Chapter 67. The Root That Remembers?

Solara did not wake gently.

It never had.

But on the morning Adria left, the city didn’t roar with bells or clatter with boots. It murmured. Distant market carts. The low hiss of steam from the lower pumps. Lanterns extinguishing one by one, as if sighing themselves out.

She walked wrapped in a traveler’s cloak too large for her, the hood pulled low enough to shade her eyes. Beneath it, her boots were caked in deliberate filth, and her satchel packed with unmarked vellum, a half-broken stylus, dried graincake, and the bone ring wrapped in cloth.

The ring hadn’t pulsed since last night.

That worried her more than if it had.

Silence could be truth. Or it could be strategy.

She passed the Eastern Run gate unnoticed—not because no one watched, but because the guards were watching up. The Archive tower had flickered at dawn. A shimmer that didn’t belong to any rite or mirrored call. Just a warping of light. An atmospheric twitch, subtle but unmis