The woman came to the shrine at the hour when the candles had burned to nothing and the only light was the faint phosphorescence of the stone itself, what the faithful call the Last Mercy because it exists only to show the supplicant where to kneel. She knelt. Her hands were still stained with earth from the grave she had just filled, the small one, and her face was a landscape emptied of everything except the exhaustion that follows when grief has consumed all its fuel and yet refuses to stop burning. The priestess emerged from the inner sanctum without sound, as they are taught. She placed one hand on the woman's forehead and leaned close. 'Which memory?' The woman closed her eyes. She had rehearsed this for weeks, had bargained with herself through sleepless nights, and now that the question arrived, the answer came not from thought but from the place below thought where decisions are made by the body when the mind can no longer bear the cost. 'All of them. Take all of them.' The priestess did not hesitate. They never do...