The side galleries above the plaza smelled of dust and old incense. Ophelia moved like she belonged there, book tucked under her arm, head bowed just enough that anyone glancing would assume she was another junior scribe running an errand.
She had spent half her childhood mapping the Sanctum in stolen afternoons—where voices carried, where they didn’t, which doors opened onto crowded halls and which onto empty chambers. The Council thought secrecy started and ended with locks and runes. They never accounted for the fact that sound traveled.
She slipped into a narrow alcove just off the main gallery, where a carved screen of latticework stone overlooked a lesser hall. From here, scribes sometimes listened to sermons to document them. Today, the benches were empty.
Voices drifted up the stair instead.
“…no sign of a body,” a woman said—Moriah, Ophelia thought, recognizing the clipped precision.
“The Rift does not give bodies back,” Lysander replied. “Whether the boy’s carcass lies shattered on Shadowvale’s side or burned to ash mid-fall is irrelevant. What matters is that Hallowmere believes he is contained.”
Ophelia pressed closer to the screen, pulse hammering.
“You told them his soul rests,” Moriah said. “That sounds very much like dead.”
“It sounds like finished.” Lysander’s voice sharpened. “Do you question the wording of my comfort now, Sister Moriah?”
A pause. Fabric whispered; someone shifted their stance.
“The father knows more than is safe,” another Seraph murmured. “He accused us outright of… fabrication.”
“Sinclair carries the truth like a wound,” Lysander said. “He knows we killed his wife. He knows we took his tongue. Yet he bows his head and nods along with the lie—because one word of rebellion would put his son beside her.”
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