The square was hollow in the morning. Puddles still clung to the cracks between cobblestones, holding small reflections of lamps that had burned out hours ago. The banners that had hung for the Jubilee were torn, their edges soaked and curling inward like spent petals. The River's breath moved softly through the alleys, a slow exhale after a night of fury.
Leona stood at the fountain's edge, the satchel strap marking her shoulder. The silence around her wasn't peace; it was exhaustion. Truth had a strange gravity—it settled heavy after the shouting stopped.
Nia leaned against the rail that bordered the square, her eyes scanning rooftops for movement. "They'll start looking again when the council meets," she said. "Harrow doesn't lose quietly."
Leona brushed soot from her sleeve. "Let him send men. The River knows the way now."
A door opened on the far side of the plaza. An old man stepped out, holding a broom. He looked at the two women but said nothing. Instead, he began sweeping mud toward the drains, as if trying to erase the night's confession. The sight hurt more than any threat could.
"They'll clean the square," Leona said softly, "but they can't clean the water."
"Where now?" Nia asked.
"Home," Leona answered. "To where it began."
The path to the Prescott cottage followed the River's edge. Mist rose from the surface, blurring the line between current and sky. The smell of silt was sharp, honest. Leona remembered running this same road as a child, her mother's laughter ahead of her and the lamp glowing in the window—always left burning so no traveler would mistake the house for empty.
Today the flame still burned. A small, unwavering light against the pale dawn. The sight stopped her.
"She kept it alive," Leona whispered.
"Or something kept it for her," Nia replied.
Inside, the air felt untouched by years. Dust lay in soft drifts on the table, yet the lamp's flame was clean, steady, golden. Its light reached only so far, as if shy of its own endurance.
Leona touched the base. Warm. Alive. The glass chimney trembled slightly, but the flame did not bend. Beneath it sat a folded scrap of paper, faded and thin. She unfolded it carefully:
Light remembers what eyes forget. Do not let it die before the River listens.
Her throat tightened. "Mother wrote this."
Nia traced the words. "Then she's still listening."
A soft sound drew Leona's gaze toward the inner hall—a dripping somewhere in the pipes, a whisper of water traveling through walls. She followed it, lamp in hand. The passage ended at a half-open door marked Clinic.
The clinic had shrunk with time. Cabinets leaned, glass cracked, air thick with the ghosts of antiseptic and candle smoke. On one wall hung a portrait—her mother, smiling beside the first group of patients. The frame was crooked. Leona reached to straighten it, and that was when she heard it.
Tick.
A pause.
Tick… tick.
Not a clock. Not a leak. It was too rhythmic, too human. A heartbeat whispering through wood.
Nia stepped closer. "Do you hear that?"
Leona nodded. "It's coming from the frame."
They lifted it carefully and laid it on the table beneath the window. The sound grew faint but certain—like a memory repeating itself. The back of the frame was sealed with parchment, the handwriting across it unmistakable:
For the day my daughter learns to listen.
Leona's breath caught. "She left it for me."
The paper tore easily. Behind it lay another photograph: her mother older, lines at her eyes, Pastor Ellison beside her, both standing before the pump-house door. And in her mother's hands—the same lamp that still burned in the cottage.
The heartbeat paused. Leona froze, waiting. Then it started again, stronger, beating in time with the pulse hammering under her own skin.
Nia gasped. "It's matching you."
Leona pressed a hand to her chest. "It's not a mechanism. It's memory. She built the sound into the wood somehow—the rhythm of her heart the day she left."
The room brightened as the lamp's light flared, scattering shadows up the walls. The River outside answered with a murmur, as though syncing its tide to their pulse. The sound filled the room, steady, forgiving.
"She turned time into heartbeat," Leona whispered. "So the world would remember she once lived."
They spent the rest of the morning searching the clinic. Drawers held forgotten bandages, letters half-written, one stethoscope still intact. Leona placed it against her chest, then against the frame. Both carried the same echo—a double rhythm, hers and her mother's intertwined.
Through a cracked window, she saw movement on the riverbank. A child's silhouette. Copper hair.
Mara.
She stood barefoot in the silt, staring upriver as if listening to something no one else could hear. When Leona stepped outside, the girl turned.
"The River told me the light survived," Mara said. "It said you would come."
Leona lifted the frame. "It's still beating."
Mara smiled faintly. "Then you're ready. The River doesn't keep its heart—it loans it."
Nia joined them. "You mean—"
"The pulse belongs to whoever listens," Mara said. "When one stops hearing, another begins."
Leona felt the truth of it settle into her bones. The rhythm inside her chest no longer felt borrowed; it felt inherited. "Then it's ours now."
Mara's gaze softened. "Yours to keep until you find someone brave enough to listen after you."
A flock of starlings wheeled over the Vale, scattering light across the River. The sun had climbed above the steeple, touching the water with gold. Leona looked toward the current, its shimmer answering her breath.
"She lied twice," Leona murmured. "To save us. But this isn't a lie anymore."
"No," Mara said. "It's the River remembering in your voice."
The child stepped backward into the shallows, water curling around her ankles. For a moment the light made her transparent—then she was gone, as if folded back into the current that had lent her shape.
Leona and Nia stood in silence. The heartbeat faded from the frame, reappeared inside their chests, two pulses joining the River's hidden rhythm.
Leona wrapped the frame carefully, tucking it beside The Daughter's Testament and the blueprints. "Three inheritances," she said. "Light, memory, and heartbeat."
"And what comes next?" Nia asked.
Leona looked at the horizon. "The River's not done speaking."
The water below answered with a hush that sounded almost like words.