The restoration wing smelled faintly of dust, solvent, and old canvas stretched too tightly over old wood.
Even late at night, Artemis kept the temperature several degrees colder in this part of the building. Climate monitors blinked softly beside sealed storage doors while restoration lamps cast pale pools of light across steel worktables littered with cotton gloves, labeled brushes, magnifying lenses, and stacks of condition reports clipped into neat folders.
Nothing here was supposed to feel emotional.
Art came into this wing broken.
It left stabilized.
At least that was the official story.
Galathea Brooks stood outside the frosted security doors with her employee badge in one hand and exhaustion pressing heavily behind her eyes. The gala had ended nearly an hour ago, but her pulse still had not settled properly since the sculpture vision.
Her skin buzzed again.
Not painful.
Worse.
Aware.
She rubbed absently at the inside of her wrist while staring at the scanner panel.
"This is a terrible idea," she muttered.
For one irrational second, she reached for the feeling of Cael's hand at her waist in the stairwell.
Grounding and steady… and real.
The memory vanished as quickly as it came.
Galathea swiped her badge.
The panel blinked red.
ACCESS DENIED.
She stared at it flatly. "That feels personal."
The restoration wing hummed quietly beyond the glass.
Waiting.
That was the problem now. Artemis no longer felt like a building that contained strange things. It felt like a building that noticed her back.
Galathea glanced once down the empty corridor before turning away from the main entrance.
There was another access point.
Service routes existed because museums relied on invisible labor more than donors liked admitting. Climate technicians, restoration staff, transport crews. Half the important work in Artemis happened through ugly doors no guest ever noticed.
She moved quietly down the narrow maintenance hallway, heels clicking softer against unfinished concrete. The farther she walked from the public galleries, the rougher the building became. Exposed pipes ran overhead. Paint peeled near old freight doors. The smell of cleaning chemicals sharpened in the colder air.
Her fingertips tingled harder now.
She flexed her hand once.
"Wonderful," she muttered. "My nervous system's on a high."
The side entrance sat recessed behind a rolling storage rack and a stack of sealed shipping crates.
A keypad glowed faint blue beside the door.
Galathea hesitated.
This was stupid.
Not adventurous.
Not brave.
Just stupid.
Cael had warned her repeatedly that some objects in Artemis were unstable. Dangerous. The memory shard at the gala had nearly dropped her bleeding into broken glass in front of half the city.
A sane person would have gone home.
Instead, Galathea stepped closer and entered the code she had accidentally memorized weeks ago while reviewing restoration paperwork over someone's shoulder.
The lock clicked immediately.
She stared at the door. "That's honestly insulting."
Then she slipped inside.
The temperature dropped hard enough to tighten her lungs.
Rows of covered paintings lined the restoration corridor beneath suspended fluorescent lights. Workstations sat abandoned for the night with tools left in careful organization: brushes soaking in solution jars, magnifiers folded neatly beside cloth pads, restoration notes taped beside partially repaired frames.
The air felt heavier here.
Not stale.
Occupied.
Galathea pulled her coat tighter around herself as the buzzing beneath her skin sharpened almost instantly. Her fingertips twitched against her sleeves.
The farther she walked, the worse it became.
Like static crawling beneath muscle.
"Okay," she whispered. "I looked. Very educational. Time to leave before I end up haunted professionally."
Something waited beyond the far partition wall.
She knew it before she saw it.
Not instinct exactly.
Recognition.
Galathea rounded the movable divider slowly.
The triptych stood alone beneath a suspended restoration lamp.
Uncovered.
Three tall panels framed in blackened wood connected by iron hinges thick with rust-dark age. No placard. No identification tag. Nothing archived beside it.
Just the painting.
Waiting.
Galathea stepped closer despite herself.
The left panel showed a young soldier seated against a ruined wall, uniform torn open at the ribs where dark pigment stained through the fabric like fresh blood. A palette knife rested loosely in his hand.
The center panel held a painter standing before a massive unfinished canvas. Ink and oil stained his fingers black while a palette knife scraped harshly through thick paint near the edge of the frame.
And the final panel--
Galathea's stomach tightened.
An old man sat draped in pale robes beside a narrow bed, skin thin enough to suggest bone beneath it. His eyes looked exhausted.
Alive.
A palette knife rested carefully across his lap.
Same face.
Different ages.
Same eyes.
The buzzing beneath Galathea's skin deepened sharply.
She rubbed hard at her forearm. "Absolutely not."
The hinges creaked.
Galathea froze.
The sound echoed softly through the restoration room.
Nothing moved.
Not visibly.
Still, her pulse climbed.
