The first morning with a complete conscience was agony.
Jiko woke to weight he'd never experienced before. Not physical, but crushing nonetheless. Every choice he'd ever made was present now, filtered through his new moral framework. Every person he'd failed to save. Every efficiency-driven decision that had harmed others. Every moment where he'd calculated benefit and ignored suffering.
The guilt wasn't crushing yet, not overwhelming. But it was there, constant and inescapable. A pressure in his chest that made breathing difficult.
"Jiko?" Ven's voice, concerned. "Are you okay?"
He opened his eyes to find her kneeling beside him. The others were still asleep, dawn barely breaking over the Wound's impossible horizon.
"I feel it," he said quietly. "Everything. The weight of every choice, every action, every moment where I could have done better but didn't."
"That's normal. Conscience makes you accountable to yourself." Ven offered water. "But you can't let it paralyze you. The past is data, not identity. Learn from it, but don't let it define you."
"How do people live like this? Carrying weight constantly?"
"Practice. And forgiveness, both of others and yourself." She helped him sit up. "You'll learn. It takes time."
Jiko drank the water and tried to process what he was experiencing. The guilt was specific: He remembered the man he'd killed in self-defense years ago. At the time, it had been pure calculation. The man was attacking, killing him was efficient self-preservation.
Now, with conscience, he could feel the weight of that choice. The man had been desperate, starving, probably not thinking clearly. Jiko could have disabled him without killing. Could have tried to talk him down. Instead, he'd chosen the most efficient solution.
And now he'd carry that choice forever.
"Does it get easier?" he asked.
"Yes and no. You learn to live with weight, but you never stop feeling it. The trick is not letting it stop you from moving forward." Ven squeezed his shoulder. "Come on. The others are waking up."
The Cartographer was already up, checking his instruments. "The Wound's activity has decreased overnight. We should use the window to move deeper or retreat to safer territory."
"Which do you recommend?" Marik asked, stretching.
"Honestly? Retreat. We've achieved what we came for. Jiko has a complete conscience, Syla's made her offer and been refused. Staying longer just increases danger." The old man looked at Jiko. "But it's not my decision alone."
Jiko examined his feelings. Fear of what the Wound held, yes. But also curiosity about the Empathy Engine, about understanding what had broken the world. And something else, something that might be determination or stubbornness.
"We continue," he said. "We've come this far. I want to see the Engine, understand what Dr. Seo created. Maybe find answers about how to live with what I've become."
"That's the guilt talking," the Cartographer warned. "Making you feel like you need to atone by completing dangerous quests."
"Maybe. But it's still my choice." Jiko stood, testing his stability. The weight was there, but manageable. "I can function. Let's move."
They packed and continued inward, following the stable corridors deeper into the Wound. The landscape grew more alien with each passing hour. They saw places where time ran backward, where cause and effect had divorced completely, where reality simply gave up trying to make sense.
And everywhere, Echoes. They were drawn to Jiko now in ways they hadn't been before. His complete conscience made him visible to them in new ways, a beacon of moral weight in a place built from broken morality.
"They're curious," Ven observed. "Watching him like he's something new."
"He is something new," the Cartographer replied. "A blank who grew a conscience, who can feel guilt but maintain analytical distance from it. That's unprecedented. Of course they're curious."
A Grief Walker approached, one of the translucent humanoid Echoes that fed on hope. It circled Jiko, studying him with mirror-eyes.
"Changed," it whispered. "Complete now. Hollow one is hollow no more."
"I'm still myself," Jiko said.
"Are you?" The Grief Walker tilted its head. "You feel different. Taste different. Before, you were empty. Now you're full but distant. Like water in glass. Present but contained."
"The Echo in chapter fifteen said I'd be conscious of conscience," Jiko said. "Is that what you're sensing?"
