The Remnant Vault sat below the city like a secret that had learned to breathe quietly. Its outer doors were older than the Salted Bastion's parapets, iron rimed with sigils that had been hammered flat by hands that no longer remembered why. Lantern light in the vault's service throat was thin and careful; it pooled in the maintenance rails and left the rest of the corridor in a hush that felt like a held breath. Aria moved through that hush with the practiced economy of someone who had learned to make buildings tell their stories: a foot finding a seam, a hand reading the metal's temperature before it touched.
They had come for a remnant treatise—one of the pre-Severing codices that forensics had whispered might contain a ledger line older than the donor trusts. The treatise had been rumored to hold an index of keepers, names folded into margins and bound with a ritual cadence that made them hard to read. If the Remnant Vault still held such a thing, it would be a hinge: a way to show that the Spiral's keepers had been real and that names had been traded like coin.
Halv crouched at the seam's mouth, crowbar ready, eyes on the corridor's angles. Rell's tracer hummed in his hands, its filament a pale, patient thing that translated pressure into light. Luna stood a little back, fingers loose at her sleeves, the jasmine at her throat a private weather. The apprentices formed a loose ring, faces pale and set; they carried lead-lined cases and false manifests and the kind of quiet courage that came from being given a task and a place to hold it.
Rell fed the tracer's filament along the treatise's binding and the lattice translated the ink's pressure into a ghostly image on its glass. The main hand was legible enough—diagrams, cautions, a list of rituals for binding names to seams—but the margins were the dangerous part: cramped notes in a later hand, corrections that argued with the main text, a short, urgent line that read like a warning.
"There's a reading ritual here," Rell said, voice low. "It's not just for forensics. It's a summoning of a voice—an anchor. It asks for witnesses and a chorus."
Aria felt the ledger's thread tighten. They had coaxed marginalia into speech before with Thornkin offerings and teacher cadences; this would be different. The Remnant's ritual wanted a public voice, a chorus to hold the treatise's memory steady while forensics read it aloud. It would require a ritual focus and witnesses who could be held steady. It would cost them.
"We do it here," Luna said. Her voice was steady, the way someone who had learned to carry other people's burdens sounded when she chose to take one more. "We read the treatise and we anchor its voice. Forensics will record it. The city will have a ledger line that predates the trusts."
Halv's jaw worked. "And the vault's defenses?"
"We keep it quiet," Aria said. "We hold witnesses. We don't make it a spectacle."
They prepared the bench like a ritual: lead-lined case, tracer's lattice, a small brazier for a Thornkin offering, and a ring of teachers to hold the cadence. The apprentices formed a semicircle and the tracer's filament crawled along the treatise's margins until the marginalia's hand shivered into a pattern Rell could read. Luna braided a low hum into the air, a teacher's net that would hold the ritual's edges steady. The Thornkin's offering—a slice of Night Orchard fruit—sat on a silver plate, black as midnight and smelling of rain.
Luna's voice rose, low and precise. She did not sing so much as shape the air; her cadence braided the tracer's light into a thin net that would hold the treatise's voice steady. The Thornkin's limb answered with a rustle in the dark, a living rope that curled like a question. The brazier's flame licked the plate and the fruit's scent rose like a tide.
The marginalia's hand spoke through the tracer's lattice, and Rell read aloud: "We bound names to seams. Keepers kept the ledger whole. When keepers were taken, the Spiral frayed. The Unnamed answered the fray. Offerings, lullabies, winter names—these were the counterweights."
The room felt very small then, as if the vault itself had leaned in to listen. The apprentices' breaths were shallow and the tracer's glass face glowed like a small, stubborn moon. Forensics recorded the cadence; Rell's fingers moved with the quiet certainty of someone who read machines the way others read faces. The treatise's voice was not a ghost but a ledger: precise, patient, and terrible in its implications.
They had not expected company.
Shade Hares slipped into the vault's outer throat like a rumor—pale, quick, and hungry for the edges of memory. Brokers' handlers had learned to use them as thieves of small things: a taste, a laugh, a witness's certainty. The Hares moved with the practiced cruelty of things that had been bred to take what made people human. One brushed a vendor's sleeve in the market and a child's face blurred; here, in the vault's hush, they sought to unmake the treatise's voice by stealing the witnesses' small anchors.
