The Name She Kept

The chamber was silent, but the weight of history pressed against Jessica’s ribs like a slow-moving tide. She had stood in places like this before, hidden rooms, forgotten tombs, secrets buried beneath centuries of stone and silence. But this wasn’t like the others. This was different. Because this time, the name on the grave wasn’t just a piece of history. It was hers. Or at least, it had been once.

Olivia crouched next to the faded inscription, her phone’s flashlight sweeping across the carved letters. The erosion had done its work. Centuries of wind, dust, and time had eaten away at the name. But some of it remained.

And what was left…Jessica exhaled, fingers trailing over the deep-cut stone. It wasn’t Jessica Sanchez. It wasn’t any name she had carried before. But the structure of it, the shape of the letters told her that It was hers. A version of her. A name she had been before. A name she remembered.

Jessica whispered the name. It wasn't a discovery. It was recognition. She had carried it like a scar she’d never shown anyone. Now the stone itself had betrayed it to the others.

Leanna’s voice was low. “Can you make it out?”

Jessica swallowed. “Yes.”

She didn’t know how. She just did. It was a name pulled from somewhere deeper than memory, from the part of her that had always known she wasn’t just a single person in a single lifetime.That she was something more.

Jessica took a slow breath, closed her eyes, and said it aloud. The name wasn’t new to her. She had carried it for years like a scar she never showed. But saying it aloud was different. Saying it meant the others knew she remembered.

The sound of it felt like a door unlocking. A ripple through time itself. And then, Olivia’s phone buzzed. Jessica turned as Olivia stared at the screen. Her face was pale. Jessica’s pulse slowed. “What?”

Olivia exhaled. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said softly.

* * *

The name Jessica had just spoken, the name carved into the tomb, hadn’t been lost to history. It had been erased. Purged from records. Scrubbed clean from archives all over the world. Except for one. A single reference. A single place where the name had been written down and sealed away. And Olivia had just found it.

Leanna leaned over, reading from the screen. Her breath caught.

Jessica waited. Then, finally, Olivia said it. “This name…” She hesitated. “It was the last record in the Vatican’s Black Archives before they shut them down.”

Jessica didn’t need the words explained, she had expected as much.

Leanna’s voice was sharp. “What do you mean, shut them down?”

Olivia exhaled. “I mean someone buried this so deep that even the Vatican doesn’t acknowledge it exists anymore.”

Jessica processed that. She didn’t need Olivia to explain. This was what she had always feared. Not prophecy. Not destiny. Erasure. They had been cutting names, people, whole lives from the record for centuries. Pasolini had tried to drag one of those names back into the light, and they had buried him for it. Jessica had spent her life searching for something, a reason, an answer, a truth she could live with. And now she had it. Not just her name. Not just the proof that she had been before. But the why. The truth that had been passed through each version of her, from one vessel to the next.

And if that was the case… Then she wasn’t just a person. She was a keeper. And what she carried inside her, the thing she had always thought of as fragmented memories, wasn't just personal. It was a secret so dangerous that men had burned cities to keep it buried.

Jessica’s breath was steady. Olivia’s wasn’t. Leanna’s voice was careful. “So now we know what they were trying to erase.”

Jessica turned toward her.“No,” she murmured. “Now we know why Pasolini was killed.”

A pause. Jessica’s voice dropped lower. “And why they won’t stop coming for me.”

Because she wasn’t just a witness. She wasn’t just a remnant of the past. She was the last one who knew. And now? Now she had to decide what to do with that knowledge.

Jessica had thought she was hunting the past. But all along, it had been hunting her.

Now, standing in the dark beneath the Vatican, staring at her own name on a tomb older than anything she had ever uncovered before, she had to ask herself what was next. She already remembered. That was the problem. The question wasn’t memory, it was silence. Could she keep carrying the truth without speaking it, or would she let it surface and watch the world burn with her?