Chapter 2: The Oracle's Fragmented Prophecy

The woman's voice was not loud.

That was the first thing I noticed, and it was wrong in a way I couldn't immediately explain — every story about Oracles I'd ever heard from anyone who'd survived long enough to tell it involved something overwhelming, operatic, a sound like weather. This was quiet. It was the kind of quiet that filled a room by removing everything else from it, the way water fills a vessel not by adding itself but by displacing air, and within about three seconds I understood that the sound was not coming from her throat.

It was coming from the room.