At the edge of the crowd, a girl with white paint on her knuckles caught Mara’s gaze and nodded toward the rear exit. Curiosity, like a bass drop, surged under her ribs. She followed, parting a curtain of fog to find a corridor lit by salvage lamps. The air was cooler here, the bass softened into something like heartbeats through concrete. Along the walls were hand-drawn posters—old volumes, long lists of names, dates that didn’t align. Someone had been preserving the lineage of these nights: who set the lines, who flipped the decks, which broken promises had become anthems.