The white-gold torq burns cold against my collarbone.

  I press my thumb against the metal, testing the sensation. Real, solid, not another phantom from Nenuphar's depths like the ones that still flicker at the edges of my vision. The library's glowglobes cast long shadows across the tome before me, and I blink against text that refuses to resolve into meaning, the words sliding away like water.

  Six hours since I woke in the Temple of Hope. Six hours of whispers following me through corridors, eyes tracking the white-gold at my throat as though the metal itself might explain what happened in those depths. No one speaks to me directly, no one explains. They simply watch, waiting for something I cannot name.

  So I search for answers myself.

  Before me lies a table stacked high with books and scrolls, their presence a quiet testimony to my desperation. Hours of searching through the Commentaries on Torq-Binding, the Histories of the First Shattering, treatises on Semblance manifestation that circle around the questions I need answered without ever addressing them directly. The air here is thick, laden with the scent of old parchment and something metallic like blood, while dust clings to the corners of every surface, undisturbed by the faint currents that swirl down from the vaulted ceilings above.

  I have been here too long. But I do not have the luxury of stopping.

  A soft sound pulls my attention. Just the scrape of movement, but enough to make me glance over my shoulder where something shifts in the periphery of my vision, someone I do my best to pretend I cannot see. My grip tightens on the edge of the table.

  I am not mad. I am not.

  "You have been here quite some time."

  The voice startles me. I snap my head around to find a figure emerging from the shadows. A wizened eunuch with a hunched posture and robes the color of ash. His eyes glint faintly in the dim light, sharp despite his frail demeanor. In one hand, he carries a tray with a simple clay cup of water, which he sets on the table without asking.

  "You look parched," he says. "I have been watching you strain over those books for hours now."

  I do not respond immediately, my eyes narrowing as I try to gauge his intent. The librarian. Of course. I had expected someone to notice me eventually, though I had hoped it would not be so soon.

  "Thirsty?" he presses, his voice mild.

  Reluctantly, I nod, reaching for the cup. The water is colder than I expect, the taste sharp as it slides down my throat.

  He watches me as I drink, his eyes flickering to the white-gold torq at my neck. "The Commentaries on Torq-Binding," he says, tapping one of the spines before me. "Twice now, I think. And the Histories of the First Shattering. Even old Architect Nenn's treatises." His finger moves to a particular volume I have not touched. "But you have not opened the personal accounts. The diaries. Strange, that. Most seekers start there."

  I set the cup down carefully. "Perhaps I am not most seekers."

  "No." His gaze lingers on my torq. "No, you are not."

  Silence stretches between us. I wait for him to leave, to return to whatever corner of this archive he emerged from. He does not move.

  "What happens," I hear myself say, "to those whose Semblances manifest wrong?"

  The words escape before I can pull them back. I curse myself for the slip, for revealing even this much.

  The librarian tilts his head. "Wrong?"

  "Unpredictably." I keep my voice flat. "Outside of expected parameters."

  "Ah." He settles onto the edge of a nearby chair, uninvited. "You have been reading the wrong books, then. Nenn writes about structure, about the mechanics of binding. But Semblances are not mechanical."

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  "Then what are they?"

  He considers me for a long moment. "Do you know the story of Optimate Mira?"

  I shake my head.

  "House Azure, three generations back. Her Semblance allowed her to see the structural weaknesses in any object. Stone, metal, flesh. Quite useful in warfare, you understand. She could strike once and bring down a fortress." He pauses. "She put out her own eyes at thirty-two."

  The statement hangs in the air between us.

  "Why?" The question leaves my mouth unbidden.

  "Because she could not stop seeing the cracks. In everything. Everyone. Every conversation revealed another fracture, another point of imminent collapse. The world became nothing but breaking points waiting to shatter." His fingers drum against his cane. "She said the only way to stop seeing was to stop looking."

  My throat tightens. "What does that have to do with my question?"

