Chapter IV
Palimpsest
The first memory came without warning: a door opening onto a room she had never seen, unfamiliar hands resting on carved stone, a face reflected in dark water.
More followed. She remembered the path of light through windows that no longer existed and grieved for names she had never learned. The memories felt less like dreams than lives written beneath her own.
Then she saw a woman standing across a chamber. The stranger turned, fear passing across her face, and the familiarity became clear. The woman was not looking at her. She was looking at herself.
When the vision dissolved, she no longer knew which memories were truly hers.


