Erebus opened the bead in a room that didn't exist.
He called it a cold pocket: a slice of his Necropolis leaned just out of phase with Luna Base, all black stone and quiet pressure, no air to carry a spark if the thing chose to die messily. I stood with him at the threshold. The rest watched through a pane that was glass only because people like seeing glass.
"Gently," I said.
"I am bone," he replied, amused. "I do nothing else."
His hand was a cage of ivory. The bead hung inside it—sleek, faceted, the colour of old smoke. Reika's No still clung to it like frost.
'Valeria?'
'Wrong tool for hitting,' she murmured from my hip. 'Right tool for a line, if he needs one.'
Erebus tapped one facet. A seam appeared that hadn't been there, as though the bead had remembered how to tell the truth. He slid a splinter of bone into the seam and turned it like a key. The bead sighed without sound and unfolded into three petals.
