The eighth name arrived without a fight attached to it.[Objective Update: Target 8 Located][Target 8 of 9: Rank Unknown — Current Position: Cathedral Plaza, requesting parley]Ezra stared at the word parley a long time before he showed it to Garrick, who read it once and went very still."That's Sorren," Garrick said. "I should have guessed she'd be the one to try this.""Try what?""You'll see." He wouldn't say more, and something in the set of his jaw told Ezra it wasn't caution this time. It was old, complicated history he didn't have the right words for yet.Cathedral Plaza at midnight looked nothing like the place Damon had humiliated him weeks ago, all the daytime crowds gone, the rankings board dark, a single figure standing beneath it with her hands folded and her head bowed like she was praying to a god that couldn't hear her anymore.She turned as Ezra approached, and Pressure Sense read no hostility at all, nothing coiled, nothing waiting to strike. Just a woman perhaps f

Garrick didn't say anything for a long moment after Ezra finished explaining. He just stood behind the shop counter with both hands flat on the wood, head bowed, the gold letters on the window catching the gray early light behind him."A splitting ritual," he said finally. "I've heard the name. I always assumed it was theory nobody actually survived testing.""That's reassuring," Ezra said."I'm not going to lie to you about the risk, not after everything else I've already lied about by omission." Garrick looked up, and the exhaustion on his face had a new edge to it now, something sharper than grief. "But I know someone who might actually know more than theory. If she's still alive. If she'll still talk to me."Sorren, seated on an overturned crate near the back room's map, straightened at that. "Who?""Mireille. Ninth of the original Nine." Garrick's jaw tightened. "She was the one who actually studied the old texts, before the rest of us decided striking first mattered more than un

The Undertrack Junction stairwell looked smaller than Ezra remembered, which didn't make sense, since nothing about it had changed except how much of his own life had happened since the last time he'd climbed down into it. "Still think about jumping in blind the first time," he said, more to himself than to anyone else, standing at the top of the stairs with Garrick's old lantern heavy in one hand. "You didn't jump," Damon said, falling into step beside him. "The ceiling made that decision for you." "Feels less dramatic when you phrase it that way." "Most things do." They descended in a loose line, Garrick leading with the lantern, Sorren close behind with her notebook tucked inside her coat, Rourke and Damon flanking the rear, weapons drawn but held low, the particular readiness of people who'd learned, over the last month, exactly how fast calm could turn into chaos down here. The station pla

Ezra didn't know where he was anymore. Not the chamber. Not the gold hall from Vaelgrith's memory. Somewhere between both, gray and formless, the two overlapping spaces finally giving way to something that belonged to neither.Something moved in the gray. Not a shape, not yet, more like the suggestion of one, the way a shadow suggests a body without actually being a body at all.*There it is,* Vaelgrith said, close now, closer than Ezra had ever felt the god's presence, standing beside him in whatever this place actually was instead of simply speaking from inside his skull. *I have been afraid of this since the processing plant. I did not have proof until now.*"What is it."*A gap-thing. Something born, not summoned. Every blackout you survived, every second the binding slipped without either of us fully holding it, left a seam. Seams accumulate. Given enough of them, given enough time, something learns to live in the space between what you remem

They didn't go in blind. Ezra had learned that lesson too many times already to repeat it now, and it was Damon, surprisingly, who insisted they slow down long enough to actually look before they leapt. "If he's three steps ahead the way everyone keeps telling me he is," Damon said, crouched behind a rusted loading container two blocks from the facility's perimeter, "then walking in there exhausted and underprepared is exactly what he's hoping we'll do. We scout first. We confirm what we're actually facing. Then we go in with a plan instead of adrenaline." Ezra wanted to argue. The urgency sat heavy in his chest, four days compressing into something that felt like hours whenever he let himself think too hard about the clock. But he recognized the wisdom in it too, the particular wisdom of someone who'd spent a decade training for exactly this kind of calculated patience, and forced himself to nod instead of push. "Fine," he said. "We scou