"You are paint," she told the triptych firmly. "Expensive paint, but still paint."
The soldier's wound darkened.
Not visually.
Wetly.
Pigment thickened beneath the overhead light until it looked freshly opened.
Galathea stepped backward immediately. "No."
The painter's wrist twitched next.
Tiny movement.
Almost nothing but enough.
The palette knife scraped once across painted canvas with a soft dragging sound.
Galathea's breath shortened.
The old man inhaled.
The movement barely lifted his chest.
Then again.
The room temperature dropped violently.
Pain slammed into her ribs hard enough to force the breath from her lungs.
Galathea stumbled sideways into a restoration cart, sending metal tools clattering loudly across the concrete floor. Her knees buckled.
The pain did not feel external.
It felt shared.
Her lungs burned.
Her joints screamed.
Pressure crushed behind her eyes like someone driving nails into bone.
She hit one knee hard against the concrete.
"No--"
The soldier lifted his head.
The painter turned slowly toward her.
The old man's eyes locked directly onto hers.
All three stared at her now.
Galathea grabbed the edge of the cart and forced herself upright, breathing raggedly.
The old man's mouth opened.
When he spoke, the voice came layered wrong, like several voices dragging through wet gravel at once.
"Seer Galathea."
The words tore through her skull.
Not heard.
Inside.
Galathea clutched at her temple hard enough to hurt herself. "Stop saying that."
The painter's fingers flexed around the palette knife. "You carried us."
"I don't even know you," she snapped hoarsely.
The old man blinked slowly. "You will."
The center seam between the panels split open a fraction.
Darkness leaked through.
Not shadow.
Something thicker.
The blackest thing Galathea had ever seen.
Cold air poured from the crack.
The pain intensified immediately.
Her lungs seized.
Galathea staggered backward gasping for air that suddenly felt too thin to reach her properly.
The restoration cart sat beside her.
Palette knives gleamed beneath the work lamp.
Without thinking, she grabbed the largest one.
The metal felt cold. Solid and real.
Instantly, the three painted figures lifted their own knives.
Not together.
The soldier first.
Then the painter.
Then the old man.
Each blade angled slowly toward the dark seam.
Galathea stared at them in horror. "No."
The pressure in the room tightened.
The old man's jaw trembled. "There."
Her knees nearly gave again.
Pain ripped through her chest so sharply she doubled forward against the cart.
For one terrifying second, she genuinely thought the building might crush her from the inside out.
The knives remained pointed toward the seam.
Waiting.
Galathea's grip tightened around the palette knife handle.
"This is how horror movies happen," she wheezed.
No one answered.
The seam widened another inch.
Darkness pulsed behind it slowly.
Breathing.
The pain became unbearable.
Galathea staggered forward before she could rethink it and pressed the knife carefully against the seam.
Resistance met the blade immediately.
Not wood.
Not canvas.
Something softer.
The knife dragged downward with a wet splitting sound.
The darkness opened.
And the pain stopped.
Immediately.
Galathea gasped violently as air rushed back into her lungs.
Something small fluttered out from the seam.
Paper.
Folded once.
It drifted downward through the cold air.
The triptych snapped shut instantly.
All three figures froze motionless.
Paint dried.
The old man's mouth closed.
Silence crashed into the room.
Galathea stood shaking, still clutching the knife hard enough that her knuckles burned white.
Nothing moved.
Nothing breathed.
Only the soft hum of the climate system restarting overhead.
Slowly, carefully, she looked down at the palette knife in her hand.
Dark wooden grip.
Thin steel blade.
Exactly like the ones inside the painting.
Cold spread heavily through her stomach.
Galathea bent stiffly and picked up the folded paper from the floor.
Her hands trembled as she opened it.
Two words waited in thick black ink.
Palette Knife.
No signature.
No explanation.
Just instruction.
Footsteps echoed faintly somewhere beyond the main restoration corridor.
Distant.
Real.
Galathea backed toward the service exit without taking her eyes off the triptych.
The farther she moved away, the easier breathing became.
The pain eased slowly from her ribs.
Then her skull.
Then her lungs.
But her legs still shook badly enough that she caught herself once against the wall before reaching the door.
The triptych remained still beneath the restoration light.
Only paint again.
Except now she knew better.
Galathea shoved through the service door into the maintenance corridor and inhaled sharply as warmer air hit her face.
Relief came fast enough to make her dizzy.
She leaned briefly against the concrete wall trying to steady herself while the paper crumpled tightly inside her fist.
The old man had known her name.
Not guessed.
Known.
And somehow worse than that--
He had known exactly what she would reach for.