The fissure did not open. It remembered how to be open.
Arden Gate lurched. The wall split and rejoined. Bread cooled and then un-baked and then cooled again. The shrine ribbon tied itself, untied itself, and scolded the wind for watching. Above the square, three shadows leaned without moving, present in every heartbeat like a cold thumb pressed to a throat.
Lio stood in the middle of it all, bent at the waist, ink running from his wrists in ropes. The door he had swallowed a chapter ago lay in him as dust and edges. Every breath felt like pulling a splinter the size of a house out of his chest. He had thrown death at the fissure like a spear.
The spear had gone in.
Something deeper than Inkless void had shown its teeth.
