the moon was highest, the first note was heard.It was low, resonant, and impossibly low—not a noise at all, but a vibration in the ribs, a chill in the marrow. It came from beneath the earth, from deep within the Mnemolith. The great stone lay dormant for centuries, its surface heaped with moss and weathered cracks, but now the cracks were outlined in a pale light,