"Needle… come leaving your name behind."
The sentence didn't come *out* of the wall. It was as if it had been written into the stone's stitching itself, and someone had traced a finger over it and read it aloud. Leo's body went rigid for a beat. Behind his teeth, the ash of his true name flared hot—like someone had blown on embers.
And then, from inside, a single knock came—
*tap.*
A tap that didn't mean *come.*
A tap that meant *understand.*
Behind them, the drain's air thinned further. A letter seemed to be taken out of the sound of the water, and that thinning—human-shaped emptiness—was coming closer. Hushed. He doesn't run, doesn't shout. He simply arrives—and when he does, things begin to become less: names, voices, meaning.
Maera snapped a fast, tight stitch into the air. That stitch wasn't a wall—only seconds. For an instant the air hardened, as if someone had grabbed time and said: *Hold.*
"Inside," Maera said again. "Now."
Yara stood in front of Leo, the small flame pressed into her palm. The count of her breathing was so steady it felt like a thread itself—a thread that, if it broke, everything would scatter. She looked at Leo, and there was a strange resolve in that look. She had forgotten why she was crying, but not why she was saving him.
"With my breath," Yara said. "One… two…"
Leo breathed in. But breathing wasn't enough anymore. The vault had asked for a price.
A name.
He clutched *Leo Ravel* inside himself like a rope—and with it came the fear that if he gave up that rope, what would he have left to hold? Pieces of sentences had already fallen away inside him. Taste was gone. The lines of faces were blurring. If the name went too—
A small jolt moved through the water behind them, as if Hushed had taken a step. The thinning in the air sharpened. For a moment Leo had the thought that he might forget even the first letter of his name—and that thought shoved him toward panic: *Then will I die?*
Maera's voice, muffled but hard, reached his ear. "If you don't go, he'll empty you. And an empty man… belongs to no one."
Leo lowered his head. He pressed his tongue behind his teeth. He couldn't "give" his name by speaking it; speaking was danger right now. So he would have to give it… without sound. Like a thread. A piece.
Yara didn't form a seal—here, making a seal could become an oath. She only held her candle flame steady inside her own hand and changed the breathing pattern, as if she wanted to spread not a "name-shadow" but a "name-silhouette" through the air—so light the vault might accept it as real.
"Behind me," she whispered.
Leo stepped forward.
Just before crossing the threshold, he felt it: the wall's stitching was probing the words inside him. Like fingers recognizing a coin hidden inside cloth. His wrist-mark flared—and with that flare the inner sentence rose again:
*Come leaving your name behind.*
Leo shut his eyes.
And—very quietly—inside himself, he took hold of the word "Leo": its three letters, the old habit of its sound, the instinct to turn when someone called it—and he **loosened** it. Like letting go of the first end of a knot.
No sound came.
But something left him—like warmth leaving breath and only cold remaining.
For an instant a question rose in his mind: *What is my name?*
And the answer didn't come at once.
Leo clenched his teeth. This was the price. A "piece of name"—not spoken, but taken.
The wall's stitching seemed to exhale a small breath of satisfaction.
The crack widened.
Leo fell inside—or was pulled in—and the cold within the stone closed around him. It wasn't the drain's cold. It was the kind of cold you feel in an old room where time has dropped its blanket and now that blanket sits heavy on the back of your neck.
Inside, it was dark, but the darkness wasn't empty. There was a fine glimmer in it—of threads. As if the place believed itself to be cloth, and it bled a little light to show its seams.
Leo wanted to turn and look back—but inside the wall, the threshold wasn't a thing you could *see*. It was a thing you could *feel*. Outside sounds had gone blurry. Hushed's thinning… was left outside. But the pressure of it still sat on the threshold, like a hungry hand resting on the crack.
Yara came in behind him. Her tiny flame was still sealed in her hand, but inside here the flame's color changed slightly—less yellow, more white—as if the memory of the wall of names' white flame had returned. Yara tightened her palm at once, shrinking the flame to save it, as if she wasn't saving light but saving a rule.
"You—" Yara tried to say to Leo, and her lips stopped. She changed the words and said, "Are you okay?"
Leo tried to answer—*Yes*—but inside him the word "yes" was losing its tie to his own identity. He only nodded. And in that nod he felt it: he couldn't remember his "Leo." As if someone had lifted the first part of his name from the corner of his mouth. The taste—no, not taste, the *sense*—of "Ravel" was still there, but "Leo" was fog.
*If someone calls me… what will I turn to?*
The thought almost made him cry—if crying required remembering what the reason was.
Maera entered last. The instant she crossed, the threshold seemed to jerk and inhale—the stone stitching recognized her, or recognized her needle. As soon as she was inside, Maera snapped two fast stitches into the air—one at the crack's edge, one below—and the crack began to tighten behind them.
From outside came a cold, empty breath—Hushed's—and it struck the crack and stopped. As if the stone had said: *Not now.*
Even so, stopping wasn't victory. It was only the performance of a closed door.
As the crack sealed, the inside world changed its sound. The hiss of water fell away into distance. In its place, a very faint knocking—very far off—began to run, as if in another room, on another stone, someone was tapping the same code.
*tap… tap-tap…*
Where was Kerin?
Leo looked ahead. This place wasn't a drain. It was a narrow corridor—stone, but with fine lines on it, as if a layer of cloth had been laid over rock. The walls didn't have carved names—there were **names that had been cut away**. As if someone had written names and then rubbed them out, but the scars remained.
And in the air, that old ink smell—so old it didn't feel like ink, it felt like history. Vault C's tasteless kinship.
