The words lingered in the hidden chamber like smoke.
“They all changed the identity of one child in every generation.”
For the first time since uncovering the underground archive, nobody reached for another document. Everyone was trying to process the scale of what they had just learned.
Lydia felt the investigation shift once again. Until now, she had believed her family had committed a terrible secret. Now it appeared they had inherited one. She looked at the carved symbol on the wooden box—the tree with two trunks rising from the same roots. It no longer looked decorative. It looked like a warning.
Harriet explained quietly that patterns were often more important than individual events. One swapped identity could be dismissed as desperation. Two could be coincidence. A repeated exch
