Chapter 12 · Allies Beneath the Red Marks

The gun sight stayed fixed on Eve’s heart.

Beyond its black circle, Kieran’s face had become a stranger’s landscape: blood drying at his temple, one cheek hollowed by pain, pupils narrowed beneath the flickering carriage lights. His finger rested along the trigger guard, disciplined and still.

Too still.

“Kieran,” Eve said.

The name struck him without recognition. His head tilted a fraction, as if he were listening for a voice beneath the voice.

The train groaned around them. Its windows showed no city now—only a red-black tunnel sliding past in impossible silence. Somewhere beyond the glass, something paced the carriage at the same speed.

Three knocks sounded against the roof.

Kieran’s jaw tightened.

Three more answered from beneath the floor.

Eve’s breath caught. The signal. His signal. The one his body had performed before his mind remembered why.

“Put the gun down,” she whispered.

“Step away from him,” Sora said.

The clerk stood between them, one hand pressed over the cracked hourglass hanging from her belt. Golden grains leaked from the fracture, not downward but sideways, drifting through the air like sparks caught in an invisible current.