Maera whispered, "This is the Suture-Way." Then she added, quieter, as if to herself, "Or something like it."
"Suture-Way?" Yara repeated the word, as if she'd read it somewhere. Then that same blankness passed through her eyes—as if the rest of the definition had vanished.
Maera didn't ignore that blankness, but there wasn't time. "It's an old route under the city," she said. "Where closed things speak to one another."
Leo looked at his wrist-mark. The mark wasn't just glowing now. It was pulling inward, like it was calling him forward. And with every tug, a question rose inside him: *Who am I?* And the answer came halfway—then not at all.
Kerin's voice came from ahead—very soft, very close. "Here."
They turned and saw him.
Kerin stood on a small platform past a bend. The box was still in his hands—but now it didn't feel "quiet." It felt like it was holding its breath. The slit in the lid was shut, or almost shut—the pressure of that black line seemed to have retreated inside. And yet Kerin's face said something had changed within it.
"I…" Kerin tried, then stopped. His eyes rolled upward, searching for words. "I… heard it."
Maera said at once, "Heard what?"
Kerin swallowed. "Like—someone inside the room… speaking. Not inside the box. Inside this… passage." He gestured toward the stone walls. "This place… is beating."
Yara said softly, "The vaults' language."
Kerin nodded. "And I think… it's taking us to a specific place."
Leo felt it too. It wasn't only the tug of threads. It was **direction**—the same wrong straight line from the map, but in stone, in air, in skin.
Maera looked at the box in Kerin's hands. "It's not sticking you anymore?"
Kerin flexed his fingers, as if checking they belonged to him. "Less," he said. "But… it left something inside my palm."
He opened his hand. Leo saw it: on Kerin's palm, very faint, a threadlike mark had risen—one small circle and a little tail of thread. Like Leo's wrist-mark, but less distinct. As if the box had written a small claim on Kerin too.
Yara held her breath. "It's… spreading."
Maera gritted her teeth. "A knot isn't satisfied with one hand."
Fear rose in Leo—but with it, in the emptiness, a small sharp curiosity. If this route connects vaults… does it lead to Vault C? To the source of his true name? Would it make him "whole"—or unravel him completely?
The thought made him shiver, because "being whole" had become a temptation. And temptation is often a snare.
They moved on. The corridor was tight, but sometimes it opened into small alcoves where the stone stepped back and the air changed. In one alcove, Leo saw a very old wooden chest—unlocked—with no dust on it, as if someone had touched it recently. On the lid was the same symbol: a stitched circle. But not Dominion's eye. Only the circle, and beneath it a thin line—like a needle.
"Someone's been here before," Yara said softly.
Maera didn't answer. She didn't touch the chest. She only smelled the air—and a tiny tension crossed her face, as if she'd recognized a familiar scent she didn't like.
"No oath here," she whispered. "But… a claim."
"Whose?" Kerin asked.
Maera lifted her needle slightly, as if she wanted to cut the answer out of the air—then lowered it again. "Whoever it is, they aren't here right now," she said. "And that's the bad part."
They went on. The corridor dipped down, then rose, then bent strangely, as if it weren't architecture but a stitched path—tight here, slack there. Leo felt as though he wasn't walking inside stone but **inside fate**.
And every few steps, somewhere along the wall, that same knocking—
*tap… tap-tap…*
Sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right. As if the place were divided into many rooms, and every room spoke the same language.
As he walked, Leo felt something else: his "Leo" wasn't coming back. He couldn't remember it. He knew he was someone, but he couldn't grasp the first part of his name. He was walking while holding on to "Ravel"—but even "Ravel" now felt like a strange, cold word, as if it belonged to someone else.
Yara saw the change on his face. She leaned toward him and spoke very softly, "Your—" then stopped. She changed the words. "Hold on inside yourself."
Leo tried to laugh; it didn't come. He whispered, "I… my name…"
Yara's eyes went wet. "I know," she said. "But right now… I can't even give it back by calling you." She paused, as if she'd felt the cruelty of her own sentence. "Here… names stick. And if they stick in the wrong place…"
Maera cut in, "Don't explain it to him right now. Just move him."
They turned a corner—and suddenly the corridor opened into a large, round chamber.
In the center of the chamber stood a stone door.
A door inside a drain?
No—this door was… *familiar.*
Leo had never seen it before, but his bones recognized it. Heavy iron, old nails along the edges, and above it the same mark: Dominion's eye over the stitched circle.
The same seal that was on the Chart-Hall ledger.
The same seal that was on Vault C's door.
And in front of this door, on the stone floor, someone had drawn a fresh line—not with ink, not exactly—drawn in black thread-line: a straight, wrong line that ran right up to Leo's feet.
As if the path ended there.
Kerin's breath caught. "That… is impossible."
Maera's face turned hard all at once. "This is Vault C from below," she said very softly—and for the first time there was something in her voice Leo hadn't heard before: an old fear, older than memory.
Yara whispered, "So… we've come under it."
Leo's wrist-mark flared—and with the flare, the ash of his true name heated again, as if the door had recognized him.
And then—at that exact moment—
From the other side of the door came knocking.
The same rhythm that had started in the Chart-Hall.
*tap… tap-tap… tap…*
As if someone inside was playing a heartbeat.
And between the knocks, a whisper came—so faint only threads could hear it—
"You've come."
Leo searched inside himself: *Who am I?*
And no name answered—only an empty space, being pulled toward the door.
Then, on the vault's iron, from the inside, came one single, clear knock—like a final signal—
*tap.*
And in the iron's seam, a very fine crack began to form.