For the first time in weeks, the spiral was gone.
Gone from the floorboards. Gone from the mirror's broken skin. Gone from Ace's chest.
Gone from everything.
Except Sarah's mind.
She hadn't slept since the door closed.
The sigil he gave her still burned against her palm—not with heat, but with memory.
The ink shimmered when she held it under the attic lantern. Faint lines ran between the larger symbols, like veins beneath skin. She recognized none of it.
But one word had emerged in her dreams every night since:
Nyren.
She didn't know what it meant.
Not yet.
But the way the earth went still when she whispered it aloud told her it was powerful.
And dangerous.
She tried to research the name.
Nyren.
The word didn't appear in any known language. Not in the books Hal left behind. Not online. Not in any old Order files she could find.
But when she wrote it in a circle on the wall near the basement, the walls shifted.
Subtle.
A breath behind the drywall.
Something was still listening.
On the fourth day, she dreamed of Ace.
Not as he was.
As he is now.
Beneath.
His skin was covered in dust, hair damp with fog. His eyes had turned entirely black—but not lifeless. They saw.
He didn't speak.
But the dream did.
"He is ours, but still hears you. If you wish to call him home, you must walk as he walked. Burn the sigil. Mark your spine. Open the memory of blood."
She woke up with the sigil clenched in her hand.
And blood beneath her fingernails.
That night, Sarah stood in the basement alone.
The door remained sealed.
The spiral had not returned.
But she knew it waited.
She lit a circle of candles.
Drew the sigil again, not on paper this time, but on her own skin. Inked down her spine in trembling lines with a needle and charcoal.
Then she burned the original copy.
The flame turned blue.
The smoke spiraled downward.
And the stone door moaned.
Hairline cracks spread across its surface.
But no light came through.
No whispers.
Just silence.
And in that silence—her own voice.
"Ace," she said, voice barely holding steady, "if you hear me—come back. I'm here. I'm waiting."
The silence deepened.
And then—just as she began to turn away—
The sigil on her back flared hot.
The door glowed dimly.
And from somewhere beyond it, something tapped.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped.