---
Mira's eyes softened a fraction. That last line mattered. Not because Sekhmet was a saint. But because a man who bothered to include it was not completely rotten.
The clerk lifted the silver knife.
"Blood signature or ink signature," he asked.
Mira answered first.
"Ink."
Sekhmet's lips curved faintly.
"Blood," he said.
The reason Sekhmet chose blood for the same reason a veteran chooses a lock that cannot be picked. Ink is clean, polite, and socially acceptable, but in Null it is also negotiable in all the worst ways.
Blood signature is a proof of intent in a way ink is not. You cannot sign in blood without feeling it. Even one drop forces a deliberate moment: a cut, a sting, a choice. That makes it harder for anyone to later say, I did not understand, or I was tricked, because the contract authority treats blood as a higher tier of consent. The contract does not only record a name; it records a living imprint.
