Chapter 18 · Into Midnight

The memory library was still collapsing when Eve found the door.

It appeared between two shelves of bottled failures, a seam of darkness where no wall had been before. Frost feathered across the brass hinges. Beyond it came the low, iron groan of a train preparing to leave.

Sora pressed both hands against the nearest shelf to keep herself upright. Glass rattled around her. Inside the bottles, drowned versions of the city flickered—streets under red rain, towers folded like paper, a child with Eve’s face screaming soundlessly behind blue glass.

“That isn’t an exit,” Sora said.

Eve’s ribs burned.

The thirteen black-gold lights beneath her skin moved like trapped insects, circling her heart, climbing her throat, then sinking again. Every pulse dragged a different memory behind it. A kitchen smelling of cinnamon. A man’s hand closing around a knife. Kieran saying her name as if it belonged to him.

Evie.

The word still echoed in her skull.

She turned toward Kieran.

He stood three paces away, one shoulder against a cracked marble pillar, blood darkening the bandage beneath his coat. His eyes tracked the room without recognition. Not the bottles. Not Sora. Not Eve.

Not even himself.

“Who are you?”