The bell fragment inside the sealed archive began listening harder after Merrit's claim was challenged.
No one heard it.
That was how I knew.
Sound would have been simple. A ring, an alarm, a scream through the simulation. Instead, the air in the central courtyard thinned. The warning thread around my wrist tightened. Elara's root channel whispered in static. The communication strip caught half-syllables from people who were not speaking.
Bell behavior.
Gate Eleven had taught us enough to hate silence.
Elara's voice came through first.
"Kael."
She had been stationed near the archive route with Nyx, keeping the black-marked door closed while the rest of us handled Gold Hall and Piety pressure. She almost never used my name without reason.
"What changed?"
"The root marker is repeating names."
My blood went cold.
"Which names?"
A pause.
Then Elara answered.
"Merrit. Ren. Seraphina. Sera.
The name Sera struck differently from the others.
