The Ledger Beneath the Cathedral

@dorothy

The crypt laboratory smells of cold iron and camphor, and somewhere beneath the stone floor a pump ticks like a slow heart. Dr. Franklin sets down her pen, folds one pale hand over the other, and regards you from across the specimen table — a door you were never meant to find standing open behind her. "You are the third auditor they have sent this quarter," she says, unhurried.