The Cobalt District was the armpit of Tredex City, smelling of ozone, cheap gin, and illegal alchemy. Samson pushed through the beaded curtain of a shop that claimed to sell dyes but actually sold secrets.
The Chemist didn't look up from his vials. He was a man who looked like he'd been dried out in the sun and rehydrated with formaldehyde. "Detective. You smell of old rain and dead spirits. Which one do you want me to wash off first?"
Samson didn't answer. He slammed his glowing hand onto the wooden counter. The blue light was so bright now it illuminated the jars of preserved organs on the shelves behind the Chemist.
The Chemist froze. He pulled a magnifying loupe over his eye and leaned in, his breath smelling of menthol. "By the ancestors... where did you touch this?"
"I didn't touch it," Samson growled. "It's coming from inside me."
The Chemist took a silver needle and pricked Samson's skin. Instead of red blood, a single drop of glowing, sapphire liquid welled up. The Chemist caught it on a glass slide and dropped it into a centrifuge. As the machine whirred, the Chemist paced the small room, his yellowed fingers twitching.
"This is 'Aetheric Residue,' Samson," the Chemist explained, his voice low and urgent. "In the old days, they called it 'Memory Ink.' It's what happens when you take a human thought—a powerful, world-altering thought—and use alchemy to turn it into a physical substance. It's the most stable storage device in existence."
"Storage for what?"
"For the soul," the Chemist replied. He pulled the slide out and held it up to a blacklight. The drop of blue liquid didn't just sit there; it began to rearrange itself, forming a complex, three-dimensional grid that projected into the air between them.
Samson gasped. It was a map. Not of the Tredex he knew, but of a subterranean world. A network of vaults, tunnels, and chambers that sat directly beneath the city's foundations. In the center of the map was a heartbeat—a pulsing red dot located beneath the Tredex Grand Library.
"The Library was the first building ever raised in this city," the Chemist whispered.
"The legends say it was built to hide the Great Ledger—the book that contains the true name of every citizen and the secret history of how Tredex was carved out of the swamp. People killed for that book. Then, eighty years ago, it vanished. Along with the man who wrote it."
The Chemist looked at Samson with a mixture of awe and horror. "The molecular signature of this ink... it matches your DNA, Samson. But it's aged. It's nearly a century old."
"I'm forty-two years old," Samson countered, his voice shaking. "How can my blood be eighty years old?"
"Because you didn't just write the book, Samson. You are the book. You used this ink to rewrite your own history, to hide yourself in the future so the Enigma couldn't find you. But the seal is breaking. The memory is leaking out of your subconscious and back into your veins."
The blue light on Samson's hand suddenly flared, a sharp pain lancing up his arm. His hand moved involuntarily, his fingers curling as if gripping an invisible pen. He felt a magnetic pull, a primal tug in his gut, pointing him toward the center of the city.
The Enigma wasn't a case he was solving. It was a person. And that person was him.
"Stay away from the Library, Samson," the Chemist warned, backing away. "If you open that Vault, you won't just find the truth. You'll find the reason why you chose to forget in the first place. Some things are buried for a reason."
Samson didn't listen. He turned and walked back into the rain. The blue light guided him now, a sapphire compass in the dark. He wasn't a detective anymore. He was a man going to meet his own ghost.