The death record lay between Thira and Nilan.

For several breaths, neither of them moved.

Nilan Aras.

His name sat beneath hers in faded ink, steady and unmistakable.

Thira touched the line above it.

Status: Deceased following memory breach.

“You signed this.”

“Yes.”

Keeper Vaela remained on the far side of the table.

Thira looked at Nilan. “Did you believe I was dead?”

His scarred hand closed.

“No.”

The answer struck harder than a denial.

“Then why?”

A pulse moved along the broken curve in his palm.

Nilan looked at the oath mark before meeting her eyes again.

“Because you asked me to.”

The room went very still.

Thira almost laughed. Nothing about the morning deserved laughter, but the alternative was throwing the record at him.

“I asked you to declare me dead.”

“Yes.”

“After asking you to help me forget.”

His silence lasted a fraction too long.

“Yes.”

“And you thought obeying both requests was wise?”

“No.”

“Yet you did it.”

“Yes.”

She was beginning to hate that word.

Vaela folded the old record closed.

“Nilan was the only named witness to the breach.”

Thira turned. “Named witness?”

“There were gaps in the report.”

“What kind of gaps?”

“The deliberate kind.”

“Created by me?”

“I do not know,” Vaela said. “That is not the same as no.”

At least the Keeper understood the difference.

Thira pointed at the bundle. “If he knew I lived, why did the Citadel accept this?”

“Because the order sealing your earlier entry came from above the rank of anyone required to question his statement.”

“Who issued it?”

“The name was removed.”

Of course it was.

In the Citadel, missing information had begun to feel less like absence and more like a signature.

“Was there a body?”

Vaela’s expression shifted by almost nothing.

“There was no body entered into the surviving record.”

“That was not what I asked.”

“It is the answer I possess.”

Thira looked at Nilan.

He did not offer another.

A strange thought settled into her: perhaps the Citadel had not been deceived by his lie.

Perhaps it had accepted exactly the lie it wanted.

Vaela gathered the pages.

“You will be given a room in the First-Oath quarter. You may attend meals and instruction. You may not enter the lower archives, the bell passages, or any chamber below the western tide line.”

“The places I am most likely to need.”

“Yes.”

“And he follows me.”

“Nilan remains your surety.”

Thira turned toward him. “Does the oath require that too?”

“No.”

“Good. I would hate for every irritation in my life to be magical.”

Something almost happened at the corner of his mouth.

It vanished before becoming a smile.

The First-Oath quarter faced east.

By the time they reached it, the sea had turned from iron grey to hard blue. Young Witnesses moved between narrow rooms carrying wash bowls, training rods, and folded cloaks.

Conversations thinned whenever Thira passed.

News had travelled faster than she had.

A girl near the water stair stared openly at the black seam in Thira’s palm. Her companion pulled her away and whispered something that included the word basin.

Thira kept walking.

She had wanted admission without being remembered.

That possibility had survived less than a morning.

Meya appeared from a doorway with two cups in her hands.

“You are alive.”

Thira glanced at the nearest whispering group. “Apparently that is disputed.”

Meya handed her one cup.

“What happened?”

“Which answer would you like? The short one or the one that gets you confined with me?”

“The short one.”

“I failed a test.”

Meya looked offended on her behalf. “You broke a sealed object during it.”

“That was part of the failure.”

Her gaze slid toward Nilan. “And he is still following you.”

“He has been made responsible for me.”

“My condolences.”

“To which of us?”

Meya considered Nilan.

“I need more evidence.”

He continued walking as if the conversation did not concern him.

Thira drank from the cup. Bitter leaf-water, hot enough to punish carelessness.

Meya lowered her voice.

“People are saying the seven bells rang for you.”

“They did.”

“All seven?”

“Yes.”

Meya hesitated.

Thira waited.

“Someone said there was another sound afterward.”

