The sun had barely dipped below the skyline when the air in the Lost and Found began to sour.
It wasn't the smell of garbage or gas, it was the smell of emptiness,like a room that hadn't held a breath in a hundred years.
Adriana was locking the ledger when she felt a sudden, sharp drop in the room temperature.
The Spirit Notes of the objects on the shelves usually a low, comforting hum
went dead silent.
"Vaelen?" she whispered, her hand tightening around her keys.
Vaelen did not appear as a shimmering heat-haze this time.
Instead, his voice came from the very shadows under her desk, tight and urgent. "Do not move, Adriana.
Dim your light.
Close your eyes and become part of the dust."
But Adriana couldn't help it.
She looked.
Standing at the glass front door was a man in a perfectly tailored, charcoal-grey suit.
He looked mundane,perhaps a banker or a lawyer but his face was a void.
Not a literal hole, but a lack of features so profound that the more Adriana looked at him, the more she forgot what he looked like.
He didn't knock.
He simply passed through the glass as if it were smoke.
This was The Collector.
He walked to the bin where Adriana had found the glowing Anchor for the man earlier that day.
He held up a hand, and his fingers elongated into thin, needle-like shadows.
He touched a forgotten silk scarf, and Adriana watched in horror as the soft, pink glow of a grandmother's memory was sucked into his fingertips.
The scarf didn't change physically, but its "soul" vanished.
It became just a piece of dead fabric.
"Tasteless," the Collector remarked.
His voice was like the sound of sand being poured over silk.
"Too much sentiment, not enough substance."
He turned his head toward the counter where Adriana hid.
He didn't see her with his eyes, but he sniffed the air, hunting for a frequency.
"There is a Weaver in this room," the Collector murmured.
"A little Bridge trying to mend what is meant to be consumed."
Before he could reach her, the "Static" in the room exploded.
A wall of white noise slammed between Adriana and the man.
Vaelen manifested, not as a guide, but as a towering pillar of obsidian shadow and crackling starlight.
"This garden is closed, Malphas," Vaelen roared.
The sound vibrated the bones in Adriana's chest.
"Vaelen," the Collector smiled, showing teeth that looked like shards of broken mirror. "You're guarding a sinking ship.
The Hardening is already here.
Humans don't want their wisdom anymore. They want the void.
I am simply... cleaning up."
With a flick of his wrist, the Collector vanished, leaving behind a trail of cold, grey ash.
The lights in the office flickered back to life. The hum of the objects returned, but it was thinner, weaker.
Vaelen turned to Adriana.
His form was flickering wildly, his edges translucent.
"He is eating the 'Why,' Adriana," Vaelen said, his voice exhausted.
"He takes the meaning from things.
Without meaning, the world becomes a machine. And machines eventually break."
"How do I stop him?"
Adriana asked, her fear turning into a cold, hard resolve.
Vaelen looked at her, his starlight eyes dimming.
"You cannot fight a void with a sword.
You must find the First Memory,the one object in this city that holds the frequency of the Earth itself.
It is the only thing he cannot consume."
"Where is it?"
"It's in the one place no one ever looks," Vaelen whispered as he faded into the shadows.
"The heart of the noise."