Chapter 16: The Echo in the Archive

The lecture hall was a cavern of stone and silence, the kind of place that swallowed whispers and made even the scrape of a chair sound like a confession. Ryu Jin sat in the back row, his eyes fixed on the lecturer—an old man with a voice like grinding gravel—but his mind was elsewhere. The green light hummed in his chest, restless, like a dog straining at a leash. He kept his hands flat on the de...