The vault smelled of old metal and colder things—pressed air that had never known wind, the faint iron tang of seals, and the dry, papery breath of ledgers that had been waiting too long. Lantern light pooled in the corridor like small moons, catching on sigils carved into the stone until the whole place seemed to hum with a patient, watchful light. Aria moved through that light with the practiced economy of someone who had learned to make a building tell its secrets: the way her boots found the seams, the way her fingers read the temperature of a latch before she touched it.
They had come for an imprint, a private registry mark that Rell's tracer had whispered might be hidden beneath a donor ledger. It was the kind of thing brokers kept in the margins—an account number, a stamped trust, a donor mark pressed so deep it left a ghost on the paper around it. If they could pull that imprint clean, they could follow the money to a vault, a patron, a name that had been smudged out of public records. If they failed, the trail would curl away like smoke.
Halv and Rell moved ahead, shadows with tools. Halv's crowbar was a blunt promise; Rell's tracer was a delicate, humming thing that translated ink into light. Luna walked close enough that Aria could feel the warmth of her shoulder. The jasmine at Luna's throat was a small, private weather that steadied Aria in a way nothing else could. Behind them, apprentices carried a lead-lined case and a crate of false manifests—tradecraft and theater in equal measure.
They reached the vault's inner corridor: a narrow throat of stone that ran like a vein between sleeping rooms. The corridor's walls were ribbed with old sigils, the kind that had been polished by hands and time. At the far end, a sealed door waited like a patient animal. Rell knelt and set the tracer against the seam, its lattice of light crawling along the metal until the device hummed in a voice only he could hear.
"Registry imprint," Rell said, voice low. "Faint. Pre-Severing ink. Someone stamped it and then tried to scrub it. But there's a ghost—an imprint under the ledger's wax."
Aria felt the ledger's thread tighten in her chest. "Get it," she said. "We don't have long."
Rell's fingers moved with the careful speed of a man who had read too many old hands. He eased the seal, coaxed the latch, and the door sighed open. Inside, crates lay like sleeping beasts, their wax seals stamped with the vault's mark. The air was colder here, as if the room had been waiting for breath. Rell set the tracer over a crate and let the lattice crawl. The device translated pressure and residue into a faint, ghostly image that shimmered on its small glass face: a spiral with a dot at its center, a donor mark that matched the marginalia they had been chasing.
"Virelle," Rell said, the name a small, hard thing. "It's here. The imprint matches the shard's marginalia."
The room tightened around them. A donor mark in a private registry was not just a name; it was a hand reaching into the ledger and pointing. If House Virelle had a registry imprint here, then the patronage lines were not rumors in the margins—they were a map.
They had the imprint, but the vault had other plans. A soft scrape came from the corridor—metal on stone, the sound of a guard waking to a wrongness. Lantern light shifted at the door. Someone had heard the tracer's hum.
"Move," Halv hissed. "We get the imprint and we go. No heroics."
Aria slid a hand into her cloak and felt the cool weight of her blade. The corridor was narrow; there was no room for a broad fight. The vault's defenders had learned to use that geometry. A single guard could hold a throat of stone if he knew how to place his feet.
The guard stepped into the doorway like a shadow that had learned to breathe. He wore the vault's colors—leather patched and practical—and a blade that caught the lantern light like a promise. His face was a map of small, careful scars. He did not shout. He did not need to. The corridor's acoustics would do his work for him.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, voice low and flat. It was the same line every guard used, but the tone carried a different weight in a place like this: not accusation so much as a statement of fact.
Aria did not answer. She moved.
Rooftops had taught her to read angles; vault corridors taught her to read weight. The first exchange was a test—two bodies measuring distance, a blade flashing, a hand catching a seam. The guard lunged with the economy of someone who had practiced violence until it was a language. Aria met him with a different grammar: a redirection, a step that used his momentum against him, a wrist twist that sent the blade singing past her ear. The corridor's walls echoed the sound like a bell.
