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“Yeah, well, put it on the list.”
Brakk’s voice rises from somewhere behind me. “The list is now bigger than the planet!”
Sira stands near the stabilizer array, one hand pressed to her temple while streams of script rush across the air before her. “The preservation field is reacting to both access keys. Rolaev ’s fragment is trying to trigger terminal erasure. Anita’s active pattern is preventing full collapse.”
“Can she stop it?” I ask.
Sira’s eyes flick toward me, and I hate the answer before she speaks. “Only if the archive accepts her judgment over Rolaev ’s.”
Rolaev ’s gaze remains fixed on Anita. “It will not. The archive was built to prevent uncontrolled revelation, not indulge your sentiment.”
Anita’s mouth tightens. “You keep mistaking not murdering everybody for sentiment.”
“I mistake nothing.”
“You mistake fear for wisdom every time you open your mouth.”
The barrier between us flares. Anita flinches, and my restraint cracks like ice under artillery.
I slam my fist against the preservation field.
Pain detonates through my arm. The chamber flashes white. Ghar Vek’Talan, once shock trooper, once believer, once useful weapon of men who knew how to make faith sound like orders, snarls into the oldest archive beneath Nareth-Kul because the woman I love is on the wrong side of a wall made of dead gods’ caution.
“Do not touch her,” I say.
Rolaev turns her head slightly toward me. “You still think proximity is protection.”
“It has served me better than philosophy.”
“No,” she says softly. “It has only made you late to larger truths.”
Anita finally looks at me, and all the anger drains from her face into something rawer. “Ghar, don’t burn yourself against the field.”
“Then lower it.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try faster,” Brakk shouts. “That is my official technical recommendation!”
The chamber convulses. A section of the far terrace folds inward without breaking, stone bending like heated metal before snapping back into its previous shape. Dust rains from nowhere. The archive rings accelerate again, and the suspended records flicker between First One experimental fields, Precursor suppression directives, and warning classifications written in cold, merciless light.
Sira stumbles, and Brakk catches her with one broad arm before she hits the ground.
“Careful, shiny,” he mutters. “I am not emotionally prepared to add catching immortal linguists to my professional responsibilities.”
Sira grips his sleeve. “The Choir is coming.”
Every muscle in my body locks.
Anita’s head turns. “What?”
Sira lifts her shaking hand toward the upper terraces. The archive shifts, displaying a translucent model of the surrounding ruin systems. Red points move through folded corridors above and behind us. Too many. Disciplined formations. Advancing from multiple access channels that should have remained sealed.
“Rolaev brought them?” Brakk asks.
Rolaev ’s expression does not change. “They followed contingency routes.”
“You mean you brought them.”
