Chapter 6 · The Clerk’s Bargain

The memory vault came apart in layers.

First the rain vanished. Then the stone floor beneath Eve’s boots turned transparent, revealing a depthless black threaded with silver clockwork. The porcelain-masked figure dissolved into a scatter of white shards. The second Kieran—whole, unbloodied, and smiling with the wrong kind of patience—stepped backward into the dark.

“Wait!” Eve lunged.

Her fingers closed on nothing.

The vault snapped shut.

She hit the floor hard enough to bite her tongue. Copper flooded her mouth. For one breath, there was only the ringing of a bell somewhere below them and Kieran’s ragged breathing beside her.

Then the Assembly’s emergency lamps ignited.

Red light washed over the archive chamber. Shelves of sealed memory cylinders shuddered in their brass brackets. Sora Bell stood at the central console with both hands pressed against a crystal plate, her narrow shoulders trembling beneath her gray clerk’s coat.

“Don’t move,” she whispered.

Kieran moved anyway.

He rolled onto one knee, caught the edge of a shelf, and dragged himself upright. Blood had soaked through the bandage at his ribs.