The darkness didn't just surround Jonathan Ward. It entered him.
Stone closed behind like a lid, sealing off the crackling fire, Caldwell's shouts, the screams of townsfolk who had thought burning a mad girl would be a quick cure for fear. All that was gone. What remained was a tunnel damp as a throat, dripping, endless.
And the voice.
"Jonathan Ward."
It slid through the black like oil over water—slow, heavy, deliberate. Every syllable landed inside him, not in his ears but behind his ribs.
He stopped. His boots slipped on wet stone. "Who's there?" His own voice sounded pitiful, cracked.
Beside him, Gregor Hale turned his head slightly. Elise lay slack in his arms, braid swinging like a pendulum. Her mirror eyes gleamed faintly, catching what little light the world refused to give up.
"Don't answer questions with questions," Gregor said softly. "That is how it keeps you talking until you forget you were listening."
Jonathan's throat went dry. "It… it knows my name."
"Everything here knows names," Gregor said. "That's what this place feeds on. Don't give it more."
Jonathan forced himself to keep walking, boots sucking at the damp floor. The drip-drip-drip echoed like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
The voice came again, closer this time.
"You will keep her. You will pay. You will forget."
Jonathan stumbled. His shoulder hit stone. "It's in my head," he whispered.
Gregor's eyes, pale iron in the dark, flicked toward him. "It is in the walls. In the water. In the paper. This place is the Archivist. It has no head. Only memory."
Jonathan wanted to run. His body itched with the command. But where? Behind was sealed by fire and stone. Ahead was Gregor, Elise, and the voice waiting like an open grave.
The corridor widened suddenly into another chamber. This one was larger, more cathedral than cell, with pillars etched in scratches too deep to be graffiti and too shallow to be scripture. In the center rose a dais of carved rock, and upon it…
A shape.
Jonathan blinked, then wished he hadn't. At first it looked like a man seated cross-legged, as if waiting to teach. But where the head should be was only a book. A great, leather-bound tome cracked open, pages turning in an unfelt breeze. Each page bore ink-blots that moved like eyes.
The voice poured from it.
"Keeper of promises. Breaker of silence. Bring the name."
Jonathan shook his head violently. "No. I won't."
The book-thing rustled its pages. A sound like laughter ran through the chamber, thin and papery.
Gregor's voice was steady. "It will test you. It will find the one door you haven't shut inside yourself. That's the door it wants."
Jonathan forced himself forward, closer to the dais, though his knees threatened to buckle. "Why me? Why not you?" he hissed at Gregor.
"Because it has already taken from me," Gregor said quietly. "And because you still have something it craves."
Jonathan knew without asking. Evelyn.
The Archivist's voice thickened, words dripping into his mind.
"Evelyn Ward. Thread and needle. The lamp in the window. Give the name. Trade the dead for the living."
Jonathan clapped his hands to his ears. It didn't help. The voice came from the marrow of the stone, from the beating of his heart, from the whisper of his wife's own voice in his memory.
He screamed: "Leave her out of this!"
The chamber shook. Dust sifted from the pillars. The book-thing tilted as though listening harder. Pages flapped faster, turning, turning, too quick for eyes to follow.
Elise stirred in Gregor's arms. Her lips parted. "Jonathan," she said, but softer this time, pleading.
Jonathan turned, and his stomach twisted. Her face had grown hollower. The mirror sheen of her eyes flickered, dulling like silver tarnished by smoke.
"She fades," Gregor murmured. "The Archivist will let her slip unless you stake her down with a promise. A name."
Jonathan's fists trembled. "I won't give it my wife's."
"Then give it another," Gregor said. "Any living name bound to your heart."
Jonathan's mind raced. His mother? Gone two winters now. Friends? He had only drinking partners, men who would not weep if his chair sat empty. Evelyn was the only tether. Evelyn—
"No," he whispered, half to himself.
The Archivist's voice thundered without thunder:
"Name. Name. Name."
The sound shoved Jonathan to his knees. His palms slapped wet stone. He looked up at Gregor, desperate. "There has to be another way!"
Gregor's expression was unreadable stone. "There isn't. Refuse too long, and she will go hollow. And you will never forgive yourself for letting a mob decide the last chapter of her story."
Jonathan stared at Elise. Her mouth trembled. Her fingers twitched, reaching toward him as if she could touch him from her stone bier. Her voice, cracked and fragile, reached him:
"Help me."
Jonathan's chest broke. He slammed his fist on the ground, the sound sharp as a gunshot. "Fine!" he roared. His throat tore with it. "Take me! Take my name! My own!"
The chamber froze. Pages halted. The drip of water stopped. Even Gregor's breath seemed to vanish.
The Archivist whispered, low and intimate:
"It is not enough."
Jonathan fell forward, gasping, half-sobbing. His name wasn't enough. He wasn't enough.
Gregor stepped closer to the dais, eyes dark. "Then take me," he said. His voice was steel dragged over stone. "You know me. You have me. But keep her."
The book-thing tilted, pages fluttering. The voice came slow now, deliberate, savoring the words:
"Gregor Hale. Too thin. Already borrowed. Already bled. Not enough."
Jonathan forced himself to his feet. His legs shook. "Then what do you want?!"
The Archivist turned another page. The ink shifted, forming shapes, letters, a word Jonathan knew too well.
"Evelyn."
Jonathan staggered back, his back colliding with the cold stone pillar. His wife's name shone on the page like it had been carved with fire.
Gregor's jaw clenched. "Don't speak. Don't repeat it."
Jonathan's vision blurred. Evelyn's face filled his mind—the small smile she wore when she caught him staring, the warmth of her hand slipping into his on winter walks, the way she said his name when he was late but alive.
The Archivist whispered again, so softly he could almost believe it was Evelyn herself:
"Trade."
Jonathan's lips parted.
And in that breath, in that terrible instant of temptation, Elise's hand shot out and clutched his wrist with icy strength. Her mirror eyes locked onto his, blazing brighter than they had since the asylum.
She whispered—not Evelyn's name, not his—but something else.
A word he did not know. A word that felt like a door swinging open.
The Archivist roared.
The chamber shook as if the earth itself had remembered something dreadful.