Chapter 25 · The Name That Must Not Be Spoken

The core had no walls.

It had depth instead—an endless black descent threaded with rivers of white light. Noa stood where the light crossed beneath her feet, bare hands pressed against a storm of memories. Every pulse struck through her bones. Every pulse took something with it.

Her mother’s face blurred first.

Noa reached for it and caught only the shape of a cheek, the warmth of a palm against her hair, the smell of rain trapped in wool. She clenched her fingers. The memory slid away between them.

Then came the sound of a bell from a street she could no longer place.

Then the taste of sugared plums.

Then the certainty that, once, someone had called her home.

‘Noa!’

Evelyn’s voice came from above—or below. The core bent direction until distance became meaningless. She was standing on a narrow bridge of red contract-light, one hand gripping the edge, the other pressed over her mouth.

The light around her tongue had begun to write.

Thin gold symbols crawled over Evelyn’s lips and vanished beneath her skin. Behind her, the city appeared in fragments: towers of black stone, suspended bridges, crowded plazas, the Sanctum spires splitting the bruised evening sky.