The final door did not close all at once.

It closed the way a throat closes around a last breath—slow, inevitable, and intimate.

Zelda felt the white plain disintegrate beneath her bare feet. Shards of the shattered ledger rose like a blizzard of glass and memory, each fragment showing a life she would never live again if she continued forward. The principle that still wore the pup’s face lunged, no longer calm, no longer patient. Its hands—small and then enormous and then not hands at all—closed around her wrists with the strength of every second chance that had ever been given and resented.

“You cannot end the account by destroying...