Chapter 22 · She Knew Me Once

The dead station breathed beneath them.

Dust sifted from the vaulted ceiling every time the city above remembered another name. Somewhere beyond the cracked platform, a bell rang without a clapper. Once. Twice. On the third strike, the old departure board flickered awake.

NOA VEY — DEPARTED.

The letters burned white, then twisted into black threads and crawled across the board like insects.

Evelyn stood between Noa and the tunnel entrance, one hand pressed to the hilt of her contract blade. Her coat was torn at the shoulder. Blood had dried in a dark line beneath her ear, but she barely felt it. The page they had found inside the master-contract copy lay open on the platform between them.

Noa’s name was written at the top.

Below it: a death confirmation dated twelve years ago.

And beneath that, in a child’s precise handwriting, Evelyn Rook.

The nameless girl crouched beside a rusted bench, hugging her knees. She had stopped crying when the underground voice called Noa my author. That silence frightened Evelyn more than the tears had.