The clock in Elias's shop groaned toward the "Ash Hour"—that wretched interval when the celestial engine's roar falters, plunging the city into a silence so absolute it feels predatory. Elias sat hunched behind his counter, siphoning "Memory Charges" gathered throughout the day into crystal phials. His fingertips were numb—not from the biting draft, but from the spiritual frost of touching the jagged shards of other people's lives.
The door creaked open, agonizingly slow. This time, Arthur did not burst in with his usual frantic clatter; he bled into the room like a creeping shadow. He looked haunted, his eyes shimmering with an unnatural, feverish gloss. On the counter, he placed a small object shrouded in an oil-stained rag.
"Elias, do not ask how I bled for this," Arthur rasped, his eyes darting toward the bolted door. "Just... look. It is unlike anything we have ever scavenged from the Pits."
Elias peeled back the cloth to find a brass pocket watch, but it was a mechanical blasphemy. It held no hands to mark the time. Instead, a thick, viscous black fluid swirled within a glass loop. With every completed circuit, the device emitted a wet, rhythmic thud—a heartbeat echoing from the metal.
"This is 'Mind-Bleed' tech, Arthur," Elias whispered, his voice trembling as he failed to still his hands. "Production of these abominations ceased after the 'Great Purge.' Where did you unearth this?"
"From the fringes of the 'Grey Zone'... where the light begins to rot," Arthur replied, leaning in until his breath smelled of rust. "There are bodies there, Elias... neither dead nor truly breathing. The 'Hollowed.' But they are smiling. How can a man who has lost his soul find the will to smile?"
Elias brushed his fingers against the watch's frigid surface. Suddenly, he was struck by a "Psychic Backlash." It wasn't a clear vision, but a terrifying surge of serenity. He felt the phantom chill of water and heard a woman's voice humming a melody never meant for the ears of Etheridge. The tune pierced the thick layers of his conditioned apathy like a rusted nail driven into a wall of ice.
"Take it away!" Elias hissed, shoving the watch back toward Arthur. "This is no memory... it is 'Bait.' The Wardens leave these relics to see whose hunger will lead them to consume the forbidden."
Arthur let out a hollow, bitter laugh. "It is too late, you merchant of illusions. You have already touched it. The 'Melody' has already nested in the hollows of your skull. Tell me... do you not feel the sudden weight of your own heart? Do you not feel the silence in this room becoming... suffocating?"
Before Elias could retort, a sound rose from the street. Not the clanging bells, but the heavy, rhythmic thud of metal grinding against stone. These were not the boots of common Wardens. These were the "Collectors"—entities that only stir when the universe detects a leak of something ancient and forgotten.
Elias snuffed his only lamp. The shop drowned in a tomb-like darkness, save for the pulse of the black liquid within the watch, which began to glow with a rhythmic throb... like a beating heart in a fresh grave.