Chapter Five - Double Encryption

# Chapter Five: Double Encryption

Victor made a mad decision.

He had no time to fully extract Silas's memories and encapsulate them into crystals. He initiated emergency transfer protocol, a theoretically existent but never-practiced technique: connecting the resonance drill directly to the family crest, establishing a real-time transmission channel through bloodline magic, directly importing Silas's memories into Ayla's consciousness.

This meant he must become the relay station. Silas's eighty years of life, plus Eleanor's hidden secrets, would first flow through Victor's brain, then transmit to Ayla. Without the inverse crystal's protection, this information torrent would burn out his consciousness in seconds.

But he had already activated the inverse crystal. The crystal containing ten years of his memories shattered in his hand, its released energy forming a protective membrane wrapping his neural crystal threads.

"Initiate transfer," he whispered to the family crest, "Target: Ayla Grayfeather. Priority: Maximum. Filter conditions: None. Accept all data packets."

The drill began operation. Victor felt violent dizziness, then influx—

He became Silas Morningstar, five-year-old Silas waking in the magic tower, first sensing magical flow; fifteen-year-old Silas under mentor Merlin Crystaltongue's guidance, gazing at that enormous crystal containing countless souls; twenty-five-year-old Silas meeting Eleanor, that black-haired young researcher, her eyes hiding entire starscapes—

No, this wasn't Silas's memory. This was Eleanor's memory, carefully encoded and hidden deep within Silas's neural crystal threads. Victor saw their collaboration, saw the discovery of the door, saw Eleanor's decision.

She voluntarily became "the seal." She fragmented the core knowledge about the door, hid it within Silas's memory, then arranged Silas's "death in accident," thus taking the secret into the Frost Tomb. But she hadn't told Silas the full truth—she concealed Ayla's true nature. Ayla wasn't merely a byproduct of the experiment. She was the spare key, Eleanor's prepared escape route. If the seal failed, Ayla could inherit her mother's memories and reassert control over the door.

Victor continued deeper, penetrating the first layer of encryption. He saw the Void.

Not darkness in the visual sense, but the conceptual opposite of existence. The Void was the collection of "non-existence," the reverse of logic itself. And at the Void's edge, there was a door. The door was half-open, a hand reaching through the crack—that hand belonged to some indescribable existence, and merely looking at it made blood pour from Victor's nose, cracks appearing in the inverse crystal's protective membrane.

He understood Eleanor's fear. What lay behind the door wasn't demons, wasn't gods, but something more ancient. They had no names, for names were attributes of "existence," while they belonged to "non-existence." They hungered to enter this world, not from malice, but from hunger—they wanted to "be," to "exist," to possess memory, self, personality.

And the masked visitor, that Moonfall-marked client, was one of them. It was a Child of the Void, having occupied someone's memories, "wearing" that personality. It wanted to open the door, not to destroy the world, but to let more of its kind in, so they too could "exist."

Victor finally understood the notebook's warning. The masked one was not who he claimed; he wasn't even a "he"—it was an it, a void in human skin.

Transfer seventy percent complete. Victor felt the inverse crystal's protection beginning to collapse, his own memories starting to mix with Silas's. He couldn't distinguish which thoughts were his, which were Silas's, which were Eleanor's. He loved a black-haired woman, but he wasn't certain if that was Eleanor or some first love of Silas's.

At the entrance, the assault team led by the masked figure appeared. They wore Royal Shadow Guard uniforms, but Victor could now see the anomaly—their movements were too coordinated, as if controlled by a single consciousness. The masked one removed the silver mask, revealing a young male face, pale, beautiful, with blue void energy swirling in the depths of his eyes.

"Mr. Grayfeather," it said, voice no longer processed, carrying a multi-layered reverberating quality, "You are ahead of schedule. Good. I despise waiting."

Victor couldn't respond. He was maintaining the transfer; any distraction would collapse the channel, Ayla would receive corrupted data, her consciousness torn apart.

The Child of the Void—the masked one—approached Silas's sarcophagus, placing its hand on the corpse's forehead. It attempted reverse extraction, but found the neural crystal threads already empty.

"Who did you give it to?" Its voice showed fluctuation for the first time, like a calm lake surface struck by a stone, "Who did you give it to?!"

Victor smiled, blood flowing from the corners of his mouth. Transfer ninety percent complete.

"I gave it to the future," he said, "I gave it to my daughter. She will become the lock you can never open."

The Child of the Void's expression twisted. That wasn't human anger, but something more primal—non-existence's jealousy of existence. It drew a dagger, but Victor was faster—he drew a second memory crystal from his pocket, the final insurance he had never told anyone about.

Self-destruction crystal. The ultimate taboo of all memory merchants, final dignity. Once activated, it would incinerate all the user's memories, including how to breathe, how to heartbeat, how to exist. But before that, the user could choose what to forget.

Victor chose. He chose to forget that night, when he received Eleanor's "death" notification, when he sat in an empty room holding infant Ayla until dawn. He preserved all happy memories: the rainy day he first met Eleanor, the afternoon Ayla first called "Papa," Eleanor turning back to smile at him in the laboratory.

From now on, whenever he thought of his wife, she would be alive. Whenever he thought of family, it would be complete. He would no longer know what happened later, no longer know what was loss, what was pain, what was loneliness.

At memory's end, he saw Eleanor reaching toward him. She appeared as when they first met at the magic academy—young, proud, eyes hiding entire starscapes.

"You're late, Victor," she said.

"But I bring the finest merchandise," he answered, handing over his empty yet infinitely light self into her hands.

The self-destruction crystal activated.