The Auction of Forgotten Things

Next morning.

The rain in Sector 3 was different. It didn't fall— so much as it hovered, suspended in the thick neon air like static waiting for a reason. Veritus pulsed brighter here, louder. The buildings wore holograms like masks, shifting signs and shimmering displays dancing across their surfaces with no real face beneath.

Oveileon walked with his hood low, the edges of his scarf dampened by the city's breath. He didn't belong here— not really— but that hadn't stopped him before.

He moved past a series of alleys, each more twisted than the last, until he reached it— a pale red door sunk into the belly of a forgotten warehouse. Nothing marked it from the outside, not even graffiti. But it hummed with something beneath the surface. Not sound. Not heat. A presence.

This was the place the girl had spoken of.

A black mark painted just above the doorframe told him it was still active: a downward spiral with a single dot in the center.

He tapped twice on the door, paused, then twice again.

It opened without a sound.

Inside, the temperature shifted instantly. Warm, but not comfortably so. The kind of warmth that warned. The smell of metal, oil, and something older— like incense burned out long ago— hung in the air.

A long hallway stretched before him, lit by dim strips of pulsing light embedded in the floor. No guards. No cameras. That was the rule here. The auction took place in silence, in secrets, and in shadows.

Oveileon stepped in.

And the door sealed shut behind him.

______

The room opened like a theatre with no stage— round, domed, and veiled in low violet haze. Around him, others had gathered. Thirty at most, all cloaked or masked, some standing, some seated on the embedded platforms circling the center. Their faces blurred by personal projectors or illusion veils. One figure wore a deer skull. Another stood perfectly still in a black trench and veil, no motion save the slow rise and fall of their chest.

No one acknowledged him. That was expected.

No names. No pasts. Only trades.

The auctioneer's voice came not from a mouth, but from the room itself. A soft, genderless whisper embedded in the walls.

"Lot Seven. A Fresh imprint. Recovered from the ruins of Sector Nine. No known Anchor. The Fragments indicate loss, obsession, and volatile grief. Opening bid— twenty fragments."

A low murmur rippled through the group. One figure raised their hand, marked with silver ink.

Oveileon didn't bid. He was here for something else.

He scanned the room, slow and deliberate.

Then he saw him.

Near the back, half-shrouded in blur light— The Keeper. Hood lowered, posture relaxed, face turned just enough to catch the faintest glint of recognition.

So. He was watching, too.

Oveileon didn't move. He stayed two levels above, pretending to pay attention to the next item—"Unclaimed tether, stored within sealed vial. Emotional signature unstable. Untested." The voice intoned like it was reading weather.

He turned back toward the Keeper. But he was gone.

______

Later, during the break, the wall behind the lowest tier split open with a hiss, revealing a narrow corridor veiled in crimson fog.

He didn't hesitate.

He stepped through.

The corridor bent left, then down. Lights flickered above, slow strobes that revealed outlines without offering clarity. Footsteps echoed ahead of him, deliberate and unhurried.

The space opened to a side room— square, sparsely furnished, with a low table and two chairs.

The Keeper sat in one of them.

"I didn't expect you to come this far," the man said without looking up. His voice, like always, was coated in dust and glass. "Then again, maybe I did."

Oveileon remained standing. "You lied."

"About many things. Be specific."

"The pendant. The girl. My name."

The Keeper finally raised his gaze. Pale eyes, rimmed with something old— regret, maybe, or something sharper. "Names are fluid things in this world, boy. You're angry because you've only now started to remember the one they gave you. But what about the one you earned?"

Oveileon's jaw tightened. "You hid it from me."

"I preserved it," the Keeper said, leaning back. "There's a difference. You weren't ready for the weight it carries. You still might not be."

"You don't get to decide that."

"Yet here you are, and here I am. So who decided?"

A long silence passed between them, filled only by the faint hum of machinery behind the walls.

Oveileon stepped closer, just enough to narrow the space between them.

"What's really down here?" he asked.

The Keeper smiled. "Not everything on auction tonight is emotion. Some items… resist description."

"I want to see it."

"You don't want to see it."

"I need to."

That, finally, made the Keeper rise. He exhaled through his nose and moved past Oveileon, pressing his palm to the far wall. The surface shivered, then slid open like a breath being exhaled.

Behind it: Darkness.

Not absence of light, but of presence. A stillness so deep it felt like it pressed inward from all directions.

"You've felt it before," the Keeper said. "That edge where memory frays. This is what's left when the fall finishes."

Oveileon stepped in.

And the silence swallowed him whole.

______

It was like stepping into the inside of a thought that was never finished. Shapes moved— or didn't. The air buzzed with a vibration, yet no sound followed. Time felt staggered.

He walked. Or thought he walked.

And then something moved in response.

Not footsteps.

A breath.

And It didn't belong to him.

From the far end of the space, a low pulse began to build— deep, arrhythmic, like a heartbeat stitched from failing memories.

Then he saw it -

The case was suspended in midair.

Inside it:

a vial of pure black glass, wrapped in glowing sigils and surrounded by thin threads of silver.

Inside the vial: something that looked like smoke, but wasn't. It shimmered, reacting to his gaze.

"What is that?" he asked.

The Keeper stepped beside him. "A Null Remnant. A memory that erased everything around it. It was pulled from a body that no longer exists in any system. The boy it belonged to was erased from birth certificate to bone."

Oveileon stared.

"It's sentient?" he asked.

"It remembers," the Keeper said, voice lowering. "But not kindly."

Oveileon's hand twitched near his pocket. The pendant he'd carried for days now pulsed with heat.

"It wants something from me."

The Keeper turned slowly. "Or maybe it remembers you."

The vial pulsed once.

A sharp sting pierced behind Oveileon's eyes. A sound— not heard, but felt — cut through his mind like string being pulled taut.

He stumbled back.

And for a moment — just a breath — he saw a different version of himself reflected in the vial's surface. Hollow-eyed. Laughing.

The Keeper moved quickly, hand raised, murmuring a sigil that dimmed the glow.

The sensation vanished.

"You're not ready," the Keeper said again, more firm this time.

Oveileon didn't respond. He was already backing away.

______

Back in the corridor, the city's sounds returned— distant but familiar. The hum of machinery, faint murmurs from the auction room, distant footsteps.

Oveileon leaned against the cold wall, hand pressed over his chest.

The pendant had cooled.

He opened his coat slightly. Beneath his collar, the mark pulsed faintly— like a name trying to remember itself.

And he knew, in that moment, he hadn't been brought to the depot to learn the truth.

He'd been brought here to choose what to forget next.