The first time she sees Gideon, it is the first time, right, she hasn't slept in three days and her mouth tastes like antiseptic and blood.

There's a split-second where she thinks it's happening again—the peeling back, the folding in, the sensation that someone else is wearing her body like a jacket. The lights are too white. Her hands won't stop shaking. Someone is talking just outside the door, but the words are muffled, like a dream underwater.

She counts the cracks in the linoleum. Eighteen. She knows them by heart.

"Hey," says a voice.

Harrow doesn't look up.

"You're kind of bleeding on the floor. You good?"

Not a nurse's voice. Not Dr. Ascher's slow, rehearsed cadence. This one is warm. Casual. American, maybe. Like TV. Like cartoons. Like a character.

Something cold uncoils in Harrow's stomach.

"You're not supposed to be here," she says, hoarsely.

"I live here now," the voice says. "Sorry. I don't make the rules."

When she lifts her head, she sees her: flame-orange hair under harsh fluorescent light, arms crossed over a borrowed hospital hoodie. Combat boots unlaced. Smirking like she just won an argument Harrow didn't know they were having.

Normally, Harrow would have a retort for this situation. She would say something snarky like "It seems like that fire on your head burnt one too many braincells" and watch as this girl left her room. But right now this wasn't a normal instance. Harrow was starting to realize, as she felt the blood dripping down her scalp like someone had smashed a warm egg on the crown of her head, that maybe she wasn't good.

Gideon doesn't flinch at the blood. She sits on the edge of the bed like it belongs to her.

"Okay," she says, tapping her knee, "so—two options. You passed out and hit your head, and now I'm a concussion hallucination. Or—and hear me out on this—I crawled out of your skull like the world's weirdest birth and now I'm real."

Harrow stares at her.

"You're not real," she says. It's not a whisper this time. It's almost a plea.

Gideon tilts her head. The lights above flicker.

And then—like a bad cut in a film—Gideon is suddenly closer. Too close. Inches from her face, her smile sharp in the sterile light.

"You know," Gideon murmurs, "you really shouldn't have made me want things."

Harrow blinks—and when she opens her eyes, Gideon is back on the bed like nothing happened.

The blood is still warm on her scalp. But now it's on the floor, too. A smeared handprint. Not hers.

She didn't move.

She didn't—

The fluorescent light blinks, once. Twice.

And then the whole world shudders, like breath held too long. Like a chest collapsing inward.

Darkness swallows.

She wakes up to stone. Cold, damp, bone-colored. The smell of dust and antiseptic rot.

Her head is pounding. Her robes are heavy with sweat. She's lying in her room—or something like it—but the geometry is wrong. The air tastes older.

Harrow sits up with a gasp, hand flying to her scalp.

No blood.

No Gideon.

The walls are curved stone again, smooth and familiar—the Ninth House, deep underground, in the catacombs where she always begins.

The dream was just a slip. A glitch. A side effect.

She tells herself this as she stands. As she re-wraps her bandages. As she repeats the ritual prayers to calm her pulse. As she reaches for control the way a drowning woman reaches for the surface.

The Ninth is quiet in a way that always feels deliberate, as though the stone corridors are waiting for her to speak first.

Harrow doesn't. Not yet.

She wraps the bindings around her forearms with practiced precision—tight, even, controlled. A ritual more sacred than prayer. One loop, two, knot under the wrist. Her fingers tremble slightly, and she tells herself it's from the cold.

The catacombs wait outside her chamber. Still, silent, hollow-breathed. The same as always.

Exactly the same.

Which is good.

Which is safe.

She moves through the hall like a ghost haunting herself. The air is sharp with mildew and embalming salt, the sacred rot of generations. She passes sealed tombs, bone altars, the locked door.

She does not look at the door.

She never does.

In the chapel, she finds the expected: dust, absence, and Ortus.

He stands awkwardly near the altar, holding a candle like he doesn't remember why he lit it. When he sees her, he flinches. Not visibly, not enough for most to notice. But Harrow always notices.

"You're late," he says stiffly.

"I was dreaming," she replies, and watches the way his eyes twitch.

"Again?" he asks. There's something behind his voice—not concern, not disdain. Maybe fear.

Harrow doesn't answer. She moves past him and begins the morning rite.

She kneels before the altar and begins the rites in fluent, perfect Lyctoral Latin.

Nonagesimus domus… corpus, cineres, ossa…

Each word is shaped like a weapon—sharp, precise, controlled. Her voice doesn't waver. She places each bone in its proper place, fingers deft with habit and holy reverence. Order. Ritual. Containment.

Harrow is the center of this place. The Ninth is hers. The bones obey.

And then—

A cough.

Wet, exaggerated, and unmistakably rude.

She doesn't need to look to know who it is. But of course she does. She always does.

Gideon Nav lounges in the last pew, slouched like she's trying to physically disrespect the architecture. Her boots are muddied, her arms are crossed, and she's chewing—chewing—on something like this is a back-alley fight club and not the sacred chapel of the House of the Locked Tomb.

Her hair is a riot of gold-red curls. Her expression is bored to death and daring someone to try to resurrect her.

She catches Harrow's glance and wiggles her fingers in a mock-blessing.

Harrow turns her eyes back to the bones.

