Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 18: Death Is a Place

Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 18: Death Is a Place

Filed: active rupture, stabilized memory breach pending.

Scene 1 – The Christmas That Changed Everything

The smell of cinnamon and melted wax lingered in the air. The living room shimmered into place—not perfectly, but in the way memory insists it happened—soft corners, glowing bulbs, a fire that popped at exactly the right intervals.

A pine tree leaned slightly to the left, its ornaments uneven, most clustered near the bottom where small hands had placed them.

The boy sat cross-legged in flannel pajamas, mouth open in a silent laugh as he ripped green wrapping paper from a box with cartoon reindeer. A toy train squealed beneath his feet. Static clung to his socks. The warmth of the moment felt thick, heavy even—like someone had layered it too richly with nostalgia.

Marie crouched nearby, hand on her chest. “This is it,” she said. “This is what hope looks like.”

Even Clara, ever the observer, softened at the edges. “He remembers this,” she whispered. “His body does.”

Tesla lingered in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes locked not on the fire or the tree, but the ticking clock with frozen hands. “This isn’t memory,” he murmured. “It’s a construct. A gate.”

Then came the door.

Cold poured in. Not just temperature, but presence.

The brother stepped through.

He wasn’t much older, but he moved like he knew something the boy didn’t. His face wasn’t cruel—but it wasn’t kind either. It was flat, like glass over ice.

He stood there, framed by wreath light, and said it:

“You know Santa’s not real, right?”

The boy blinked.

His stomach turned. The fire, the cocoa, the soft wrapping paper—everything that had felt magical just a moment before—suddenly felt fake. A setup. A show. And he was the last to know.

He looked around the room like he was seeing it for the first time. Like it wasn’t his.

A thought rose—unbidden, quiet, dark.

I don’t belong here.

It was just a flicker. But it came with a weight.

“Am I… not really theirs?” he whispered. Not to his brother. Not to anyone. Just to the air, to the ache in his chest.

The brother’s head snapped toward him.

“What did you say?”

The boy couldn’t repeat it.

The brother stepped closer. His voice dropped.

“You think you’re adopted?” he said, more accusation than question. “You think that makes you special? That you get to be different from us?”

The boy didn’t respond. He was staring at the tree now, wondering if the ornaments meant anything. If the photos on the mantle were real. If the love had been a costume.

The brother crouched down.

“You don’t ask questions like that,” he hissed. “Not unless you want to tear them apart. You say something like that and you kill them. You break mom and dad. You undo everything they gave you. You understand me?”

The boy nodded. But something inside him was already unraveling.

“I’m serious,” the brother said. “You ask that again, you’re not my brother anymore.”

The boy’s breath caught. His fingers gripped the train tracks on the carpet, and for a moment, he felt like the floor would swallow him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, another voice—his own—whispered:

If I don’t belong here… where do I belong?

The pressure behind his eyes built like a scream he couldn’t release.

He felt himself slipping—just a little—toward the edge of something dark. A cliff he couldn’t see the bottom of.

The shame hit him like a fever. The guilt. The terror. The love he still felt—and the fear that none of it was real.

And for a moment—brief, flickering, and buried deep—he thought about not being alive at all.

Not in words. Not in plans. Just the impulse:

If I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be hurting them.

He didn’t move. Didn’t cry.

But the fire dimmed. The cocoa cooled. The paper wilted in his hands.

And the magic of the day—the warmth he’d believed in—curled into something cold and silent.

Clara and Tesla React

Clara didn’t speak. She stepped back from the memory’s edge like someone touched a flame and hadn’t expected to be burned.

Her hand went to her chest. Not for protection. Just to hold something in.

Tesla exhaled slowly. “That was a wound pretending to be a question,” he said. “And no one ever answered it.”

He adjusted the console—gently now, reverently. Not trying to control the memory. Just trying to understand it.

CLARA: “He didn’t need truth. He needed mercy.”

TESLA: “And instead he got shame.”

She looked to him, then to the boy.

CLARA: “This is why the machine falters. It wasn’t made to hold a soul that’s been taught to hide itself.”

Tesla didn’t reply. He just watched the boy’s small form still lit by the ghost of holiday lights, and said, very quietly:

TESLA: “We have to keep him alive.”

[…]

Standalone Fragment – Echoes Before the Wasteland

//ACCESSING ARCHIVE: FAILED MEMORY SEGMENTS//

“—they said she would burn brighter than us all.”
[UNKNOWN VOICE, POSSIBLY EMBER]

I saw him once in a mirror. Not the boy. The other one. The one made of words.
[POSSIBLE EDITORIAL ENTITY — OBSERVER ERROR LOG]

Poe wrote me a letter he never sent. He called me brother. He said I was the ink to his blood.
[CROWLEY FRAGMENT // VEIL CODE REDACTED]

I used to think the Host was lying. Now I think it was telling a version of the truth no one wanted.
[CLARA, UNSPOKEN THOUGHT — LOGGED IN STATIC]

There was once a door beneath the stage. I opened it. Inside was a child. Or maybe it was God.
[ALEISTER — UNKNOWN PERFORMANCE RECORDING]

I remember a girl made of color. She never spoke in words. She painted in feeling.
[BOY — MEMORY OF EMBER, CORRUPTED BY GUILT]

You ask what you are. You ask where you are. The better question is: What have you left behind?
[THE HOST, IN RECURSION LOOP]

Past is— [REDACTED]

Continue reading here – https://empirenevadathenovel.wordpress.com/2025/04/12/unto-a-golden-dawn-dossier-19-the-girl-in-the-chair/

Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 19: The Girl in the Chair