"We cannot stay in the streets,"
Vaelen urged, his form flickering like a candle in a draft.
"The open air is too thin.
You are a beacon, Adriana, and the shadows have long reaches."
They navigated the city's veins until they reached the Museum of Modern Art.
To the tourists outside, it was a building of sharp glass and white marble.
To Adriana's awakened eyes, the building sat upon a massive, swirling knot of ancient energy.
"A museum?"
Adriana whispered, ducking under the shadow of the grand entrance.
"It is a vault of human intention,"
Vaelen explained. "Every painting, every sculpture is a frozen Spirit Note.
The concentration of 'Meaning' here acts as a natural barrier.
The Hollows cannot enter a place where the air is this thick with human soul."
They didn't go to the galleries.
Vaelen led her to a restricted maintenance elevator.
He touched the control panel, not with a finger, but with a pulse of static.
The elevator descended far below the basement levels, into a space that didn't appear on any architectural blueprint.
The doors opened to a circular hall filled with towering tapestries that glowed with a soft, internal light.
This was the Archive of the Weavers.
"You're late, Vaelen," a voice echoed.
An old woman sat in the center of the room, her fingers moving rapidly through the air as if she were knitting invisible thread.
She was blind, her eyes covered by a silk cloth, but she turned her head toward Adriana with perfect precision.
"And you've brought the sun with you,"
the woman said.
"I am Kora. I am the last of those who remember how to mend the veil."
"The Hollows found her on the 6 train," Vaelen said, his voice heavy with relief.
"She Harmonized them, Kora.
She didn't just repel them
she turned them back into notes."
Kora stopped her invisible knitting.
Her expression shifted from curiosity to grave concern.
"Harmonizing is a gift of the Ancients, child. But every time you pull the Static into yourself to neutralize it, you risk becoming the very thing you fight.
The Light within you is a tuning fork
if you strike it too hard against the dark, it will shatter."
"I had no choice,"
Adriana said, clutching her chest.
"They were going to take the Memory."
"And they will try again," Kora stood, her robes rustling like dry leaves.
"The Museum is a safe house, but it is also a training ground.
If you are to be the Bridge, you must learn to command the Loom of Reality."
Kora waved her hand, and the glowing tapestries began to shift.
The threads of light detached from the walls and floated in the air around Adriana, forming a complex, three-dimensional web.
"The Static is just a tangled thread," Kora commanded.
"Close your eyes.
Don't look at the Museum.
Look at the vibration.
Find the knot that Malphas left in your spirit and unbind it."
Adriana closed her eyes.
Within her, the First Memory glowed, but she saw something new,a dark, jagged splinter of grey ice lodged near her heart
a remnant of the Hollows' touch.
"If I unbind it," Adriana whispered
"where does the darkness go?"
"It doesn't go anywhere," Kora's voice was a sharp command.
"In the Unseen, nothing is ever destroyed.
It is only transformed.
Turn the ice back into water.
Turn the scream back into a sigh."