Aria saw the first pale smear at the edge of the tracer's light and moved before the Hares could find purchase. She stepped between the seam and the vault's mouth and caught a Hare with a practiced hand, fingers closing on something that felt like cold breath. The Hare's thorns pricked her palm and a small, private thing thinned: the morning's coffee lost its edge, a bright note of citrus gone from the air. The Mirror Rip the brokers had used earlier had taught them to weaponize reflection; the Hares were a different cruelty—silent, intimate, and fast.
"Hold the ring," Luna hissed. Her hum tightened into a thin Echo Shield and braided the witnesses' memories into a net. The shield would cost them—always did—but it would buy the seconds Rell needed to coax the marginalia into a full read. The teachers' faces went pale as the cadence deepened; the strain of holding a public ward in a private vault was visible in the way their hands trembled.
Rell's voice read on. The marginalia answered with names—keepers' names folded into ledger lines, dates that predated the Severing, a notation that matched the registry imprint they had pulled from the seam. Forensics recorded each syllable and the tracer translated pressure into a pattern that could be read in court. The treatise's voice was a map and a charge: keepers had been real, and their names had been used as anchors.
The Hares did not give up. A handler's sleeve flicked and a pale thing brushed an apprentice's palm; the apprentice blinked and a small domestic memory thinned. Aria moved like a tide, catching Hares and tossing them into the brazier's flame where Thornkin sap and fire unmade them with a sound like a sigh. Each time a Hare was burned, the teachers' chorus tightened and the Echo Shield took a toll: a memory haze for a witness, a taste dulled for a teacher, a day's clarity thinned. The ledger's arithmetic was being paid in pieces of the people who held it.
When the reading finished, the room was very quiet. The tracer's lattice had recorded the marginalia in full: names, dates, a notation that matched the Salted Bastion's registry line. Rell's fingers trembled as he copied the readout into the Loom's ledger. The apprentices' faces were pale; one of them, the boy with ink on his knuckles, pressed a hand to his mouth as if to keep a name from falling out.
Luna's hum collapsed and the Echo Shield fell away. The cost landed like a bell. The witness who had been closest to the treatise—an old archivist they had brought from a neighboring safehouse—blinked and reached for a name he could not quite find. Forensics had anchored his testimony, but the Echo Shield's haze had blurred a small, private memory: the smell of his wife's bread, a lullaby he had hummed to a child. He looked at Aria with a small, raw gratitude and a hollow where something had been.
"You did well," Aria said, voice low. She had paid for Thornkin bargains and Tidebind echoes and Mirror Rip redirects; she had learned the ledger's arithmetic in the hard way. The words were small and fierce.
The archivist smiled, a thin, tired thing. "We have the names," he said. "We have the ledger's older hand. Forensics will hold it. The city will have a line that cannot be smoothed away."
They packed the tracer's readout and the treatise into lead-lined cases and sealed them with practiced hands. The Thornkin's limb uncoiled outside and braided itself back into the Night Orchard with a rustle that sounded like a satisfied sigh. The Hares had been burned or driven off; the vault's alarms had not yet climbed. They had been careful and the bargain had been kept.
On the skiff back to the Loom's safehouse, the night felt thin and honest. Aria sat with her hands folded and felt the ledger's cost like a small, private wound. The Echo Shield had blurred a witness's memory of a lullaby; the Thornkin had taken a ribbon's memory; the Mirror Rip had dulled a taste. Names had been read aloud that predated the trusts; keepers had been named in the margins and the Spiral's history had been pulled into the light.
Luna's hand found Aria's and squeezed, fingers warm and steady. "We did what we had to," she said, voice soft. "We gave them a line they can follow."
Aria let the words land like a small, fierce thing. The Remnant Vault had yielded a remnant of truth: a list of keepers, a ledger line older than the donor trusts, a charge that would change the city's story. The cost had been paid in memory and taste and the teachers' small sacrifices. They would count it, as they always did. They would move witnesses to safehouses, feed the tracer's readout to forensics, and prepare the packet that would make the Spiral's history public.
Outside, the Bonebridge's rails hummed and the city's night breathed on. Inside the Loom's safehouse, the treatise's readout glowed under a lamp like a small, stubborn heart. Names had been spoken into the ledger; the Unnamed's hunger had been named and given a seam to answer. The ledger's thread ran on—bright, dangerous, and paid for in pieces of themselves—and Aria tightened her grip on the lead-lined case and let the night hold them like a promise.