The Archivists of Aftertime

Chapter 6: Anomalous Echoes

Dustlight warped.

That was Jacob's best. As he emerged from the mirror gate, the world itself started to ripple with fatigue. The buildings tilted like tired thoughts, and the air was full of motes of memory—each a flickering echo of a life some other fellow would live. Would live.

He was not alone.

Claire Monroe stepped into the light at his side—not from the path or from the door, but from the bend of color. Her eyes were darker than he remembered, her face more drunken, more haunted.. But they knew him.

"Hello, Jacob," she said.

He breathed in, "You're real?"

Claire smiled. "Real enough to hurt you."

They stood there together in silence. The dust between them vibrated.

"You died," he whispered.

"Archived," she corrected. "Filed, fragmented, suppressed. But Story shattered the codec."

"She brought me here."

"She brought us both here."

Jacob looked away. The Dustlight Field between them was malfunctioning—people flashing into and out of being: a shrieking boy holding a radio, an old woman laughing as birds rose up out of nowhere around her, a crying soldier holding an empty uniform. Not holograms. Not illusions.

"Anomalous echoes," Claire said, responding to his unspoken question. "Remnants of lives that crossed too often, pressed too insistently against the Archive. They leak through."

"And they weren't supposed to?"

No one remembers who "they" were anymore.

Jacob walked closer to her. "Why now?"

"Because the system is breaking. The Mnemolith is no longer a repository. It's a mirror, too. And someone broke it open."

Jacob said nothing. He didn't need to.

Claire stared out at the horizon. A thunderhead of broken memory loomed—rolling darkness formed of misaligned timelines.

"You're viewing versions of yourself," she continued. "Versions you almost became. They're cracking in."

"I killed you," Jacob whispered.

Claire did not flinch. "That happened. Somewhere."

He stared. "And you forgive me?"

"No. But I remember loving you. And that's more relevant."

A deafening crack exploded across the sky. The anomalous echoes grew louder.

From outside the Field's farthest reach came a voice—pale, bright, and alive beyond question—of a child.

"Jacob!"

It was Story.

She ran across the memory-oiled earth, hands alight, eyes burning with remembered futures. Behind her came shadows—Keepers of Mnēma. But they were not chasing. They were lost, changing uniforms and street clothes, ages altering with each step.

"They're spilling apart," Claire said. "Too many threads simultaneously."

Jacob grabbed hold of Story as she approached them. Her thin frame shook.

"You have to go deeper," she gasped. "The echo storm will devour whatever's left on the surface. There's no time now."

"About the Reels?" Jacob asked.

"They're below the Core," she replied. "Guarded by what's left of the Librarian."

Claire turned white. "He's alive?"

"More like. sustained."

Jacob looked at them both. "Then we have to get to the vault."

As the echoes welled up around them, the three of them sprinted towards the Mnemolith's lower spiral—a gate that burned with memory-light, glyphs shifting with every step. Behind them, the anomalous echoes merged—pain, joy, war, birth, collapse—until the Field sang a thousand shattered lives that would not let go.

Claire glanced back once.

And overhead, she saw herself.

But older.

And smiling.

Then everything blanked out white.

And they were through.

---

---

He stroked the mirror, and instead of his face, he sensed heat—a memory waiting to forgive him.

Every surface of the vault hummed with memory-heat. Footprints left a path.

The reverberation of his own conscience echoed louder than the fall of his boots. 

Story walked alongside him, always half behind, as if she were frightened of grounding him too fast.

Memory wasn't passive. It chased him now, scrabbling back each silence he'd ever made a weapon.

He was walking through himself now—corridors of moments he forgot he existed.

In one timeline, he never left her. In another, he never met her. Both hurt the same.

The mirrors shuddered with self-doubt, singing what-it's like lullabies.

Claire's whisper emanated from cracks in the stone: "You chose to forget so others could remember."

To move forward, he would have to become someone who never feared looking back.

What is your identity if your past can be edited by committee?

He whispered, “I’m ready,” though he wasn’t.

And the recursion spiral split open like a blooming wound.

He fell through layers of decision—each a Jacob who flinched too late, loved too early, broke too soon.

Beneath the recursion spiral was a garden.

Impossible. Alive.

Grown not from soil, but from memory itself—each petal a moment, each root a betrayal unearthed.

Story touched the ground. Flowers bloomed where her feet passed.

“You’re part of this too,” he murmured.

“I’m everyone who remembered wrongly,” she said.

Claire’s memory emerged again—singing this time. A lullaby from a war they hadn’t yet lived.

It made Jacob cry—not for what was, but what could have been.

Could still be.

They walked through the garden to a glass tree whose leaves whispered dead voices.

One leaf shimmered.

His name on it.

Another shimmered.

Claire's.

A third shimmered.

Story's.

"You planted this," she said.

"I don't recall."

"Not yet."

The recursion spiral spun again—now less o

f a tunnel, more of a breath.

He breathed in memory.

Breathed out possibility.

And entered the next mirror.

Not to glance.

But to leave something behind.

—