Chapter 6: The Architect Explains the Rules

The voice arrived before the room changed.

It arrived the way pressure changes before a storm—not heard so much as registered, a shift in the quality of the air that made the ears expect sound before sound came. Elian felt it first in the back of his teeth. He had felt something similar once before, in the Athenaeum's lower laboratory, three seconds before the twelfth amplification test went wrong, and the recognition moved through him like cold water poured between the shoulder blades.

He did not step back from the column. He pressed one hand flat against its surface—dark, semi-translucent, faintly warm, not stone—and waited.