The absorption happened against his will, the woman's consciousness tearing into his own like a physical invasion. Her memories joined the growing cacophony in his mind—seventy years of love and loss, the ache of outliving children, the bitter taste of time sold to pay for medicine that never came.
Overwhelmed by the spiritual contamination, by the weight of alien thoughts and emotions he couldn't process, Cael collapsed onto the cobblestones of a narrow alley. His form flickered wildly between states as reality warped around his unstable presence, flowers wilting and blooming in impossible cycles, shadows moving independently of their sources.
“Help,” he whispered to the darkness, though he knew no help would come. The cosmic realm had rejected him, and the mortal world couldn't contain what he was becoming. “Please, someone help me.”
But there was no one to hear him except the city's indifferent stones and the growing storm clouds that gathered overhead with geometric patterns that spoke of reality preparing for upheaval. Seventeen days to find a solution, and he was already losing himself to forces beyond comprehension.
The countdown had begun, and every absorbed soul brought them closer to an ending that would consume them both in cosmic fire.
Either way, nothing would ever be the same.
Chapter 20
What I Cannot Keep
Damian
The moment Cael collapsed in the city center, Damian felt it like molten steel poured directly into his chest. Their soulbond transmitted not just emotional distress but actual spiritual agony, waves of cosmic pain that sent him to his knees in the middle of treating a patient's time-burns. The connection between them blazed with distress signals that made his entire nervous system scream in sympathetic response.
“Fuck,” he gasped, his hands shaking as the agony flooded through their link. The woman on his examining table looked at him with alarm, but Damian was already moving, abandoning his supplies and rushing toward the door with desperate urgency.
“I have to go,” he told his patient, his voice rough with barely controlled panic. “Emergency. Get to Corrin if the burns worsen.”
He rushed through the chaos-filled streets of Veil Row, guided by the burning sensation in his heart that grew stronger as he approached Hourglass Plaza. The usually bustling districtfelt wrong, charged with supernatural energy that made the air taste of copper and ozone. People moved with the jerky uncertainty of those who sensed danger without being able to identify its source.
The plaza itself was a scene from a nightmare. The cobblestones felt slick and strangely cold beneath Damian’s feet, the air carrying a biting chill that didn’t match the warmth he felt on his skin from the sun above. There was something off in the way the street sounds echoed, as if shadows moved where they shouldn’t, and the magic in the air prickled along his senses.
Time-clocks throughout the district had stopped entirely, their hands frozen at impossible angles that suggested temporal distortion beyond anything Damian had encountered.
He found Cael unconscious near the central fountain, surrounded by a circle of supernatural frost that refused to melt despite the heat radiating from nearby braziers. His presence pulsed and shifted in the space beside him—sometimes radiating enough heat and energy to make the air vibrate, sometimes so faint that Damian could barely sense more than a ripple of cold at his side. At moments, the force pressing against him was almost solid, grounding him with its weight; at others, it seemed to slip through the room like mist, barely there at all. He heard gasps from those nearby, and the prickle of magic on his skin told him the entity’s power was visible, even if he could only feel its shifting intensity.
Civilians gathered at what they hoped was a safe distance, their whispered accusations cutting through the charged air like blades: “He caused this.” “The Hollowed follow him now.” “Death has gone mad.” Their fear was palpable, justified, and absolutely heartbreaking.
A Time Exchange official was already cordoning off the area, his crisp uniform and authoritative voice creating order fromsupernatural chaos. “Stand back, citizens. This is a temporal hazard zone. Anyone caught interfering with official business will be subject to immediate detention.”
Damian ignored the warning and pushed through the crowd, his white cane tapping against frost-covered stones as he navigated toward Cael's still form. The official tried to block his path, but Damian's voice carried the authority of someone who'd spent twenty years healing in crisis situations.
“I'm his physician,” he lied smoothly, kneeling beside Cael despite the supernatural cold that immediately bit through his clothes. “Unless you want to explain to your superiors why you prevented medical intervention, I suggest you let me work.”
The frost burned against his hands as he checked Cael's vital signs, but his touch seemed to stabilize the cosmic entity's flickering form. Whatever instability was tearing through Cael's transformed essence responded to Damian's presence like magnetism responding to lodestone.
“Come on,” Damian whispered, his fingers finding the pulse point at Cael's throat. The rhythm was erratic, cycling between cosmic timescales and mortal heartbeats with violent inconsistency. “Come back to me. Don't you dare leave me alone with this crowd.”
Cael regained consciousness during the journey back to the clinic, his form still flickering unpredictably between states. His voice, when it came, was raw with self-loathing that cut through Damian's relief like acid through silk.
“I hurt someone,” he choked out, his hands gripping Damian's arm with desperate strength. “There was a soul, lost and wandering, and I was supposed to give them peace. Instead I trapped them inside me. I can feel their memories burning through my consciousness like acid.”
The words hit Damian with nauseating clarity. Cael's transformation from cosmic entity to something unprecedentedwas progressing in ways none of them had anticipated. Instead of becoming safely mortal, he was becoming unstable, dangerous to the very people he'd once served with gentle mercy.
“Hey,” Damian said firmly, though fear bloomed in his chest like poison flowers. “Look at me. You're not a weapon anymore, that's all. You're learning to be something new, and change is never clean or easy. That doesn't make you weak or wrong.”
Even as he spoke comfort, Damian couldn't ignore the growing wrongness in Cael's essence. The cosmic entity's presence, once cold but stable, now felt chaotic in ways that made Damian's magical senses recoil. Whatever process was transforming Cael was accelerating beyond safe limits.
Back in the clinic’s safety, they sat together on Damian’s narrow cot while Cael trembled with spiritual contamination. Fragments of the absorbed soul’s memories were already bleeding through their connection—flashes of a young man’s final moments, the crushing weight of time-debt, and the terror of being caught between life and unlife.
Damian reached instinctively for the familiar techniques of Paincraft, desperate to help. “Let me absorb some of the distress. I’m good at carrying what other people can’t bear.”
“No,” Cael said sharply, pulling away from his touch. “You don’t understand. This isn’t just pain—it’s foreign consciousness. If you take it into yourself, you could lose your own identity entirely.”
