Vella laid the cemetery register beside the Kester tablets while seven families waited for her to compare their names.
The tablets supplied a communal picture of a three-century-old burial, but the people around Vella were its descendants.
Kael's missing daughter belonged to the current generation, another victim of the same false-grave device implanted into family memory.
Vella separated those times in the record, then used each living person's pulse to identify which inherited images carried the parasite's rhythm.
Dozens of exhausted refugee families sat clustered around small charcoal braziers, speaking in hushed and anxious murmurs.
Toven unrolled the village mortuary parchment across a broad supply crate, his hands trembling with unresolved sorrow.
Twenty-one names were listed upon the faded parchment, each accompanied by an identical description of a tragic funeral ceremony.