"Yes. You experience guilt but see it as weight, not truth. You feel shame but can question if it's deserved. Most humans are drowning in their moral sense. You're swimming in it, aware you could sink but choosing not to." The Grief Walker drifted closer. "Fascinating. We'll be watching your progress."
It departed, leaving Jiko unsettled. The Echoes' attention felt invasive, like being studied by things that understood him better than he understood himself.
"Try to ignore them," Marik advised. "Echoes feed on attention. The more you engage, the more interested they become."
They continued for hours, the Wound's center drawing closer. The Cartographer's device began showing unusual readings, fluctuations that suggested massive energy concentrations ahead.
"The Engine," he said. "We're approaching its location. The readings are consistent with reality-altering machinery of enormous scale."
"How much further?" Ven asked.
"Half a day, maybe less. But the closer we get, the more unstable things become. We'll need to be extremely careful."
As if summoned by his words, reality fractured.
The stable corridor simply ended, opening into a chasm of pure instability. Jiko could see into it, see layers of reality stacked on each other like pages in a book. Each layer showed different versions of the Wound, different possible outcomes of the Severance.
In one layer, the Severance had never happened. In another, it had consumed everything. In a third, humanity had adapted perfectly, living in harmony with moral weight made tangible.
"We can't cross that," Marik said. "It's pure chaos."
"There has to be a way," the Cartographer insisted. "The Wound wouldn't exist without some path to its center."
"Or maybe it exists specifically to prevent access," Ven countered. "To keep people away from the Engine."
They were debating options when Syla appeared.
She materialized from shadows, her porcelain form more cracked than before. Something about her seemed diminished, as if Jiko's refusal had wounded her in ways that weren't healing.
"Having trouble?" she asked, her voice sharp.
"Syla," Jiko said, not surprised. "Come to gloat?"
"Come to help, actually. Despite your rejection." She gestured at the chasm. "This is the Threshold. The boundary between accessible Wound and the Engine's heart. It can only be crossed by those the Engine accepts."
"And how does one get accepted?" the Cartographer asked.
"By being what the Engine was designed to affect. Humans with empathy, capacity for moral emotion, the ability to feel others' pain." Syla looked at Jiko. "You're perfect for it now. Complete conscience, fully capable of experiencing guilt and virtue. The Engine will recognize you as exactly what it was meant to fix."
"You're saying it will let us through?" Ven was skeptical.
"It will let him through. The rest of you..." Syla shrugged. "Probably not. You're normal. Boring. The Engine has no interest in normal humans. But Jiko, with his unique structure, his conscious conscience? The Engine will want to study him."
"That sounds like a trap," Marik said.
"Everything about this is a trap. But it's the trap Jiko chose when he refused my offer." Syla moved to the chasm's edge. "I can guide him across. Protect him from the worst of the instability. In exchange..."
"Here it comes," the Cartographer muttered.
"In exchange, he acknowledges that I was right. That completing his conscience was a mistake. That he should have accepted my offer." Syla's cracked face showed something like vulnerability. "I don't want payment or servitude. Just acknowledgment that I was trying to help."
Jiko looked at his companions. They were clearly opposed to trusting Syla, to letting him go alone. But they also couldn't offer an alternative. The chasm was uncrossable for normal humans.
"If I go alone, will you keep them safe?" he asked Syla.
"Safe from the Wound? Yes. Safe from their own choices? No. I'm not a babysitter." Syla extended her hand. "But I'll ensure they can wait here without being consumed by instability. That's the best I can offer."
"Why help at all?" Ven demanded. "If you wanted him to accept your offer and he refused, why not just leave him to fail?"
"Because I'm curious," Syla said simply. "Because I want to see what happens when someone like him reaches the Engine. And because..." She hesitated. "Because loneliness makes you do stupid things, and I've been alone for eighty years."
The admission hung in the air, raw and honest. For the first time, Jiko saw Syla not as a manipulative Echo but as something desperate and isolated. She'd been trying to recruit him not just as a curiosity but as a companion in her strange existence.
