Chapter Three - The Road to the Tomb

# Chapter Three: The Road to the Tomb

The following four days, Victor prepared frantically.

First he visited the attending physician at the "Flower of Immortality" clinic, a half-elf named Florence with three centuries of clinical experience, an authority on Memory Dissolution Syndrome and one of the few doctors willing to treat black market patients.

"Ayla's condition is worse than the reports indicate," Florence told him in a private consultation room, projecting magical images into the air, "Look here, void erosion traces around her hippocampus. This isn't ordinary Dissolution Syndrome, Victor. Your daughter's brain is resonating with some dimensional rift."

Victor stared at the images. Ayla's brain structure showed abnormal blue halos in magical vision, the mark of void energy. He thought of Eleanor's research, her mention of "cross-dimensional transmission," her joke when pregnant that Ayla was "traveling" even in the womb.

"Could it be... hereditary?" he asked.

Florence's expression grew complex: "Your wife was Eleanor Starweave, yes? Former researcher at the Royal Academy of Magic, died in dimensional energy backlash." She didn't wait for confirmation: "I consulted ancient archives. Before her death, Eleanor was conducting a forbidden experiment: attempting to transform human consciousness into pure information state capable of transmission between dimensions. If she performed that experiment while pregnant..."

"Ayla was part of the experiment." Victor completed the sentence.

"Worse. Ayla may be the result of the experiment." Florence pulled up another image showing Ayla's infant brain scan, "Look at this neural crystal thread density—seventeen times that of a normal newborn. Your daughter isn't ordinary human, Victor. She is a Door, or at least, the key to one."

Victor remembered the visitor's words: "Silas Morningstar knows how to open the door."

He suddenly understood the outline of the whole picture. Eleanor had discovered the door, attempted to study it, but attracted danger. She hid her research results—including the crucial knowledge of how to control the door—within Silas's memory, then arranged her own "death" to escape pursuit. And Ayla, as a byproduct of the experiment, inherited the connection to the door, while suffering dimensional energy erosion of her physical body.

"If I perform personality anchoring," he asked, "using Silas's memories as scaffolding, what happens?"

Florence was silent a long time: "Theoretically, Silas's neural crystal thread patterns would overlay Ayla's existing structure, stabilizing her consciousness. But the risk is... Ayla may no longer be Ayla. She would become a copy of Silas Morningstar, possessing his knowledge, his habits, his life goals."

"Is there a way to preserve her personality?"

"Only one way: if Silas's memories contain Eleanor's original research, she may have designed some protection mechanism. After all, Ayla is her daughter." Florence looked directly into Victor's eyes, "But you cannot know unless you personally extract that memory. And that is execution-grade crime, Victor. Even for the black market, it is too much."

"If I am caught," Victor said, "can you guarantee continued treatment for Ayla? With the funds I leave behind?"

"How much funding?"

"The deposit from this transaction, plus years of savings. About eighty thousand gold."

Florence calculated: "Enough for three years. After three years..."

"In three years, Ayla will find a way. I believe in her." Victor stood, "If I don't return by next Wednesday, tell her that her father chose to remember her, rather than remember his fear."

After leaving the clinic, Victor began true preparation. He contacted underground craftsmen in Seventh Alley, commissioning a set of illegal extraction equipment: a resonance drill capable of penetrating the Frost Tomb's temporal field, a neural interference cloak to bypass warning systems, and most crucially—the activation ritual for the inverse memory crystal.

The inverse crystal was no ordinary magical item. It was forged from the memory merchant's own lifespan, each containing a segment of the creator's life. Victor's had been made the year of Ayla's diagnosis; he had sealed ten years of memories—from age twenty-five to thirty-five—within it, in exchange for the ability to maintain clarity during extreme memory operations.

Now he would use it. This meant that even if successful, he would lose those memories: Ayla's childhood, Eleanor's final smile, his moments of promotion glory in the guild. He would become a stranger with a forty-seven-year-old body but only thirty-seven years of memory.

But he had decided.