He recovered faster than she expected. The guard's foot found a ridge in the stone and he shoved, a shove meant to pin. Aria's shoulder hit the wall and the world narrowed to the scrape of leather and the metallic taste of adrenaline. She twisted, used the wall as a fulcrum, and shoved back. The guard's blade nicked her forearm; the sting was sharp and immediate, but not enough to stop her.
From the doorway behind them came a shout—someone had seen the tracer's light and called the vault's watch. The corridor's mood shifted like a weather front. Aria had not come to trade blows; she had come to buy time. She needed a minute, maybe two, for Rell to coax the registry imprint into a readable form and for Halv to seal the crate. Two minutes in a vault corridor could feel like an hour.
She met the guard's next lunge with a small, private prayer and a practiced motion: a Tidebind redirection, not the full lunge she had used in larger battles but a compact variant that borrowed the tide's geometry and folded it into a human motion. It was a costly thing to use even in small measure—her muscles would ache later, her hands would tremble—but it bought her the angle she needed. She twisted, hooked the guard's wrist, and sent him stumbling into the wall. The blade clattered from his hand and skittered across the stone.
For a breath the corridor held its breath. Then the guard lunged for the blade.
Aria dove. She did not want to kill him; she wanted to stop him. Her hand closed on the hilt and she rolled, using the corridor's narrowness to her advantage. The guard's shoulder slammed into the stone and he cursed. Halv was at his side in a heartbeat, a crowbar across the man's back, and Rell's tracer hummed like a small, triumphant insect.
"Got it," Rell said, voice tight. He held up the tracer's glass face and the ghostly imprint shimmered: the spiral, the dot, a registry number half-visible beneath a smear of wax. "Registry imprint—Virelle trust line. It's faint, but it's there."
Aria let herself breathe, a small, ragged thing. The corridor's air felt suddenly too thin. The guard's breath came quick; he spat curses and promises. They could have bound him, gagged him, left him for the vault's watch to find. That would have been the tradecraft answer. But the Loom did not leave witnesses to the vault's mercy. They protected witnesses because witnesses were the ledger's counterweight.
"Who sent you?" Aria asked, voice low.
The guard laughed, a short, bitter sound. "You think I'd tell you?" He spat. "I'm paid to hold doors, not to sing."
Halv's crowbar pressed into the man's shoulder. "We can make sure you don't get killed for this," she said. "We can make sure you disappear for a while. Tell us who the patron's agent is. Names, routes, launch numbers."
The guard's eyes flicked to the tracer's glass. The registry imprint was a small, bright thing in his mind now, a pressure that made his jaw tighten. He swallowed. "There's a manifest," he said. "Launch three. Bastion dock. Agent—Marek. He takes private runs for the patron houses. Virelle pays through a broker called Black Keel."
The name landed like a stone. Marek. Black Keel. Launch three. Each was a thread that could be followed. Aria felt the ledger's map rearrange itself in her head.
"Good," she said. "You'll come with us. We'll make sure you're safe. But you have to tell us everything you know."
He hesitated, then nodded. The corridor's watch would be on them soon; they had to move. Rell set the tracer to record the imprint and Halv wrapped the crate in oilcloth, sealing the ghost of the registry into a lead-lined case. The tracer's readout blinked and the lattice translated the faint imprint into a string of numbers and a donor notation that Rell copied into a small, leather notebook.
They moved fast, the way people do when a plan has to be kept from unraveling. Apprentices formed a screen; Halv's crowbar pried the door closed behind them. The guard—now a witness—walked with them, shoulders hunched, eyes darting like a man who had been paid to forget and was now being asked to remember.
Outside, the vault's outer corridor smelled of damp stone and old paper. The city's noise was a distant thing, a tide that had not yet reached them. Luna's hand found Aria's forearm as they stepped into the stairwell, a small, steadying anchor.
"You used it," Luna said, voice low.
Aria blinked. "Used what?"
"The Echo Shield," Luna said. Her fingers tightened for a heartbeat. "You used it on the witness."
Aria's mouth went dry. She had not thought of the guard as a witness in the technical sense—only as a man who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time—but Luna's words made the ledger's logic snap into place. The Echo Shield was a teacher's ward, a thing that could hold a witness's memory steady for a short time while forensics anchored testimony. It was not a thing to be used lightly. It had a cost.
