Chapter 32 · Give the Names Back

The name struck the city like a bell dropped from heaven.

Evelyn Rook.

It rolled through the archive walls, through the iron shelves and the glass tubes carrying ink between floors. Every contract answered. Paper snapped open in locked drawers. Seals flared blue-white beneath the dust. Somewhere above them, thousands of voices cried out at once—not in pain, but recognition.

Noa pressed both hands against the cracked core.

The thing beneath her palms was not stone anymore. It pulsed like a heart made of pages, each beat forcing a new line of script through the fracture. The letters crawled over her skin, burning cold.

EVELYN ROOK.

Again.

EVELYN ROOK.

“Stop it,” Silas Morn snarled.

His voice came from behind her, shredded at the edges by the contract threaded through his body. Black-gold lines climbed his throat and disappeared beneath his jaw. One eye had become a smooth circle of ink.

“You crossed the first clause,” he said. “You do not have the authority to alter the Master Contract.”

Noa looked at the shining name beneath her fingers. “Neither did you.”

Silas’s mouth tightened. “I gave this city order.”

“You gave it a cage.”

“A cage keeps people alive.