The sealed workshop antechamber felt smaller than Galathea Brooks remembered.
Not physically. The dimensions were the same --stone floor, steel counters, the heavy glass observation wall separating the preparation space from the containment chamber beyond.
But the air pressed closer now.
As if the room understood what had been brought inside.
Galathea stood at the long metal table, palms braced against its cold surface. The Palette Knife lay a few inches from her hand, wrapped carefully in linen, humming faintly like a sleeping machine.
Her fingers trembled.
She curled them into fists.
Across the room, Cael Alexander finished locking the final containment bolt on the chamber door. The mechanism sealed with a heavy metallic clack that echoed through the space.
"That's the last one," he said.
Galathea nodded, though the movement felt distant. Her attention drifted back to the inner chamber where the unstable painting had been mounted on a reinforced frame.
