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Here.

She glanced once towards the door - still sealed, still silent - but she could feel the corridor beyond it and imagined the footsteps that hadn’t come yet. Still, she pressed anyway.

Stone shifted beneath her hand, sliding aside with a muted scrape. A narrow hollow opened in the wall, untouched, waiting.

Somewhere beyond the room, stone rang faint and distant. There was movement, and it was too close.

She hesitated. The hollow was narrow and dark. Inside, the memory stone. He’d moved it since that night, out of the light and into the wall itself. The pull was the same.

She reached in, her palm still stinging where the cuts hadn’t fully closed.

The room answered before her fingers had fully closed around it. Light tore across the fracture map, lines flaring alive in violent violet brilliance. The violet light. Of course. Even from outside, they would recognise it. The stone beneath her feet vibrated, a deep pulse rolling outward as if the city itself had drawn breath.

Maia gasped.

Something surged in her. Fear and resolve arrived together, indistinguishable.

Caelith.

She could feel the weight of him, his intent, his warning, pressed into her bones.

Footsteps thundered in the corridor outside, as Maia clenched her hand around the stone.

The air screamed. The walls flared bright, then brighter, the fracture map burning like a wound torn open. The sound outside sharpened. She could hear orders being barked, metal striking stone.

It was almost too late. She turned and ran as fast as she could, towards where she had come from. Somewhere behind her, a corridor sealed with a grinding snap. If she’d been half a second slower, the stone would have closed in on her rather than behind her. But she couldn’t afford to think about that.

The junction opened ahead of her, Julen’s silhouette still pinned in the sentry’s grip that wasn’t entirely a performance anymore. She caught his eye for a second - go, go, don’t wait for me - and didn’t slow down until the eastern underways swallowed the sound of her own footsteps, and finally, the sound of anything at all.

Only then did she let herself breathe. Only then did she feel the memory stone burning against her palm, and understood with aching clarity: whatever Caelith had guarded was not meant to save her, or Julen, or Selinne, or even the city.

It wasn’t for them. It was for whoever was desperate enough to follow it.

36

The Memory Stone (Part I)

As Maia reached her quarters, she slammed and locked the door behind her, breathless and alone.

The stone burned against her palm, a searing heat that felt alive. She staggered across the room and flung it onto her desk. The pain eased at once, but the stone did not still. It pulsed, warped, light rippling across its surface as if it were breathing.

Maia stared at it, heart hammering.

It called to you, didn’t it?

Caelith’s voice echoed in her memory.

She took an involuntary step closer. The glow brightened, slow and rhythmic, casting fractured shadows across the walls. Terror and awe arrived together, and no way to tell which was which. Whatever this was, it was no longer dormant and she knew with sudden clarity that time was not on her side.

If there was any chance of reaching Caelith, of understanding what he had left behind, she would have to act now.

She moved toward the stone, drawn by its thudding light, by the sense of gravity pulling her inward. The closer she came, the brighter it burned, until the room seemed suspended between illumination and darkness.

Then, just as her fingers hovered over its surface—

Everything stopped.

The light vanished. The hum cut dead. The world thinned.