Nico was walking through the large garden of the enormous building. It seemed like an oasis of peace, yet the silence of the others made him feel exposed, vulnerable, as if every step he took was being watched and judged. They hadn't said a word since the blind man had arrived and was now leading them a few steps ahead.

  Despite Leo's suggestion, who had reverently whispered the name “archivist,” Nico did not know who that man was. In fact, he remembered almost nothing. The memories that surfaced were fragmentary and painful: every time he tried to understand how he had gotten there, a dull pain pierced his temple, like an invisible blade piercing his brain.

  Around them, in various parts of the garden, women and men in simple white tunics, identical to those of the Archivist, wandered like ghosts. The tunics had no belts, so they fell straight down without revealing any shape. It was almost impossible to distinguish the men from the women: they all had shaved faces and skulls. Nico noticed that their complexions varied, from ebony, similar to Kiah's, to more amber or lighter shades, but they were all hairless.

  With those clothes and shaved heads, all the same, Nico had an unpleasant feeling; that uniformity gave him the impression of a rigid, suffocating order.

  But in that uniform group, there were also other faces. The men wore soft, light cotton shirts and straight pants, held up by wide suspenders. Some wore jackets, others did not; some had their shirts tucked into their high-waisted trousers, but it did not seem to matter. Some were clean-shaven, others had long beards.

  The women wore dresses with floor-length skirts in light colors: cream, pale green, dull blue. Some wore aprons, others a shawl over their shoulders. Their hair was tied back in a practical style or left loose: not perfect, but neat enough not to look unkempt. To Nico, those men and women gave a feeling of tranquility, as if they were at home.

  Some were painting, others were tending the vegetable garden, and still others were strolling around the small lake in the center of the gardens, but their movements were slow and repetitive, their eyes downcast or staring into space, and no one seemed to really notice what was around them.

  Nico, one step behind the Archivist, waited for the man to speak to him.

  “Holy salami, how sad...” muttered Leo, one step behind him, into Nico's ear.

  Nico turned around. Leo was walking a little behind him, with Kiah at his side. He had deep circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept in a while, and Nico noticed that he kept touching his side, where he usually kept his dagger. He gave him a questioning smile.

  " It looks like the clinic where my uncle is staying..." said Leo, putting his index finger to his temple and rotating it in a circle.

  Kiah glared at Leo. His friend continued in a low voice, “Except the nurses there are much prettier,” he added, nodding toward a group of flowing tunics with shaved heads.

  Nico laughed. Kiah glared at him sternly and motioned with her chin for Nico to turn forward.

  Nico laughed again, watching Leo repeat the gesture of his index finger to his temple, this time pointing at Kiah.

  He saw Leo put his hand on his hip again and noticed his shadow dart forward, as if he wanted to run ahead. He squinted, everything was fine and he thought it was just a trick of the light, then asked Leo, looking at Gareth behind him:

  “Where are our weapons?”

  “At the door,” Gareth replied with a grunt.

  “What?” said Nico, not understanding.

  The boy Nico didn't know intervened: “The antivirus here,” he said, pointing his thumb in Gareth's direction, “has problems without his little sword. Poor thing.”

  Then he turned to Gareth and added mockingly, “What's the matter, little Gareth? Afraid you'll get bitten by a mosquito with malaria?”

  Gareth growled but said nothing.

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  Nico frowned, seeking Kiah's gaze. She murmured, “I'll explain later,” pointing with her eyes at Gareth and the blond boy, shaking her head. Then Nadia said, “Weapons stay outside. This is a safe place.”

  Gareth shook his head, arms crossed, muttering something Nico couldn't understand.

  The Archivist waved his hand and everyone stopped. The blind man walked a short distance away from them, to the middle of a meadow where several people in simple clothes were sitting on the grass. Among them were men and women, and a shaven-headed woman, Nico could tell from her melodious, crystal-clear voice, was reading a passage from a book. It was an indistinct murmur: he couldn't make out the words, only the tone of her voice.

  “Damn, that blind man moves damn well!”

  Nico laughed: “Yeah!”

  “It's old,” replied Nadia, watching the Archivist approach a man who was rocking back and forth, waving his hands in distress.

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  Nico asked, “What do you mean?”

  She continued, “I didn't know it really existed. It's part of the first phase of the game.”

  “Yeah,” said the boy Nico didn't know. “They say he's blind because he sees the Code,” then he shrugged, “but who knows if that's true.”

  Leo looked at the boy, wrinkling his nose and grimacing in annoyance: “If you say so, it's definitely a...”

  “Ssh, hey, look over there,” said Kiah, interrupting everyone.

  Nico turned and saw the Archivist: his blind face staring at that of a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, his eyes glassy and catatonic. The Archivist grabbed the man's face and pressed his thumbs against the man's temples.

  “I wonder if he did that to you too,” said Leo, watching the scene with eyes as big as saucers.

  “What?” Nico asked, turning to stare at Leo with a frown.

  Kiah nudged Leo with her elbow. “Will you shut up?” she said through clenched teeth.

  Nico remained silent. He didn't understand what Leo was talking about, and that made him even more uncomfortable. He returned his gaze to the scene in front of them: the middle-aged man slumped down, and immediately two huge, clean-shaven men, almost certainly men judging by their physique, lifted him up to carry him away, while the Archivist stopped to talk to others dressed in the same way.

  Nico felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around: it was the boy whose name he didn't know.

  “Hey, tell me,” Nico said hesitantly.

  The boy held out his hand: “I'm Peter.”

  Nico nodded, shaking his hand.

  “You don't remember me, do you?” the boy asked with a crooked smile.

  Nico shook his head: “Should I?”

  The Archivist came towards them, shaking his head: “He's not ready yet,” said the blind man, staring at Peter, who backed away with bright eyes and a crooked smile, his hands raised in surrender, as if he found the situation amusing.

  Nico blurted out, intrigued: “Excuse me, sir, um, sovereign...” He hesitated, then continued: “What is this place?”

  The blind man rolled his eyes and inhaled slowly, then said, “This is the Pillar.”

  It seemed that the man had said everything, but Nico insisted, “Yes, of course, but with all due respect, sir, Archivist... what exactly are you doing here?”

  “I thought that was clear, subject N_01.”

  “Um, well, not really... sir,” said Nico.

  The Archivist seemed to ignore him and turned away, walking along the path.

  “It looks like a clinic for crazy people to me,” Leo muttered, almost to himself.

  Peter patted Leo on the shoulder. “Yeah, a sanatorium,” said Peter, looking around smugly with that crooked smile on his face. “It's on a hill, too.”

  Leo suddenly nodded in agreement: “Yeah, so they can breathe fresh air, right?”

  Kiah, irritated, gave them both a slap on the head with her palm, and the two fell silent, chuckling.

  The Archivist stopped near a rose garden and looked at Nico with his blind eyes: “I keep the backups. In this world, every entity can fall, change, be rewritten, or deleted. But nothing is truly lost as long as a copy exists. When the world becomes corrupted, I restore it. When an entity is destroyed, I decide which version to resurrect it from.”

  Nico nodded, even though part of him didn't really understand what he meant. He didn't dare ask for himself: he was afraid of what the blind man would say, so he said, “So these people...”

  “Yes. They are entities from the game who have ‘fallen’ in different ways.”

  Nico nodded: “Erebos.”

  “Not only that. There are those who have been affected by internal errors, but many are here for Him.”

  Nico took a deep breath: “Sir, I don't remember.”

  The man nodded: “I know.”