Caelum left the house with the shard secured beneath the floor and his coat fastened high at the throat. Scavenging required early movement—not because the light changed, but because human density did. In a city frozen beneath permanent Violet, time was measured by habit rather than sun position. Patrol rotations, municipal ration deliveries, Silence Hours, suppression audits—those formed the rhythm of the day.
The sky above remained a uniform amethyst haze, stretched thin across a sun that had not shifted in four decades. Its edges were blurred, as if the atmosphere itself had grown tired of defining it. There was no warmth difference between what the older registrars still called "morning" and what they once called "night." Only degrees of cognitive pressure that ebbed and thickened unpredictably.
Caelum adjusted both Mind-Blankers before stepping into the street and slowly began traversing the narrow district.
Buildings leaned inward, polymer windows diffused, corners padded. Hard edges encouraged geometry; geometry encouraged association. Association encouraged structure. The architecture itself was a form of discipline.
He moved with measured efficiency toward the western salvage corridor where derelict housing blocks still yielded usable materials—metal brackets, filtration mesh, insulated wiring that had not yet degraded under prolonged permeability.
Halfway along the route, he slowed.
The old municipal school sat at the corner of a recessed square, its exterior wrapped in layered foam padding and suppressive mesh. No glass. No decorative panels. Even the door was cushioned along its edges. The building had once been painted in primary colors; traces of faded pigment clung stubbornly beneath layers of matte overcoat, muted to near-monochrome.
The door stood partially ajar.
Voices filtered through.
Young voices.
He would normally avoid lingering near communal structures. Groups increased probability density. Children, especially, were volatile under Violet—emotionally reactive, memory-rich, untrained in flattening associative drift.
But the salvage route narrowed along the school's outer wall. To pass without drawing attention, he had to move close enough to hear.
"…and before the sun stopped," the teacher was saying, her tone calm and measured, "the sky changed colors throughout the day."
A pause, as if allowing the idea to settle without inviting imagination.
"Not like Violet," she continued. "Different colors. Each one governed a law."
Caelum slowed involuntarily.
Inside, the classroom walls were fully padded in dull gray foam. The floor was layered with shock-absorbent material. No sharp furniture. No reflective surfaces. Even the desks were rounded and bolted low to the ground.
He could picture it because he had sat in a similar room once, years ago, before his father had withdrawn him for private suppression instruction.
A child's voice rose. "What colors?"
"Red," the teacher answered. "Yellow. Green. Blue. And then Violet."
She did not elaborate immediately. That was deliberate. Details encouraged visualization.
"Red made things heavier," she said carefully. "Gravity increased. People stayed close to the ground. Heavy work was done then."
Another small voice: "Like crushing?"
"Controlled compression," the teacher corrected gently. "Not crushing. Yellow came next. Motion was easier. Travel happened during Yellow. Wind turbines produced more energy."
A pause long enough to discourage imaginative expansion.
"Green accelerated growth. Plants grew quickly. Wounds healed faster. Blue changed the way fluids moved. Water flowed upward."
A ripple of soft murmurs followed that. The idea of water rising was difficult to hold without visualizing.
The teacher's voice sharpened slightly. "Do not picture it. Remember the rule. Description is knowledge. Image is invitation."
The murmurs ceased.
"And Violet?" a child asked.
Caelum felt the faintest tightening beneath his ribs.
"Violet thins the barrier between thought and matter," the teacher said, tone flattening further. "Forty years ago, the cycle stopped during Violet. The sun has not rotated since."
"Why?" another child whispered.
"We do not know," she replied. "Scholars disagree. Some say mechanical failure. Some say cosmic shift. Some say human cognition crossed a threshold."
Caelum registered that phrasing carefully.
Inside the classroom, a soft tapping indicated someone fidgeting. The teacher continued before the children could ask more.
"What we do know is this: under prolonged Violet, thoughts gain mass if they are emotionally intense and structurally coherent. That is why suppression is necessary."
A faint series of beeps echoed—children's training bands adjusting automatically as collective attention rose.
"If you replay a memory too vividly," she continued, "especially one filled with fear or shame, the memory may condense."
A small voice asked, almost too quiet to hear, "Into a monster?"
"Into a Fracture," the teacher corrected. "Monsters are stories. Fractures are cognition without discipline."
Caelum resumed walking slowly along the padded exterior wall, careful not to allow the content of the lesson to aggregate into imagery.
"Some people," the teacher said, "lose memories under suppression. That is a side effect of survival. But forgetting completely can be dangerous."
The air in the corridor beyond the school shifted subtly, as if something distant had exhaled.
"If you cannot retain a memory," she went on, "it does not disappear. It may attempt to retain itself. And if it retains itself without you—"
She paused.
A controlled pause.
"It may devour the mind that abandoned it."
Silence followed. Not the brittle silence of panic, but the heavy stillness of children attempting to flatten fear before it sharpened.
Caelum felt his Mind-Blankers tighten fractionally.
He understood the subtext. Echo Fractures were not always born from indulgence. Sometimes they were born from neglect. Repeated repression without integration created gaps, and gaps attracted structure.
A soft alarm chimed from somewhere further down the street.
Not from the school.
Closer.
Caelum's gaze shifted toward the salvage corridor.
At the intersection ahead, the air shimmered with erratic distortion. Jagged luminescence flickered into partial anatomy—ribs forming and dissolving, limbs misaligned, a jaw assembling before fragmenting again.
Impulse Fracture.
It had likely formed from a sudden emotional spike—startle, fear, uncontrolled grief. They were common under endless Violet, especially near communal structures.
The children inside the school did not scream.
The teacher's voice lowered but did not waver. "Remain seated. Flatten associative thought. Breathe in counts of four."
The Impulse twitched toward the building, starved for narrative reinforcement. Its edges flickered like torn glass reflecting fractured light. It did not possess coherent anatomy. It possessed suggestion.
Caelum lowered his gaze immediately and emptied his mind into numeric sequences—prime distributions, salvage inventory, the tensile strength of alloy brackets.
The Fracture lurched in his direction, sensing proximity, but found no emotional cohesion to anchor to. Its outline destabilized further, collapsing inward as patrol units turned the corner at disciplined speed.
Containment rods struck with calibrated force. A localized dampening field activated. The Impulse convulsed once, then disintegrated into brittle violet motes that evaporated into the haze.
The teacher resumed speaking almost seamlessly, as though the interruption had been part of the lesson.
"That," she said, "is why we regulate our thoughts. Fear gives structure. Structure gives weight."
Caelum moved past the school without looking back.
He felt the faint tremor of children reciting breathing counts in unison.
The city beyond remained narrow and subdued, its architecture a constant reminder that imagination was a liability unless disciplined beyond instinct.
He reached the salvage block and began prying loose usable metal from a collapsed awning frame. His movements were mechanical, efficient.
Yet as he worked, the teacher's words settled uneasily.
If you cannot retain a memory, it may attempt to retain itself.
He thought of his father's face, already blurring at the edges despite his effort to ration recall.
He thought of the shard beneath his floor—stable, coherent, born from restraint rather than panic.
An Impulse was cognition without discipline.
What, then, was a construct born from disciplined suppression?
His Mind-Blankers hummed steadily, unaware of the distinction forming quietly in his thoughts.
Above him, the unmoving sun remained suspended behind diluted bruise-light, neither rising nor falling.
Forty years without rotation.
Forty years of accumulated thought.
And in a padded classroom behind him, children were learning how not to imagine a world that once changed colors.