The spire-cities of Helion loomed above the storm-swept valleys, their edges blurred by rain and charged winds. Jova, a memory sculptor, whispered to the glass node in her hand. It flickered—half a child’s laugh, half a dissolving face. The commission was a struggle; the client, a reclusive scientist, had paid dearly to preserve a mind that resisted shaping.
She pressed further, peeling back layers of thought until she saw him—Dr. Velt, standing before the machine he built to escape death. He had siphoned his essence into pulses of light, but in doing so, severed something vital. Jova felt it—a vast, aching emptiness.
The node failed. Not corrupted. Incomplete. Jova stepped away from the console, the storm outside mirroring the void within the fragmented memories. Some things, she realized, could not truly be preserved. They had to be lived.
She left the lab as lightning cracked the sky, her mind strangely quiet.
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