Zero's eyes lingered on the words bleeding across the parchment. Each line shimmered faintly before drying into place, as though the book itself bled truth instead of ink. He clenched his jaw. It unsettled him, the idea that something unseen had the right to record them so mercilessly, stripped of intention or thought.
Lilith moved closer, her hands brushing trembling fingertips over the spines of the shelves as if searching by instinct. Her gaze darted, her lips parted, and for the first time since they left the prison she allowed a fragment of desperation to show.
"There has to be something," she whispered, more to herself than him. "Something about when they took me. About what I was before… before I became nothing more than their weapon."
