Chapter 61. Return Through Dust

The fog cloaked Solara like mourning cloth.

Thick, sour, low to the ground—not a veil, but a weight. It muffled the bells, dulled the glow of the city’s high lamps, and turned every alley into a threat. It clung to the Archive’s spires like silk wrappings on a corpse.

Adria passed beneath the outer wall just before dawn, the city gates unguarded for the first time in years. She knew which guards wouldn’t ask questions, which alleys curved just shy of the watchers’ lines of sight, and which stone path would echo least under boot.

The trick wasn’t speed.

It was certainty.

Move like you belong—or like no one does.

She wore a plain traveler’s cloak, dark gray, the color of fog and forgotten things. A blade was hidden along the spine of her belt. Her hair, unbound, clung wet against her cheeks. She hadn’t slept. There hadn’t been time.

She crossed the outer square of the Archive just as the bell in the Tower of Speech began its slow chime.