The cup stopped near Thira’s mouth.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. By the time the story reached me, it had happened to six different people and one of them had apparently drowned.”

Nilan had stopped several steps ahead.

His back remained toward them.

“Forget it,” Thira said.

Meya gave her a peculiar look.

“That seems like a dangerous phrase around you.”

Despite herself, Thira smiled.

Only briefly.

Nilan stopped before a door near the end of the corridor.

“Here.”

Thira looked at it.

Plain dark wood. Bronze latch. A narrow opening above the lintel admitted a blade of sea light.

Nothing remarkable.

Her right hand lifted toward the latch.

Then stopped.

Not there.

Her fingers moved lower, finding a shallow scratch beside the frame.

She pressed it.

A second latch clicked inside the door.

Nilan went motionless.

Meya stared.

“You guessed that?”

Thira looked at her own hand.

“No.”

Meya’s humour disappeared.

Nilan opened the door.

Thira did not move.

“How many times have I opened this?”

He said nothing.

She entered.

The room was small: a narrow bed, writing shelf, water jar, and one window overlooking the cliffs.

A dark patch marked the wall beside the bed where something had once hung.

Salt.

Old wood.

A trace of dried rain.

The smell reached her before anything else.

Home was not the word.

Her body used it anyway.

Meya remained outside.

“I think,” she said carefully, “I am going to leave before I accidentally learn something that gets me locked underground.”

“A rare moment of wisdom,” Thira said.

“Do not become accustomed to it.”

She left.

Nilan stayed in the doorway.

Thira crossed to the window without deciding to.

Her palm settled against the sill.

Then slid beneath it.

A loose piece of stone shifted under her thumb.

Nilan’s shoulders tightened.

Thira looked at him.

“You knew.”

“I suspected.”

“That is becoming another word I dislike.”

She pulled the stone free.

A narrow hollow waited inside the wall.

Something had been wrapped in faded cloth and pushed deep into it.

Thira drew it out.

The bundle was no longer than her finger.

“Thira.”

She opened the cloth.

A shard of bronze lay inside.

One edge was jagged. The other curved.

Part of a bell.

A tiny joined-circle mark had been scratched into its surface.

The black seam in Thira’s palm warmed.

Nilan stepped into the room.

“Do not touch it.”

Thira looked at him.

“You have said that to me before.”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

His silence answered.

She held the bronze by the cloth.

“You knew this room was mine.”

“Yes.”

“And you still brought me here.”

“Vaela assigned it.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No.”

Thira studied him.

“Did you want me to find this?”

“I did not know it was still here.”

That, at least, sounded true.

“Then why are you frightened of it?”

“Because I remember what happened the last time you touched it.”

The words tightened something beneath her ribs.

“What happened?”

The scar in his palm darkened.

The oath again.

Thira looked down at the bronze.

She needed three echoes closed without another person anchoring her before she could approach the Second Oath.

This object belonged to her missing life.

The sensible choice was to give it to Vaela.

The sensible choice had not brought her to the Citadel.

“If I enter an echo,” she said, “do not pull me out.”

Nilan’s jaw tightened.

“If you cannot return—”

“I will ask.”

“And if you cannot speak?”

“Then you will have to decide whether you trust the woman I am now.”

Something moved through his expression.

Pain, perhaps.

Or memory.

“I have made that mistake before.”

“Which part was the mistake?”

He did not answer.

Thira set Meya’s cup on the shelf.

Floor beneath her feet.

Door behind her.

Next breath.

She touched the bronze.

The room changed.

Night pressed against the window.

The same bed.

The same shelf.

Three years earlier.

Thira stood beside the wall.

Not the Thira watching.

The Thira who had lived here.

Her hair was shorter. A silver First-Oath mark crossed her palm.

A black seam ran through its centre.

Nilan stood near the door.

His hand was unscarred.

“No,” he said.

Past Thira wrapped the bell shard in cloth.

“You asked what I needed.”

