She inherited the ledger. It cataloged what bodies could not keep. Not bones. Not photos. Mechanical traces of gestures. Whispered phrases. The exact weight of a hand at a bedside. Elena Marlowe keeps other people's skill alive. She restores gears and tapes. She reads records like prayers. Grief brought her to the Archive. Duty bound her there. Miriam Hargreave protects the institution's secrets. Thomas Vale taught Elena to trust the craft. Isaac Penfold tends the machines that fold memory into metal. One late entry claims what Elena remembers is wrong. A small, precise discrepancy. A man's last hour recorded in brass and ink. The temptation is clear. Repair the wound. Restore what grief misnames. The Archive will not tell her if that crossing is mercy or theft. She faces the ledger with hands that still know how to fix things. Which truths must be kept? Which must be left to fade?