When the final plate clicked free, the glass spiral rose as if inhaling. Hypnolust chimed a low, ancient note; for a beat the whole cathedral became a memory: hands building, hands naming, hands singing a new world into being. Sakika knew then that the core contained an echo—a recording of a city before Nyxport’s iron laws, of people who had sworn to seed longing into the pipes as a way to remember themselves. Hypnolust wanted the echo to complete its loop. That was the drill’s purpose: to unearth what people had buried when the world hardened.