Chapter 14 · A Childhood on Loan

The wall was still bleeding ink.

Noa held her burned hand a few inches from the blackened stone, close enough to feel the heat trapped beneath its surface. The letters had been written over soot and old fire scars in a neat, patient hand.

NOA VEY.

Below it, a date from twelve years ago.

Below that, Silas Morn's signature.

The ink had run at the edges, glossy and wet, as if the wall had only just remembered how to write.

Behind her, the people of the Nameless Quarter shifted in the dark. No one spoke now. Even the children had gone silent. The bounty broadcast still murmured from a broken speaker somewhere down the alley, Silas's voice bleeding through static as he promised the city that every stolen memory could be restored.

Noa had believed him for half a breath.

Then she had seen the signature.

Evelyn leaned against the opposite wall, one hand clamped over the wound beneath her ribs. The white judgment mark on her throat had been rewritten into PROTECTED, but the letters flickered whenever she breathed. Her face looked pale beneath the grime. Noa knew that.