I didn't leave straight away.
Her sanctum had lost its owner, and it knew. The alien architecture was going soft at the edges, the way a dream does when the dreamer starts to wake: corners that had been sharp were rounding, surfaces that had drunk the light were giving a little of it back. Somewhere under the silence I could feel the structure deciding how long it had left.
Not long. But long enough for one more thing.
I closed my eyes and listened with Soul Resonance. Everything here had been built around one mind, and that mind was gone, so the rest stood out like stones in a drained riverbed. There. Deeper in, behind three folds of space she'd stitched shut. A single heartbeat, slow and stubborn.
I opened the folds one at a time.
