The appearance of Arthur Hart was not a resurrection; it was a haunting. He stood in the red dust of the wash, wearing the same salt-and-pepper tweed blazer he’d worn the night of the "accident" at the Sterling lab. He looked older, his face a cartography of grief and genius, and he leaned on a cane that hummed with a familiar, low-frequency vibration.
The sandstone wall—the living tomb of Ethan—groaned in response to his presence. The silver threads pulsed a frantic, blinding white, the tectonic heartbeat of the subterranean loom accelerating until the ground beneath our feet felt like a living thing.
"Father?" I breathed, the word tasting like copper and old memories.
"In a manner of speaking, Grace," he said, his voice a dry rustle of parchment. He didn't look at me; he looked at the
