White swallowed Sable.
It was not sky. Not fog. Not light. It was a place that erased edges.
Sable clung to the duplicate's hand as they dropped. The grip was the only thing that felt real. Everything else slid away, including sound.
Then sound returned in pieces.
A child laughing.
A kettle whistle.
A man speaking a rule.
Sable's stomach lurched. Her body expected impact. It never came. The falling changed into a slow drift, as if the court had decided speed was no longer useful.
Sable tried to pull in air. Her lungs filled, but the air tasted like nothing. She looked for her own body.
She had hands. Boots. Clothes. She was whole enough to fear.
The duplicate was still there, just ahead, still holding her. The duplicate's face looked strained now, not calm. Her eyes darted as if watching for a strike.
Sable tried to speak. Her voice came out, but it sounded far away to her own ears.
"Where are we."
The duplicate answered at once. "Whitefall. The court's inner corridor."
Sable tightened her grip. "I did not know there was an inner corridor."
"You were not taught," the duplicate said. "You were trained."
Sable's jaw tightened. "And you were shaped."
The duplicate flinched at the word, but did not deny it.
The white around them rippled.
A room appeared without warning.
Red clay walls. A low table. A pot of simmering stew. Smoke curling toward a ceiling beam. Sable's chest tightened as her body recognized it before her mind did.
A woman sat on a stool near the table. Dark hair wrapped in cloth. Hands stained with spice and soot. She looked up with sharp eyes and held them steady.
A little girl stood in front of her.
Sable's stomach dropped.
The girl was Sable, younger, hair loose, face unmarked by Registry discipline.
The woman cupped the child's cheeks with both hands.
"You must listen," the woman said.
Sable felt the words land inside her bones. She did not remember them, but her body did. Her throat tightened in response.
The child nodded once, serious.
The woman spoke a word.
Sable could not hear it with her ears. She felt it. A clean pressure behind the tongue, a sound shaped like a key.
The child's eyes widened. "Again."
The woman repeated the word, slower.
Sable's heart hammered. This was her true name. Not spoken by the court, not stolen by Oren. Given by someone who loved her enough to be careful.
Sable tried to move closer. The white resisted, as if the memory had boundaries.
The duplicate's hand tightened. "Do not chase it," she said. "If you chase the word, you will lose the thread."
Sable swallowed. "You know that word."
The duplicate did not answer.
The red clay room cracked like thin ice.
The scene shifted.
White stone walls now. A clean chamber. A drain in the floor. A child's wrists held down by straps. Sable felt bile rise.
A brush moved across the child's palm, painting ink that burned.
A young Oren Vale stood beside the table. He looked almost kind, if you did not understand what kindness could hide. His sleeves were rolled up. His hands were clean.
He spoke with a calm voice, like a lesson.
"Your name is Sable Vane," he said. "That is enough."
The child cried out. The ink lines tightened like rules being sewn into skin.
A symbol formed on the child's palm.
Not the closed loop.
Not the thorn crown.
A blank space.
A deliberate absence.
Oren leaned closer. "You will forget the other word. You will forget it because you will be safer without it."
The child sobbed. "I want my mother."
Oren's face did not change. "You will have the Registry. The Registry is better than a mother."
Sable's hands curled into fists in the white space between scenes. Rage rose behind her teeth, hot and clean.
The duplicate's breath hitched. She was seeing it too.
The memory shattered again.
Sable's own cell appeared. The cot. The desk. The lamp. Sable stood at the desk copying oath tablets. Everything looked normal until it didn't.
The door opened.
Sable watched herself stand and walk out with calm certainty.
Her eyes were empty.
A second voice spoke through her throat. A woman's voice, controlled and cold.
"Now."
Sable felt sick. This was the night of the theft. Not a glamour. Not a mistake. A taking.
The white blurred.
The vault appeared. The bowl of black glass. The Crown Seed pulsing fast. Maera's blade flashing. Heat pouring from Sable's mouth.
Sable watched her own face under the hood, expression blank, as if someone else wore it like a mask.
The Seed leapt into her hand.
Then the scene froze.
The Crown Seed turned in the thief's palm like an eye looking for something.
Sable saw the mark on the thief's palm.
A thorn crown.
Not on Sable. On the thief.
On the duplicate.
Sable's chest tightened. "That was you."
The duplicate's jaw clenched. "That was the part of us they could command."
Sable turned on her. "You stole it."
"I was made to retrieve it," the duplicate snapped. Her calm slipped. "I was made to keep it from being held by the wrong hands."
Sable's voice went sharp. "The wrong hands. Meaning mine."
The duplicate's eyes flashed. "Meaning a hand that can refuse."
The words landed hard.
Sable stared at her. "You hate that I can refuse."
The duplicate's voice lowered. "I envy it."
The white around them rippled again.
A corridor formed, narrow and long, lined with oath tablets that hung in the air without hooks. Each tablet carried a name. Some names were clear. Some were scraped down until they barely existed.
Sable stepped forward. The duplicate followed, still holding her hand. Their footsteps made no sound, but the tablets trembled as they passed, like they sensed a signer.
Sable scanned the names. Many were unfamiliar. Some were coven oaths. Some were shifter route vows. Some were Registry pledges.
One tablet caught her eye.
I SWEAR TO KEEP THE HEARTH.
The same oath that trembled in the Hall of Oaths earlier.
Sable reached toward it.
The tablet shifted away from her hand.
Then it shifted toward the duplicate.
Sable's stomach tightened. "It recognizes you."
