She spoke into the dark like someone tossing a stone into a still well. The old words came back to her trembling lips, each syllable awkward at first, then steadier as the memory uncoiled.
The cadence her mother had hummed in the chapel, the half-forgotten inflections Serenya had lent when she taught her to keep the rhythm. Ilaria folded the prayer around her like a shawl, feeling for the familiar scaffold of meaning that should hold whatever answered.
Breathe, she told herself, and the gallery listened.
The mark under her sleeve pulsed as if it recognized the sound, an answering throb that made the skin beneath her palm hum with warmth. She put air to the prayer, louder now, pressing the foreign syllables into the stone. The words rolled out and filled the Dawn Gallery, pooling at the base of the great glass wall and churning the shadow like wind on glass.
Silence came back, enormous and exacting.