"I had to," Aria said. "He was about to be found. The watch—"
Luna's hand softened. "I know. But you know the cost."
Aria did. She had watched Luna teach cadences and seen the way teachers paid for their wards with small things: a memory that thinned, a taste dulled, a day of fog. The Echo Shield protected up to five witnesses for a minute. The cost was a memory haze—small, personal memories that blurred for twenty-four to seventy-two hours. It was a price that teachers paid so others could remember.
Rell's tracer chimed, a small, practical sound. He had finished the imprint's readout and was already cross-referencing it with the shard's marginalia. "Virelle trust line," he said. "Registry number matches the shard's donor notation. Launch three goes to the Salted Bastion. Agent Marek's manifest shows a private vault transfer at dawn."
Aria felt the world tilt. The Salted Bastion was a ruined fortress turned patron holdfast; it was a place where the wealthy hid things they did not want the Council to see. If Marek ran a private vault transfer there, then the ledger's thread led to a place that would not answer to public packet releases.
"We follow Marek," Aria said. The decision felt like a blade sliding into place. "We trace launch three. We find the Bastion vault."
Luna's fingers brushed Aria's palm, a brief contact that steadied her. "We'll need witnesses," she said. "We'll need to anchor testimony so the Council can't bury it. The Echo Shield bought us a minute. Forensics will need more than that."
Aria nodded. The guard—now a witness—walked between them, shoulders hunched but steady. The Echo Shield's haze would blur a small thing in his mind: a taste, a name, a private memory. It would come back, thin and fragile, but it would come back. They would record his testimony, anchor it with forensics, and then move the witness to a safehouse where Luna could tend the shield's aftereffects.
They descended into the Loom's underbelly with the registry imprint sealed in a lead-lined case and a witness in tow. The tracer's readout glowed like a small, stubborn truth: Virelle, launch three, Marek. The ledger's map had a new line, and it pointed to the Salted Bastion.
As they moved through the Loom's corridors, Aria felt the Echo Shield's cost like a small, private bruise. It did not hurt; it was a hollow where a memory had been. She thought of the guard's face—tight with fear, then easing as the shield took hold—and of the registry imprint that would let them follow a patron's hand. She thought of the ledger and the way a single imprint could change the shape of a story.
In the safehouse, forensics set the tracer's readout under a lamp and Luna prepared the witness for the shield's aftercare. The guard's eyes were distant for a moment, then focused, then clouded as the Echo Shield's haze settled. He blinked and reached for a name he could not quite find. Luna hummed a small cadence and the sound braided the room like a net.
"You did what you had to," Luna said, softer than she had in the corridor.
Aria let herself believe it for a moment. They had the registry imprint. They had a witness who could place a manifest and a launch. They had a line that led to the Salted Bastion. The ledger's thread had been pulled taut.
But the cost was real. The Echo Shield had taken a small thing from a man who had been paid to hold doors. It had taken a small thing from Aria too—the memory of a face she had not yet named, a laugh that had thinned in the vault's cold. They would pay for it in the days to come: a taste dulled, a phrase missing, a private thing that would return like a fish to a net.
They cataloged the imprint, sealed the witness in a warded room, and set a watch. At dawn they would follow launch three to the Bastion. For now, the safehouse smelled of ink and boiled coffee and the faint, stubborn tang of sigil-metal. The tracer's readout glowed on the table like a small, patient animal.
Aria sat with her hands folded and let the ledger's map settle in her mind. The Salted Bastion was a dangerous place; patron vaults were guarded by law and by muscle. But the imprint was a map, and maps were what the Loom followed. They would go to the Bastion. They would find Marek. They would follow the donor line until it led them to the heart of the registry.
Outside, the city moved on—market cries, the distant clang of a bell, the soft, indifferent wash of tide against the docks. Inside the safehouse, a registry imprint waited to be read and a witness slept under a teacher's ward. The ledger's thread had been found in the vault's margins, and two people who had chosen to stand together began to plan the next line.