Of course Gideon is here. Of course she's late. Of course she's loud and irreverent and breathing wrong in this sacred space.

This is normal. This is expected. This is canon.

Harrow finishes the rite without pausing, her tone unwavering.

She does not acknowledge Gideon again.

——

At first, there's only pressure.

Like trying to surface through thick syrup, or being born backward through sleep. Everything is muffled. Too warm. Too bright. Every sound has teeth.

Then:
Breath. Not mine—someone else's. Shallow. Ragged. Familiar.

I don't know how I know that. I just do.

I stay still. Not because I'm afraid—I don't think I am—but because movement feels like a question I haven't learned how to answer yet. Muscles twitch, one by one. Fingers first. Then shoulders. Like I'm remembering how to wear myself.

There's a taste in the air. Bleach. Plastic. Metal. The stale buzz of recycled oxygen. I can feel fabric on my legs—cheap, scratchy, synthetic. A breeze across bare skin.

A fluorescent light hums overhead. Somewhere nearby, a machine clicks and whines like it's pacing.

My body is slow to obey, but it's mine. Mostly. It's like coming back to a book I didn't know I was writing.

Something shifts.

Someone makes a noise—not far. I can't see them, not yet, but it cuts through the fog like a blade.

And suddenly, I am sharp.

The fog pulls back, and I am here. Not fully. Not clearly. But I'm awake in a way I wasn't before.

I don't know where I am.
I don't know who I am.

But I know I'm not supposed to be here.
And neither is she.

——

The corridors of the Ninth were colder than usual, though Harrow wouldn't admit it aloud.

The chill wasn't measurable. It didn't show in the breath. But it lingered—a humidity made of absence. The kind of cold that settled in marrow and made bone feel like it could remember things.

She walked the length of the corridor with her hands folded behind her back, silent, composed, the hem of her robes whispering over dust-smoothed stone. She had seven rituals to complete before midday, a sermon to deliver to three disinterested Sisters, and a meeting with Ortus that she had already emotionally resigned herself to dreading.

Routine. Rhythm. Repetition. Ritual.
This was how the Ninth endured.

At the reliquary, she stopped. Unlatched the heavy doors. The bones inside were perfectly catalogued, as always—every spine coiled like a sleeping serpent, every skull tagged and sorted. But when she reached for the sacrum of Saint Triformis, her hand hovered.

It wasn't where she left it.

Not wrong. Just… shifted.

An inch to the left.
Turned slightly inward, as though looking at her.

Harrow re-centered it in silence. She did not frown. She did not hesitate.

She simply closed the reliquary and moved on.

She continued the day's work with the grim satisfaction of someone polishing their own tomb.

Down in the ossuary, she prepared the remains of four novices for final interment. They'd been dead nearly a century—long enough for the bones to be clean, light, and compliant. Harrow worked in silence, the way she preferred. The Sisters nearby muttered prayers under their breath, but she tuned them out.

Prayer was noise. This was reverence.

She aligned each skeleton with meticulous care: humerus to scapula, femur to pelvis, the curvature of the ribs in sacred arcs. She murmured the binding canticles under her breath as she placed each skull—only pausing when her fingers brushed against something that felt—

Warm.

Not heat. Not truly. Just the sensation that lingered in her fingertips half a second too long. Like the bone was breathing beneath her touch.

She finished the rite without acknowledging it.

By midafternoon, she sat in her study, translating a crumbling Lyctoral manuscript copied from a copy of a copy. Her notes were arranged by discipline: soul projection, preservation, spirit containment. She did not allow herself to revisit extrusion theory. Not today.

Not after the dream.

She dipped her pen. She wrote.

One of the words on the page changed when she blinked.

invocatio had become resurgemus—and then shifted back again, like a fish beneath water.

She closed the book. Slowly. Quietly.

The room was silent.

She did not mention it to Ortus at their meeting. She listened to his usual dramatic rambling with the detachment of a long-suffering prison warden. He spoke of honor and swords and poetic longing for an early death.

She nodded at the appropriate times.

When he left, she sat in the silence for a long time. Listening.

There was nothing to hear.

But the silence felt… too smooth. Like it had been sanded down.

She left her study with the intention of walking. Moving. Resetting. There were patterns she could rely on—paths through the Ninth that followed centuries-old bones and architectural symmetry. Her feet knew them better than her conscious mind.

The corridor outside her chambers was narrow, ribs of stone overhead like the inside of a throat. Cold. Familiar. She took the first turn without thought.

She passed Gideon leaning against the wall near the armory, arms crossed, chewing on something, probably dried flesh or spite.

"Sup, Reverend Daughter," Gideon drawled, all teeth. "You look especially corpse-core today."

Harrow did not stop walking. She did not flinch.

"Please die quietly," she said, as prescribed by custom.

Gideon barked a laugh behind her.

She turned the next corner. Took the steps down two flights. Looping route. A reset. Spatially simple.

And then—

She passed Gideon again.

Same fucking wall. Same posture. Same jerky little smirk.

"Back so soon?" Gideon asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Forgot your rosary? Or your personality?"

Harrow's stomach didn't drop. Her pulse didn't stutter.
She was the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. She performed surgeries on dead saints. She could repress an earthquake.

So she did.

She walked past her again.

This time, she didn't speak.

This time, she didn't look.

And this time, she didn't fucking blink.