The door did not break.

It peeled.

Black-vein script that had once been content to crawl across marble now forced itself into the seam of the seal like living crowbars. The eighth syllable—fresh, shared, written in four voices and a wolf’s unspent love—had rooted too deeply in the living world. It had woken more than debt-creatures and unresolved mercies. It had woken the mansion itself. And the mansion, after centuries of soaking up Alpha blood, Luna blood, betrayal blood, and rebirth blood, had finally decided it was done being a passive location.

It wanted a voice in the account.

Zelda felt the peel like a second heartbeat slamming against the...