The duplicate's expression went guarded. "It recognizes coherence."
Sable felt the court's lesson in that word. Coherence was not morality. Coherence was stability. A lie that everyone accepted was coherent.
Sable forced herself to speak carefully. "If you were made to retrieve the Seed, why did you come after me."
The duplicate's grip tightened. "Because you are the part that could break the plan."
"What plan," Sable demanded.
The corridor ahead opened into a wider chamber.
In the center stood a tall pillar of pale stone. Around it circled thin lines of light like rotating rings. Each ring carried faint writing that moved as it turned.
Sable stepped closer and saw the writing was not a language she knew, yet she understood it anyway. It was the oath chain itself, displayed as living record.
There was a gap in the rings.
A missing segment.
A missing signature.
The chain pulsed. Each pulse tugged at Sable's palm.
Sable looked down. The seal mark on her skin glowed faintly. The partial line had closed into a loop, but it was not complete. It was waiting to be filled.
The duplicate lifted her palm. The thorn crown glowed in answer.
Sable's throat tightened. "That thorn crown is not a name."
"It is a handle," the duplicate said quietly.
"A leash," Sable replied.
The duplicate's voice went flat. "Yes."
Sable stared at the missing segment in the oath chain rings. "That gap is me."
The duplicate's eyes stayed on the rings. "That gap is us."
Sable's voice dropped. "If we combine, it fills."
The duplicate nodded once.
"And if we sever," Sable said, "one of us is erased and the gap becomes a lie."
The duplicate's jaw tightened. "A coherent lie."
Sable looked at her, disgust and pity mixing in her chest. "That is what you were built to accept."
The duplicate's voice snapped. "You think I asked to be built."
Sable held her gaze. "No. But you keep choosing it."
The duplicate's face went still. Something small shifted behind her eyes. Not rage. Not calm. A crack.
"I do not know how to be anything else," she said.
The words hit Sable harder than she expected.
Before Sable could answer, the rings of light around the pillar accelerated.
The writing blurred.
A new scene forced itself into place.
A private chamber. Dark wood. A table set with ink, wax, and thin silver cord. A hand wearing an iron ring pressed down on a tablet.
Oren's hand.
Oren's voice, clear.
"Split the record," he said. "One carries obedience. One carries the dangerous missing sound. Keep the dangerous one under Registry discipline. Keep the obedient one near the Seed."
A witch's voice replied, tense. "It will fracture her."
Oren answered, calm. "It will stabilize the realm."
A second voice spoke, colder. A woman's voice.
"The Seed prefers wholeness."
Oren's reply was immediate. "The Seed will learn to prefer what we give it."
Sable's stomach turned.
The memory shifted slightly and Sable saw the speaker.
Mother Rook.
Younger. Harder. Standing in the shadows, watching the tablet, watching the ring, watching the choice being made.
Sable's chest tightened. Mother Rook had been there. She had not stopped it.
The white snapped back.
Sable stumbled. The duplicate steadied her by the hand.
Sable's voice shook. "Rook. She knew."
The duplicate's eyes flicked away. "She tried."
Sable's jaw clenched. "Tried what."
"To hide what she could," the duplicate said. "To keep you alive until you could choose."
Sable's throat tightened. "Then where is she now."
The white shifted around them again.
A distant shape appeared in the blank space. A door.
Not a physical door. A boundary.
Beyond it, Sable saw stone tunnels and damp air. A real place. An exit from Whitefall.
Sable lunged toward it, pulling the duplicate with her.
The duplicate resisted.
"No," the duplicate said, urgent. "If we exit separately, he will find you first."
Sable yanked harder. "He already has the Seed."
The duplicate's voice sharpened. "And he has the ring."
Sable's heart hammered. "He cracked it."
"He cracked the iron," the duplicate said. "Not the vow inside it."
Sable did not understand, but fear filled the gap.
They reached the door boundary.
The white thinned.
Sable saw the tunnels more clearly now. Old stone. Carved steps. A narrow passage leading away.
Sable stepped through.
Her hand slipped.
The duplicate's fingers slid against hers, grip failing as if the court had decided separation was part of the remedy's price.
Sable grabbed, desperate.
"Come with me," Sable said.
The duplicate's eyes locked on hers.
For the first time, her face held no calm at all.
Only fear.
Only choice.
"I cannot," the duplicate whispered.
Then the white snapped shut between their palms.
Sable fell forward into cold damp air and hit stone hard enough to knock breath out of her.
She rolled onto her side, coughing, palm burning.
Above her, far away, she heard water dripping.
Real sound. Real gravity.
Real consequences.
Sable pushed herself up on one elbow.
She was in a narrow tunnel beneath Knotspire. The walls were old stone. The floor was slick. Faint markings ran along the passage, half erased by time.
She looked at her palm.
The seal was still there, but the loop had opened again.
Not broken.
Unfinished.
Sable's throat tightened. "No."
A scrape sounded behind her.
Sable spun.
A figure stood at the tunnel bend, half in shadow. Not the duplicate. Too tall. Wrong shape.
The figure held a lantern that burned with white flame.
And in the lantern light, Sable saw the iron ring on the figure's hand.
Oren's ring.
Unbroken. Whole.
The figure lifted the lantern slightly, as if greeting her.
Then Oren Vale's voice spoke from the shadow, calm and certain.
"You chose combine," he said. "How noble."
Sable's blood went cold.
Because the voice did not come from Oren's mouth.
It came from Jory Quill's.