The staircase was not made to be traversed quickly.
The steps were irregular, worn down in different ways, as if different eras had used them for incompatible purposes. Marikka felt every step respond with a dry, ancient vibration, unmediated by the ordered Athenaeum. Down here there was no protocol. There was stratified memory.
Cedric slipped once, grabbed the handrail, and stifled an oath. "Okay. I'll say it. This staircase hates living people."
Aurelian did not reply. He was tense in a new way: not alert, not fleeing. Anticipation.
Marikka noticed it. "You know where we are."
"I know where we might be," he said. "And it's worse."
The staircase ended in a wide gallery, carved into rough stone. No shelves. No active runes. Only empty niches and stone slabs inscribed with half-erased markings, like names removed too quickly.
The mark on Marikka's wrist pulsed. Not warm. Recognizing.
Cedric looked at the carvings. "These... aren't titles."
Aurelian nodded. "They are personal records. Or they were."
Marikka approached a slab. She placed her hand on it. The vibration that answered was heavy, restrained. It didn't speak of books. It spoke of people reduced to an archive entry.
"This place catalogs what should no longer circulate," she said. "Not errors. Responsibilities."
A sound crossed the gallery. Not footsteps. Not updates. A dry, rhythmic beat, like the strike of a sealing sigil.
Cedric stiffened. "Please, tell me it's not—"
"It's him," Aurelian said.
The temperature changed. Not cold. Absence.
From the back of the gallery emerged a figure dressed in opaque, not bright, white. The fabric did not reflect light: it absorbed just enough to always appear clean. Every step was identical to the last, as if the floor were forced to accept him.
He had no escort.
He didn't need one.
Marikka felt the mark react with sudden violence. Not like an attack. Like a forced recognition.
The man stopped a few meters from them. He wasn't looking at Marikka. He was looking at the air around her, as if reading an invisible marginal note.
"Anomaly confirmed," he said. His voice was not threatening. It was definitive. "Persistence above threshold."
Cedric took half a step back. "Okay. I don't know who you are, but if you're here to—"
"I am not here for you," the man interrupted him. "You are side effects."
The Inquisitor's eyes finally rested on Marikka.
The world aligned.
Not in the sense of order, but of total attention. Every vibration in the gallery fell silent, as if the place itself were listening.
"You," he said. "Are an unregistered Key."
Marikka felt the breath catch in her throat. Not out of fear. Because of the precision with which she had been defined.
Aurelian took a step forward. "She has a name."
The Inquisitor looked at him for the first time. A beat of silence.
"She has had several," he replied. "None stable."
Cedric whispered: "This guy doesn't debate."
"It's not his job," Aurelian said, through gritted teeth. "He is the last step before resolution."
Marikka clenched her hands. "I am not an object."
The Inquisitor barely tilted his head. "Nor a procedure. Yet both things are classified."
He took a step forward. Marikka's mark burned, not on the skin but within, as if someone had tried to read her without permission.
"Your status is unstable," he continued. "But promising."
Aurelian snapped. He drew a seal, quick, desperate.
Isaak didn't even look at him.
The seal extinguished mid-gesture, like an interrupted sentence.
"This sector is not under your jurisdiction," Aurelian said. "Down here—"
"Down here," Isaak interrupted, "is exactly where the exceptions end up."
He turned back to Marikka. "I will not take you today."
Cedric blinked. "...excuse me?"
"Not yet," Isaak clarified. "The system must observe how you react to awareness."
He took half a step back. The pressure in the gallery decreased by an imperceptible degree.
"But now you know my name," he concluded. "And I know you resist."
His voice dropped lower. More dangerous.
"This makes the next encounter inevitable."
Isaak Verne turned and walked away. He did not disappear. He did not use portals. He simply walked out of the gallery, and the place recomposed itself around his absence.
Silence returned. Dirty. Unstable.
Cedric slumped against a wall. "Okay. I hate him. I hate him so much."
Aurelian was trembling. "He put a bookmark on us."
Marikka looked at the stone slab in front of her. Now, beneath the dust, a new carving was emerging.
A name.
Hers.
And she understood, with a clarity that hurt, that the Inquisitor had not come to capture her.
He had come to evaluate her.
And the Athenaeum, somewhere above them, was already taking notes.