Chapter 37 · The Voice Beneath

The voice rose through the floor again.

“Noa.”

Evelyn froze with one hand braced against the cracked marble of the Sanctum’s lower hall. Dust drifted through the darkness like pale snow. Somewhere above them, the city groaned beneath the weight of its own rewritten laws. Bells rang without hands to strike them. Doors slammed open and shut. Names—old names, stolen names, names that had been buried for generations—whispered through the walls and vanished.

Then the voice came again.

“Evelyn.”

It sounded like Noa. Not almost like Noa. Not a mimic wearing the shape of her voice. It carried the same low warmth, the same slight rasp at the end of a word, as if every sentence had to pass through a throat scarred by secrets.

But Noa’s voice had never called Evelyn’s name like that.

Not with longing.

Evelyn tightened her grip on the iron rod she had torn from a collapsed railing. Blood had soaked through the bandage around her ribs and chilled against her skin. She could barely draw a full breath, yet the pain was useful.