The name didn't leave the room.
Even when neither of them spoke, it lingered—heavy, pressing, as though it had weight beyond ink and paper.
Eliza stood by the board, arms folded, staring at the copied version of the characters they had carefully rewritten from the manuscript.
Marshall watched her.
"You've been quiet," he said.
"I'm thinking," Eliza replied.
"That usually means something's wrong."
She didn't deny it.
Instead, she picked up a marker and circled the first character of the name.
"These symbols," she said slowly, "they're not random. They follow a structure. Direction matters. Stroke order matters."
Marshall leaned forward. "So it's a real language?"
Eliza hesitated.
"Yes. Just not one we use anymore."
He frowned. "Ancient?"
She nodded slightly.
"Very."
She walked back to her system and began typing, pulling up archived linguistic records—old documents, partial translations, fragments that most departments never touched.
Marshall moved closer, watching the screen fill with unfamiliar scripts.
"What are we looking for?" he asked.
"Patterns," Eliza said. "Shape similarities. Root structures. Anything that matches what we pulled from the manuscript."
Minutes passed.
Then—
She stopped.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Wait…"
Marshall straightened. "You found something?"
Eliza leaned closer to the screen, scrolling carefully.
"I've seen this curve before," she said, pointing. "Not exactly the same—but close enough."
Marshall crossed his arms. "Where?"
She clicked open another document—older, more degraded.
"This is early Hebrew script," she said. "Not modern. Ancient forms—before standardization."
Marshall looked between the screen and the copied symbols on the board.
"You're saying the manuscript—"
"—is written using a modified form of ancient Hebrew," Eliza finished. "Altered, but still rooted in it."
Marshall exhaled slowly. "So we finally have something solid."
Eliza nodded.
"Yes. It gives us structure. We won't understand everything yet—but we're not guessing anymore."
Marshall gestured to the board. "Then read it."
Eliza turned back to the copied name.
She studied it carefully, breaking it down piece by piece.
"Some of the characters are distorted," she said. "But the base forms are still there."
She pointed to the first symbol.
"A…"
Then the next.
"Za…"
Then the final structure.
"…zel."
Marshall's eyes narrowed. "Say it again."
Eliza looked at the full sequence.
"Azazel."
Silence.
Marshall repeated it under his breath. "Azazel…"
He looked back at her. "You're sure?"
"As sure as I can be without a complete text," Eliza said. "The structure matches. The root forms align. It's not random."
Marshall nodded slowly, processing.
"So now we have a name. And we know the language it came from."
Eliza stepped back from the board. "Which means we can start working through the rest of the manuscript the same way. Piece by piece."
Marshall allowed himself a faint, tired smile.
"For the first time," he said, "we're actually moving forward."
Eliza didn't argue.
Her eyes remained on the name.
Azazel.
Not just a hidden mark anymore.
Now—
A lead.