  "Everything manifests according to its nature. Mira's Semblance showed her truth. What she could not bear was that truth itself." He stands slowly. "The diaries are on the third shelf, eastern wall. The ones written by those who survived their Semblances rather than being consumed by them. You might find them illuminating."

  He turns to leave.

  "How do you survive it?" The words come out quieter than I intend.

  He pauses. "You learn what your truth is trying to tell you. And you decide whether you are strong enough to hear it."

  His footsteps fade into the stacks, leaving me alone with the books and the weight of his words.

  I stare at the eastern wall, at the shelf he indicated where the diaries sit in a neat row, their spines worn from handling. Personal accounts, individual truths from those who survived their Semblances rather than being consumed by them. The words should draw me forward.

  They do not.

  Instead, I return to the Commentaries, to the safe distance of theory and structure, my eyes scanning familiar passages about torq-binding and power transfer and expected manifestation patterns that tell me nothing about what actually happened beneath those purple flowers. The words blur together. I blink hard, forcing them back into focus.

  A shadow shifts at the edge of my vision.

  I have been pretending not to notice her for six hours. Pretending the whispers are only about the torq, only about whatever happened in the baptism that I cannot remember. Pretending that the figure who appears in reflections and darkened corners is a trick of exhausted perception.

  But she is there. Always there.

  My fingers tighten around the book's edge. I will not look. I will not acknowledge what cannot be real.

  The air grows colder.

  Against every instinct screaming at me to maintain control, to keep pretending, I turn my head.

  She stands just beyond the glowglobe's reach, pale skin almost luminous in the dim light, white hair cascading like smoke around her face. And her eyes. Purple, impossibly deep, twin mirrors of Mother's own.

  She does not speak. She has never spoken.

  My pulse thunders in my ears. Six hours of ignoring her, of treating her as a phantom my mind conjured from trauma and exhaustion, six hours of pretending I am not losing my grip on reality. She tilts her head slightly, the movement gentle, questioning.

  "You are not real." My voice comes out hoarse. "You are a side effect. Trauma. Oxygen deprivation. You are not real."

  She does not respond. Does not vanish. Does not confirm or deny.

  I stand abruptly. The chair scrapes against stone, too loud in the library's silence. "Leave me alone."

  She steps forward.

  I freeze. She has never approached me before, never crossed that invisible boundary between us. My breath catches as she glides closer, movement as silent as falling snow. She stops just within arm's reach, her violet eyes locked on mine.

  "What are you?" The question breaks from me, raw and desperate.

  Her hand rises slowly, pale fingers extending toward my forehead. I should step back, should run, should do anything but stand here while this impossible thing reaches for me.

  But I cannot move.

  Her fingertips brush my skin. Ice and fire. The touch sears through thought, through reason, piercing into a place I did not know existed. My mind reels as something foreign and yet familiar takes root.

  A name.

  Binah.

  The word blooms in my thoughts, sharp and clear, as though it has always been there waiting to be uncovered. I gasp, and she pulls her hand back, stepping away with the same fluid grace.

  She stands once more at the edge of the light, watching, waiting. Then she lifts her hand and beckons, the motion slow and deliberate, before turning away with white hair flowing like a veil as she walks deeper into the library's shadows.

  I remain frozen, my thoughts caught in a storm of confusion and fear as she fades into darkness without looking back. But even as the shadows swallow her, I know she is waiting. Waiting for me to follow.

  Do I follow her? Do I trust this thing that calls itself Binah, this phantom only I can see?

  I glance at the scattered books on the table. The Commentaries. The Histories. The diaries I have not yet touched. All of them meaningless now, drowned out by the single undeniable truth pulsing in my thoughts.

  Binah.

  The library feels emptier without her visible presence. The silence presses against my ears. My hand uncurls slowly, fingers aching from how tightly I had been gripping the table's edge.

  I force myself to take a step forward, then another, my heart pounding against my ribs with each movement toward the shadows where she disappeared. I do not know where she will lead me or if I will regret following, but I cannot stay here.

  Not anymore.

  The darkness swallows me as I leave the safety of the glowglobes behind.