"A memory," the throne said. "A single perfect memory. Choose any you wish, and it will be unmade from your soul."
"You will each tell a horror," the usher said. "A short thing, true or false. If the court finds your tale wanting, it will take what it is owed."
Inside, the corridor sloped downward, lined with portraits whose eyes seemed to flick. Voices rose and fell like stage directions shouted between acts. They reached a theater—round, small, with crimson seats and a stage scraped by unseen nails. Onstage, a single spotlight cut a column of ash in the dark. No performer. No orchestra. Only a throne, curved and similar to the hourglass crown, waiting like an accusation.
Mara's chest hollowed. She thought of birthdays past, of the small victories and secret humiliations. She thought of the exact taste of peppermint tea when she and her brother would steal cups at dawn, the way he once taught her to fold paper cranes until their hands bled with papercut stars. She imagined choosing a trivial thing: a smile, a smell, and handing it away like spare change. But the court's hunger had rules that were not written in ink: trivial choices wilted, returning new, hungry emptiness in their place. The payment demanded weight.
No sender. No address. Only a single symbol pressed faintly into the corner: a crown of thorns encircling an hourglass.
"Name for name," intoned the bone-masked woman. "Rememberless for remembrance."
"What did the court take?" the throne asked again.
The throne hummed. A thin wind fluttered the curtains. A single plucked string answered the actor's confession. He stumbled back into his seat, thinner by the width of a sigh.
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