The air in the Hall of Judgment didn’t just vibrate; it shrieked.

  By forcibly folding the distance between the Great Scale and the Hollows, I had snapped a fundamental rule of geometry. The stone floor beneath my boots didn't just crack—it turned into a grey liquid, caught in a state of indecision, unable to determine if it should exist as a solid anymore.

  I stepped through the shimmering tear in the air. A white-hot needle nced through my skull, stitching a sudden, cold void into my mind. I reached for a specific thought, a familiar anchor to my own life, but it was gone.

  What was my stepmother’s name?

  Nothing. There was only a smooth, terrifying bnkness where a name used to be. I had traded a piece of my past to bridge the gap to Leo, and the universe had wasted no time collecting the debt.

  "Leo," I said. my voice sounded thin and hollow in the cramped, weeping cell.

  The boy on the stone floor didn't move. He looked like a charcoal sketch that someone had tried to rub out with an eraser. His skin was the color of wood-ash, and his eyes—the eyes that used to spark when we talked about leaving Aizawl—were as ft as dead television screens.

  "Who are you?" he whispered again. The sound was like dry husks of corn rubbing together. "Are you the shadow that brings the sleep? I’ve been waiting for the sleep."

  I knelt in front of him, the gold light pulsing in my veins casting long, dancing shadows against the damp walls. I reached out to touch his shoulder, but I hesitated. I remembered the ghost in the void; if I touched Leo without absolute control, would I accidentally delete what was left of him?

  "It’s Zany, Leo. The petrol. The peak. The truck." I forced a ugh, but it felt like swallowing broken gss. "I’m the guy who’s supposed to be looking out for you, remember?"

  Leo tilted his head. A tiny, painful flicker of something—not a memory, but the ghost of a feeling—tugged at his mouth. "Zany? That... that sounds like a warm word. But I don't have warmth anymore. The Law took it."

  Behind me, Hades stepped through the rift. He looked around the tiny, miserable cell with an expression of deep, ancient exhaustion.

  "The Law doesn't take warmth, boy," Hades said, his voice echoing like a closing tomb. "It takes purpose. In the Hollows, souls aren't punished. They are simply discarded. And when the universe forgets you, you eventually forget yourself."

  I stood up, turning to face the King of the Dead. The gold light in my eyes was no longer a flicker; it was a steady, dangerous glow. "Then we're rewriting the record. Reincarnate him. Now. Give him a life where he doesn't have to shake, where he doesn't have to hide in the mist."

  Hades crossed his arms, the heavy keys at his belt clinking like funeral bells. "I told you, I’m just the caretaker now. The machine handles the cycles. To pull a soul marked as 'Waste' back into the fold... that requires a manual override. It would require me to be the King again."

  "Then be the King," I snapped. "You said you were bored. Here’s a reason to wake up. Defy the system you built."

  Hades looked at Leo, then back at me. He saw the price I was paying—the way my left hand was slightly translucent, flickering in and out of existence as the world tried to recim the energy I’d stolen.

  "You're a fool, Mediator," Hades whispered, but his fingers reached for the heavy, obsidian key hanging from the center of his belt. "You're trading your own Is for his Was. But fine. If the Beginning wants a Mediator who acts like a brother, I won't be the one to argue."

  He stepped toward Leo and raised the key. The air began to hum with a new, terrifying frequency.

  "But know this, Zany," Hades warned, his eyes fring with cold, blue fire. "Once the wheel turns for him, you cannot follow. He will go to the world of the living, and you... you will still be a ghost in the machine. Are you ready to be the only one who remembers?"

  I looked at Leo. I thought about the name of my stepmother that I couldn't recall. I thought about the smell of petrol that was already fading from my mind.

  "Turn the key, Hades," I said. "I’ve always been good at keeping secrets. Even from myself."