*Year 2, Day 10 after the Fall - The Battle for Ironhold's Gates
The corrupted Golem army was winning.
Ora stood on the wall, watching Kaelen bleeding out thirty feet below, surrounded by things that used to be human. She could save him. She had the power. But for the first time, she understood the real cost.
The corruption had evolved. Or maybe she'd evolved. Either way, she could feel it now—a menu of memories floating in her consciousness, each one tagged with its potential power.
*Mother's last kiss before the fever took her* - Worth 3.7 soul-resonances, enough to kill three Golems.*First time Lyra said "I love you"* - Worth 10.2 soul-resonances, enough to kill ten.*The taste of honey cakes on her seventh birthday* - Worth 0.3 soul-resonances, enough to wound one.*Father teaching her to read* - Worth 15.8 soul-resonances, enough to clear the entire courtyard.
She could see them all, every memory she still retained, glowing like coins in a vault. Her corrupted Vital Echo resonated at exactly 47.1 resonances—the harmonic vulnerability Theron had warned about, now measuring each memory's worth. The corruption whispered their values, showed her exactly what she could buy with each one.
"Choose," it said in Lyra's voice. "He's dying. Choose what matters more—a memory or a life."
Kaelen screamed as a Golem's blade found his shoulder.
Ora reached into her mind, fingers of thought touching different memories. *The smell of Lyra's hair* - no, too precious. *Mother's lullaby* - no, it was all she had left of her. *The sound of rain on Crysillia's crystal roofs* - beautiful but not essential.
She found it. *The afternoon Father taught her to swim.* She could see it perfectly—the lake outside Crysillia, water so clear you could see bottom thirty feet down. Father's hands supporting her back, his voice saying "I've got you, I won't let go." The safety. The trust. The perfect love of a child who believed her father could protect her from everything.
It would hurt to lose this. But Kaelen would hurt more to lose.
She grabbed the memory and *pulled*.
It came free like a tooth from a skull, trailing roots of associated memories. The pain was extraordinary—not physical but existential. She felt the memory dissolve, transform, become pure corruption that flooded through her veins.
"I'm sorry, Papa," she whispered, and unleashed hell.
The corruption that erupted from her wasn't random anymore. It was precise, targeted, shaped by the specific memory she'd burned. It moved like water—like a father's protective hands made manifest in destruction. The wave swept through the courtyard, dissolving Golems but flowing around Kaelen like he was a stone in a stream.
Twenty Golems unmade in seconds. Kaelen saved.
And in Ora's mind, a blank space where warmth used to live.
She tried to remember her father teaching her to swim. She knew it had happened—the facts remained. But the feeling was gone. The image was gone. The sound of his voice saying those specific words—gone. Like trying to remember a dream after waking, she could feel the shape of where the memory had been but not its substance.
Kaelen struggled to his feet, staring at the dissolved Golems. "How did you—that was so controlled. So specific."
"It cost more than you know."
Later, in the medical tent, as healers worked on Kaelen's shoulder, he asked her about it.
"I had to choose," she said simply. "A memory for your life."
"Which memory?"
She opened her mouth to answer and realized she couldn't. Not wouldn't—couldn't. The specifics were gone. She knew she'd sacrificed something about her father, something about water, but the details had been consumed entirely.
"I don't remember."
Kaelen's face went pale. "Ora, that's—"
"That's the price." She stood to leave, then paused. "You're worth it. The memory, whatever it was. You're worth it. But I need you to understand—every time I save someone, I lose someone else. A memory of them, anyway. Soon I won't remember why I'm fighting. I'll just remember that I am."
"Then stop. Stop using the corruption."
"And let people die?" She laughed, bitter as winter wine. "I'm already losing myself piece by piece. At least this way, I choose which pieces. At least this way, the loss means something."
That night, she made a list. Every memory she could still recall, catalogued by emotional weight and potential power. The corruption helped, whispering suggestions:
*First kiss* - Medium power, low emotional cost (she'd never liked him much anyway)*Lyra's graduation* - Immense power, devastating cost*The smell of bread baking* - Tiny power, but it was her last "comfort" memory*The pain of breaking her arm at age nine* - Decent power, and who'd miss pain?
She organized them. Strategized. Some memories she marked as "never"—the last ones of Lyra, of her mother, the few good ones of her father. Others she marked as "acceptable losses"—acquaintances, distant relatives, places she'd never return to anyway.
She was becoming an accountant of her own soul, budgeting her past to pay for the present.
The corruption loved it.
*"You're learning,"* it whispered. *"Everything has a price. Every choice has a cost—the same transaction economy the Distillers perfected. Soon you'll understand—the memories aren't being destroyed. They're returning to where they came from. The collective. The unity. Where all memories are everyone's memories, each worth its precise soul-gram value in the ledger."*
"Shut up."
But even as she rejected its philosophy, she continued her list. Because tomorrow there would be another battle. Another choice. Another memory to burn.
She wondered if Vorgoth had planned this too. If he'd known that making her choose would hurt worse than random loss. That the act of selecting which part of herself to sacrifice would break her faster than any external torture.
Probably.
The bastard was usually right about the worst parts of human nature.
Outside, Kaelen was alive, organizing the defense, his shoulder bandaged but functional. Inside her mind, a blank space existed where her father's love used to live. A perfect, father-shaped void that would never fill again.
She'd made her choice.
She'd make it again.
But each time, she'd have less to choose from.
Eventually, she'd run out of memories worth sacrificing. What would she become then? What fought when there was nothing left to fuel the fighting?
She supposed she'd find out.
If she remembered to care by then.
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