Chapter Two - The Weeping Moon

# Chapter Two: The Weeping Moon

The visitor in the silver mask appeared late on Tuesday night.

Victor was sorting a batch of "gray memories"—those in the intermediate zone between not-quite-legal and not-seriously-illegal. A memory crystal turned in his hand, containing the moment when a certain merchant betrayed his partner, the complex emotions of guilt and satisfaction intertwining to give the crystal a murky amber hue.

The warning bell rang. Three long, two short—indicating the visitor bore voidstone, a rare mineral from dimensional rifts that could shield against conventional detection magic, an essential tool for illegal memory operations.

Victor concealed the gray memories in a hidden compartment and activated the defensive runes on the counter. Only then did he look up, watching the figure emerge from shadow.

The visitor was taller than expected, the silhouette beneath the cloak suggesting long-trained muscle. Most striking was the silver mask: shaped like a full moon, but with a crack in the lower right corner, a frozen metallic tear embedded within the fissure. This was the mark of an ancient organization—Victor had seen it once in the guild's advanced archives: the Moonfall Society, a secret cult that believed "memory is existence," holding that the essence of personality was the sum of memories, and that death was merely a change of form so long as memory remained intact.

"Mr. Grayfeather." The voice behind the mask was magically processed, but Victor noticed a detail: when the visitor spoke, the voidstone ring on their right ring finger glowed faintly. This indicated the voice modulation wasn't achieved through external equipment but through direct neural interface operation, meaning the visitor's brain had undergone deep magical modification.

"The shop is closed," Victor replied, his fingers secretly moving toward the emergency alarm beneath the counter.

"Mr. Grayfeather never closes to true need." The visitor placed a small leather pouch on the counter, the scent of dragonblood resin immediately permeating the air, "I have investigated you, Victor. The accident seven years ago, the true reason for your expulsion, and—" a pause, "your monthly bills at the 'Flower of Immortality' clinic."

Victor's fingers stopped above the alarm.

"Ayla reaches the critical point next Wednesday, yes?" The visitor continued, tone as casual as discussing weather, "The third stabilizer injection. If the personality anchoring isn't performed by then, her neural crystal threads will begin dissolving basic functions. I have witnessed such deaths. Very... slow. The patient forgets how to swallow, yet hunger remains; forgets how to breathe, yet the fear of suffocation persists. In the final days, they simply lie there, eyes open, having forgotten even 'fear.'"

"What do you want?" Victor's voice was hoarse.

"I have already said. Complete personality transplant. The target: Silas Morningstar, archmage, died in a laboratory accident twenty years ago. Body preserved in the Frost Tomb, memory should remain intact. I want you to extract his entire life, then implant it into my brain."

Victor accepted the bone fragment, pretending to examine it while actually sensing its magical residue. The fragment was ice-cold, indicating the original owner died in an experiment involving void energy. But when he extended his mental power into the fragment's depths, a wave of dizziness struck—

He saw fire. Blue, cold, all-consuming magical flame. Within the flames, a woman's silhouette turned her head, lips moving as if calling a name.

Victor forcibly terminated the probe. His palm trembled, old scar tissue aching. That silhouette, that profile, that posture of turning back amidst fire...

Impossible. Eleanor had been dead twenty years. Her memories had been completely destroyed in that surgery seven years ago, not even the tiniest shard remaining. He could not see her image anywhere, unless—

Unless the original owner of this memory, Silas Morningstar, had seen her at the moment of death.

"Why him?" Victor asked, struggling to keep his voice steady.

The figure tilted their head, the movement carrying an inhuman stiffness: "Because he knows how to open the Door."

"What door?"

"The Door of the Void, Mr. Grayfeather. The greatest secret of the Third Age." The visitor leaned forward, moonlight streaming through the window crack to refract into strange patterns on the mask's fissure, "Do you think Merlin Crystaltongue simply discovered Memory Alchemy? He found a door, and behind it lay the source of all knowledge. Silas Morningstar was Merlin's final apprentice. He inherited everything about that door, then took it to his grave."

Victor thought of Eleanor's research. She had never fully explained her project at the Royal Academy of Magic, only mentioning it involved "cross-dimensional energy transmission." Three months before her death, she had told him with unusual excitement that she had discovered "an entirely new form of existence" that might completely transform human understanding of life and death.

"Twenty times the deposit," the visitor said, "payable upon completion. Enough to purchase all the stabilizers Ayla will need for her entire life, and more—if the personality anchoring succeeds, she may never need stabilizers again. Silas's memories contain complete neural crystal thread repair techniques, forbidden knowledge never made public by the guild."

Victor looked at the bone fragment, at the runes carved upon it. He recognized several: Eleanor's handwriting, her personal style, the small spiral she habitually added at the end of runes. He had seen it countless times in her notes.

"I need time to prepare," he said. "The Frost Tomb's defense systems are no trifle."

"You have one hundred twenty hours." The visitor moved toward the door, then paused, "Oh, and Mr. Grayfeather—do not attempt tricks. I know you possess an inverse memory crystal, your final insurance. But believe me, if you betray this transaction, Ayla will melt before your eyes like a snowman in sunlight. I have that capability."

The door closed behind them, the scent of dragonblood resin lingering in the air like an inescapable curse.

Victor stood alone in darkness, holding that bone fragment carved with his wife's handwriting. He remembered that night seven years ago, Ayla convulsing on the operating table, Eleanor's memory fragments dancing in magical flame like luminous butterflies. He had tried to grasp them, but they passed through his fingers, dissipating into air.

Now someone told him those memories might never have truly vanished. They had simply been transferred, hidden somewhere beyond his reach.

And he must choose: trust this mysterious masked figure, risk an execution-grade forbidden operation; or refuse, and watch his daughter forget how to breathe at sunset five days hence.