The old printing district was a ghost of its former self. Giant, silent printing presses stood like iron skeletons in abandoned factories. The air smelled of faded ink, mold, and decay.
The team split up as planned. After a few hours, Cain's voice came through the communication device. "I have something. An old records bindery. Supposedly abandoned, but the lock on the back door has been recently picked. Very professionally." He gave them the address.
Minutes later, Isolde's whisper followed. "I feel it. A cold spot. Near the address Cain gave. Something was erased there. Recently."
Liam and Ronan were already inside the bindery when they got the messages. It was a vast, dark room filled with shelves of old, leather-bound ledgers. Following Ronan's [Probability Currents], which pulled them toward a path of 'high information, low risk,' they found a specific section: Civic Engineering Records, 10-15 years prior.
"She was here," Liam said, his voice low. He could feel the residual temporal disturbance. He ran his hand along the spines of the massive books, closing his eyes, searching for the echo. He found it on a thick ledger marked Pumping Station Maintenance & Staffing.
He pulled the book down and opened it. Most of the pages were filled with neat, methodical script. But one page was different. It was a list of personnel assigned to the station the year of the disaster. Liam touched the page, focusing.
[Temporal Echo]. This time, the image was clearer. The Redactor's hand—not her face—moving across the page. A strange, custom-made stamp in her hand. The stamp bore the symbol of the Blank Page Legion. She pressed the stamp down next to a name on the ledger. The ink of the symbol seemed to devour the name next to it. But Liam saw it for a split second before it vanished from the echo: Elias Vance.
"Ronan," Liam breathed. "They aren't just erasing events. They're erasing people."