“I did not agree to this.”

“You do not have to agree.”

“You want me to sign a death record.”

“I want them to stop looking for someone who survived.”

“And when you come back?”

Past Thira’s hands stopped.

“If I come back, I may not know that I did.”

Nilan looked as though she had struck him.

“Then don’t do it.”

A bell sounded somewhere below.

Once.

Past Thira closed her eyes.

“You know what happens if I keep what I heard.”

“No. You think you know.”

“I know enough.”

“You always say that when you are about to make a choice for both of us.”

The words cut differently than anger.

Past Thira turned toward him.

For a moment neither spoke.

Whatever existed between them occupied the silence more completely than either of their bodies did.

Then she held out the wrapped bell shard.

“When it is done, put this back.”

Nilan did not take it.

“Why?”

“So I can find it if I return.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then you will know the forgetting worked.”

He stared at the bundle.

Past Thira’s voice softened.

“Sign the record, Nilan.”

“I will hate you for asking.”

“I know.”

“And yourself?”

A tired smile touched her mouth.

“I am hoping to forget that part.”

The echo pulled tighter.

The old room sharpened around Thira. The grain of the wood became clearer. Salt glittered on the window ledge.

She wanted to remain.

One more sentence.

One more answer.

The bell sounded again.

Second.

Her black seam burned.

The memory seemed to notice her.

Past Thira turned—not toward Nilan, but toward the place where present Thira stood watching.

Impossible.

Their eyes almost met.

Floor.

Thira found it beneath her shoes.

Door behind her.

Next breath.

The echo resisted.

Past Nilan finally reached for the shard.

His fingers touched Past Thira’s.

The present began to fade.

Thira drew in air.

Mine.

She pulled her hand away.

Morning returned.

The bed.

The window.

Nilan with a scar across his palm.

Thira remained standing.

No voice had called her back.

No hand had touched her.

The bronze shard lay against her palm.

Nilan looked first at it, then at her.

“One,” he said.

She understood.

One echo closed without an anchor.

Two more before the Second Oath.

“If Vaela accepts your word,” Thira said.

“She will.”

“You sound certain.”

“She likes rules more than she dislikes surprises.”

That was almost humour.

It vanished quickly.

“What did you see?”

Thira looked at him.

“You signed the record because I asked you to.”

A muscle moved in his jaw.

“Yes.”

“You argued.”

“Yes.”

“You still did it.”

“You had already made the choice. I could help control the lie or leave you alone inside it.”

“That is not the same as trusting me.”

“No.”

The answer hurt in a place she did not understand.

Perhaps because some part of her had expected him to say otherwise.

She looked at the bronze shard.

“I told you I wanted them to stop looking for someone who survived.”

Nilan went still.

The oath did not cut him.

“You can hear that sentence,” Thira said.

“Yes.”

“Then tell me who ‘they’ were.”

The broken mark in his palm opened by a hair.

Enough.

Thira looked away.

Past Thira had expected to return.

She had expected to return without remembering.

And she had hidden something in this room specifically for that woman.

For her.

Thira reached into the hollow again.

Her fingers brushed stone.

Then something dry.

A folded strip of bark.

Nilan saw it.

The change in his face told her he had not known it was there.

That mattered.

Thira unfolded it.

The writing was compact and slightly slanted.

Her own.

She knew before reaching the name at the bottom.

There were only four lines.

If you are reading this, the forgetting worked.

Believe Nilan about the death record.

Do not follow Nilan below when the third bell rings.

And whatever he remembers about us—

The final words had been cut away.

Not torn.

Cut.

Thira turned the strip over.

One sentence had been written across the back.

WHEN THE THIRD BELL RINGS, RUN FROM THE PERSON YOU TRUST MOST.

The sea struck the cliff below.

Once.

Then somewhere deep inside the Citadel, a bell began to ring.

Thira raised her eyes.

Nilan stood between her and the door.