Chapter 34 · The First Ledger

The laughter continued after the archive doors sealed.

It did not come from one throat. It leaked through the walls in thin, overlapping layers—an old woman chuckling beneath the stone, a child giggling somewhere inside the stairs, a man's breathy amusement rising from the floor beneath Noa's boots. The sound crawled over her skin.

Noa pressed both hands to her head.

The name inside her answered.

Not Noa. Not Vey. Something older moved behind those fragments, a buried syllable with teeth. It pulsed beneath her tongue each time the underground presence called to her.

Come below.

She stumbled backward until her shoulders struck Evelyn's chest.

Evelyn caught her by the waist before her knees gave out. The contract officer's grip was firm, instinctive, and painfully familiar in a way Noa could no longer explain. The touch became a rope thrown across a widening void.

Noa twisted around. Evelyn's face hovered in the darkness, outlined by the faint blue light bleeding from the archive door. Her eyes were alert, but the memory behind them was gone. No recognition. No history.