The catalog is open.

The Quiet Floor.

Iren reached the lantern hall before the watch could relight it. The cold had a grain to it now, like something dragged across paper. She listened — not for footsteps, but for the absence of them.

The hall was sixty lanterns long. None of them lit. Each empty wick was a small dark mouth. She passed the first row and the cold deepened, the way a held breath deepens — and somewhere far down the corridor, a single flame coughed itself awake.

It did not stay lit. It was not, she realised — when she could think about it again, much later — a flame at all.