He felt something then. Not quite sympathy, but understanding. Recognition of suffering in another being.
That was empathy. His conscience was teaching him to see others' pain even when they were trying to hide it.
"I'll go with you," Jiko said. "But not because you were right. Because I want to reach the Engine, and you're offering a way to do that."
Syla's expression was unreadable. "Fair enough." She looked at the others. "I'll create a stable zone here. You can wait safely for... however long this takes. Days, probably."
"If he doesn't come back?" Marik asked.
"Then I'll guide you out of the Wound and you can mourn appropriately." Syla gestured, and reality solidified around them, creating a bubble of stability. "There. Safe as houses, assuming houses still existed."
"Jiko," the Cartographer said urgently. "You don't have to do this alone."
"Yes, I do. The chasm won't accept you, and forcing your way through would kill you." Jiko felt his new conscience weigh the decision. "This is my choice. Trust me to make it."
"We do trust you," Ven said. "That's what makes this so hard."
Jiko embraced each of them, feeling the warmth of connection, the weight of care. These were his friends, his chosen family. And he was walking into danger to answer questions that might help him survive what he'd become.
"If I don't come back," he said, "know that you taught me what it means to be human. That matters more than survival."
He took Syla's hand before they could argue further. Her touch was cold but solid, real in ways most Echo interactions weren't.
"Ready?" she asked.
"No. But let's go anyway."
Syla laughed, and it was genuine. "Oh, hollow one. You're learning."
They stepped into the chasm together, and reality shattered around them.
Jiko experienced every possible version of himself simultaneously. Versions where he'd accepted Syla's offer and lived incomplete. Versions where he'd died in the deserters' camp. Versions where the Cartographer had never found him, where he'd remained a blank wanderer until something killed him.
Through it all, Syla guided him, her shame-feeding power somehow stabilizing the chaos. She navigated the layers of reality like someone who'd done this countless times.
"How do you survive this?" Jiko gasped.
"Practice. And I'm already broken, so the instability doesn't affect me the same way." Syla pulled him through a particularly violent reality-shift. "We're almost through. Hold on."
They emerged on the other side into impossible calm.
The Engine's chamber was a sphere of perfect stability, carved from the Wound's chaos like a bubble in boiling water. At its center stood the Empathy Engine itself.
It was smaller than Jiko had imagined. Perhaps ten feet tall, made of pre-Severance machinery and post-Severance crystal. Elegant and terrible in its simplicity. This small device had broken the world, made thoughts real, transformed humanity's relationship with morality forever.
And it was still running. Humming with power, processing, working toward whatever goal Dr. Seo had programmed into it eighty years ago.
"There it is," Syla said quietly. "The thing that made me possible. The machine that turned humanity's deepest hopes into their worst nightmare."
Jiko approached slowly, feeling his conscience respond to the Engine's presence. It wasn't hostile, just present. Observing him the same way he was observing it.
"What do I do?" he asked.
"Whatever you want. Study it, destroy it, try to understand it. I brought you here. What happens next is your choice." Syla stepped back. "But choose quickly. The longer we stay, the more likely the Engine's defenses activate."
"Defenses?"
"Oh yes. Did you think Dr. Seo would build something this important without protection?" Syla smiled her cracked smile. "We're about to have company. The kind that makes Echoes look friendly."
As if summoned, the chamber's walls began to shimmer. Figures formed from crystallized morality, pulled from the Engine's processes. They were humans but not human, perfect constructs of guilt and virtue made flesh.
And they were moving toward Jiko with deliberate intent.
"What are they?" he asked.
"Moral Constructs. The Engine's immune system. They exist to eliminate threats to its functioning." Syla's form shifted, becoming more combat-ready. "And we, hollow one, are definitely threats."
The constructs attacked, and Jiko's new conscience screamed warnings as he fought for his life in the heart of the broken world.
The game had reached its climax.
And Jiko was about to discover what his conscious conscience could really do.