November brought a cold wind and bad news. Taxes were raised by a quarter. For our farm, stuffed with cheese and flour, it wasn't critical—we could have handled even a fifty percent hike. But I looked at the neighboring fields and understood: for the rest, this was a death sentence. Recruiters were working full force in the city. Young guys were being snatched right off the streets, promised glory, but in reality being prepped as cannon fodder.

  I liked the turn this story was taking less and less.

  In December, I went into town for new clothes. In the center, on the main square, I stumbled upon a massive crowd. People were buzzing, waiting for something important.

  I stood in the back rows, debating: should I buy a jacket first or listen to what was brewing here? I decided to wait.

  Soon, the sharp, rhythmic clank of metal was heard. Knights in heavy armor wedged into the crowd in a V-formation, clearing a path. A family ascended the high platform. They looked strange: like humans, but their hair and eyes gleamed with a bright green. Exactly the same color as mine right now.

  Probably got some elves mixed into their bloodline, I thought. Or dwarves. Or maybe it's just their family magic...

  A man of about twenty-eight stepped forward. He squared his shoulders and began his speech.

  "Blah, blah, blah..." I muttered after just five minutes.

  He spoke for a long time. About how great and noble we were. About how vile and evil our neighbors from the United Nations were. About how it was time to restore historical justice and defend our borders. The standard package for any ruler who decided his people were getting a bit too cramped.

  I left halfway through. I didn't have the strength to listen to this pretentious nonsense. Everything was clear without extra words. A war was coming soon. A big, dirty, and completely unnecessary one.

  I returned home just as dusk began to swallow the farm. Alastor and Aya were waiting for me in the kitchen. I sat at the table without taking off my jacket.

  "Listen," I said, staring at my empty plate. "I was in town today. Some prince or the next savior of the nation was giving a speech. Anyway, get ready. A war is starting soon."

  They froze. Alastor slowly lowered his hands; Aya stopped stirring the stew. They sat in complete silence, and it was obvious from their faces: they knew. They knew even before I opened my mouth. They were just afraid to say it out loud, hoping that their peaceful life on the farm wasn't just a temporary stop.

  But the rut of fate was leading us toward a conflagration once again. And this time, I felt like sitting it out in the barn wasn't going to work.

  The next day, I was rolling around in a snowdrift. Tizor and I were enthusiastically making "snow angels," waving our arms and legs. The snow was fluffy, cold, and clean.

  At some point, I caught the rhythmic thud of hooves. I threw my head up—Mira appeared on the horizon. She was galloping toward the farm, and I immediately noticed a heavy, massive burden on her belt.

  "MIRA!" I jumped up, brushing off the snow.

  She reined in her horse. Hanging from a sling was a massive book bound in old leather. My Book of Oblivion.

  "You're right on time," I smiled, feeling everything inside me calm down.

  "Uh-huh," my sister tossed back shortly.

  We went into the house. Mira slammed the book onto the table, and centuries of dust danced merrily in the rays of the winter sun. Aya stepped closer, examining the artifact with caution and curiosity.

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  I placed my palm on the cover.

  ZIIIING.

  I began to pour it in. Everything. Every moment of this cycle: the taste of those pancakes, the smell of gunpowder from the musket, the horse races with Erol, Yara's face at the wedding, and the unbearable weight of a thousand souls. I deposited memories and emotions, trying to anchor them so I could read them a few years from now, being a completely different person.

  When I finished, Mira silently picked up the book.

  "Hey, where are you going?" I asked, surprised. "Not even going to have some tea?"

  "Need to hide it," she cut me off. "I'll be back later."

  And she left just as swiftly as she had appeared. Geez, what a pace.

  When the door closed behind my sister, Aya sat down across from me.

  "What was that, Zen?" she asked quietly.

  I sighed, examining my palms.

  "My insurance policy. Every fifteen years, the curse wipes my personality to zero. I become a 'blank slate.' I record my life in this book so I don't start the next cycle with the question 'who am I?'"

  I grimaced.

  "True, with each time, the picture gets blurrier. Memory is a fickle thing. Every time you remember something, you remember something completely different. Small details fade, the brain invents things, embellishes things... In the end, I read about myself, but I feel like it's a story about someone else."

  Aya was silent for a long time. Her gaze became somehow... hunted.

  "So..." she began, and her voice trembled. "So, it is possible to preserve oneself?"

  I arched an eyebrow questioningly.

  Aya looked at me with such desperate hope that it made me uneasy.

  "Zenhald... I am a Demon of Fear. Our essence is simple: we live until we die. And after death, we return to our world, to Hell, and that's it... we reset. We forget everything that happened up above."

  She suddenly slid off her chair and dropped to her knees, clutching my sleeves.

  "I'm begging you! Help us! Preserve our memories—mine and Alastor's! I don't want... I don't want to forget these years! I don't want to forget Erol, Yara, little Tizor... These breakfasts, this house..."

  She started to cry. Loudly, in a very human way, smearing tears across her cheeks. A Demon of War was begging me to preserve her happiness.

  "I'm begging you, Greg! Just not this! I don't want to become just soulless fear in the void again!"

  "Um..." I hesitated, feeling incredibly awkward. "What are you doing, Aya? Get up. You could have just asked, without the theatrical effects."

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

  "Alright. We'll do it. But we need a suitable book. Not regular paper, but something that will withstand centuries, moisture, and fire. We either need to find an empty artifact or make the pages ourselves from the skin of magical beasts."

  Aya instantly jumped up, wiping her face with her apron.

  "Okay, Zenhald! We'll buy everything! We'll find everything! The best materials in the world!"

  She rushed to the doors, clearly intending to begin the search for "eternal paper" immediately. I stayed sitting in the kitchen, staring at my hands.

  A diary for demons, I thought. I wonder what they're going to write in there?

  Well, if it helps her not forget Tizor... so be it.

  A month passed. The book was ready—a weighty tome bound in the hide of some beast whose scales gleamed dully in the dim light of the kitchen. The demons had taken the task seriously: a book capable of surviving even a drop into the maw of a volcano.

  We sat at the table. Aya and Alastor placed their palms on the cover, and I covered their hands with mine.

  "Let's go," I muttered.

  I closed my eyes and pulled on the threads. Mana rushed from them in a thick, hot stream. The process turned out to be much more exhausting than I had anticipated. I wasn't just pumping pictures over—I was acting as a living bridge through which their lives seeped into the book.

  It was... unpleasant. Just way too much of everything.

  Hundreds of hours of their shared domestic life, the taste of their first successful stew, the joy of Tizor's first word, the pride in Erol and Yara's successes at the Academy. Every bit of their "happiness" hit my nerves like a hammer on an anvil. For my Void, this much foreign warmth was akin to radiation. I absorbed their kindness, digested it, and spat it out into ink, feeling myself becoming transparent in the process.

  The process lasted an eternity. Or a couple of hours. When I finally pulled my hand away, my fingers were trembling as if I had been hauling rocks all day.

  I silently crawled over to the sofa and collapsed onto it, staring at the ceiling with a glassy gaze.

  I was empty inside. Completely. Emotional overload—too many emotions in a short span of time.

  "Greg? How are you doing?" Alastor's voice reached me.

  "I'm not," I responded without turning my head. "Right now, I am pure emotional garbage. Congratulations, your happiness is now officially documented, and I feel like a wrung-out rag."

  Experiencing so many of someone else's feelings in such a short period of time is more exhausting than any battle.

  I closed my eyes, feeling myself falling into a colorless darkness.

  "Just go to sleep already..." I grumbled to myself.

  And I fell asleep.