The light hit her first.

  A sharp white circle burned into the dark behind her eyelids, boring straight through whatever scrap of rest she’d managed to snatch on the way down. It was the exact pitch of brightness used in medical dramas for concussion checks, somewhere between interrogation and concern.

  She flinched and tried to turn her head away.

  Stone rasped under her cheek.

  “Oh good.” someone chirped, close enough that their breath warmed the tip of her nose. “She flinched. That’s usually a promising sign.”

  Her eyes flew open on reflex.

  A small red face filled her field of vision.

  For a second, all her brain supplied was colour. Red skin, glossy and smooth, the shade of fresh-spilled glyph-light. Red eyes, darker, pupils narrow and vertical like a cat’s. Two short black horns curled back from a high forehead. Big ears, a little too wide, each one pierced through with tiny metal rings that chimed when he moved.

  The rest of him followed in increments.

  He was crouched in front of her, balanced easily on the balls of his feet, long toes hooked against the stone. His tail was coiled neatly beside his heels like an obedient snake, the pointed tip twitching in time with some internal rhythm. From his hand spilled the light that had stabbed her awake.

  It wasn’t a torch. Not exactly.

  A slender rod of bone and brass, pulsing faintly with the tower’s own red, held in clever fingers. At the end, a cluster of glyphs turned slowly over and over, each one bright as a miniature sun. They threw that sharp, focused beam straight into her face.

  She blinked against it, eyes watering.

  “Please don’t move.” the imp said cheerfully. “Unless you want to, in which case you probably are not dead. Yet. Excellent news either way.”

  His teeth flashed when he grinned.

  They should have been menacing. They were neat little daggers, each one pointed, each one much too capable of removing strips of flesh. But his grin reached his eyes in an uncomplicated way that took the edge off. He looked more like a child delighted by his own mischief than a predator.

  She became aware, in ragged pieces, of everything that wasn’t a red face.

  The stone under her was the tower’s ring, rough and hot through the thin fabric at her shoulder and hip. The air had that metallic tang it always did so close to the shaft, full of heat and old blood and whatever the glyphs were burning as they crawled. The hum had settled back into its usual low background vibration, threading through her bones like a familiar headache.

  Her body was not where she’d left it.

  She was on her side, one arm pinned under her, one knee crooked awkwardly. Someone had turned her so she wasn’t half hanging over the edge anymore. The shaft yawned a little way off, its red mouth as calm as ever, glyphs climbing steadily up the inner wall like nothing had happened.

  Nothing had happened.

  Except the glass. The hook. The shattering.

  Memory rushed back all at once and then broke apart, scattering into flashes.

  White blank. Line widening. Her own face, cracked through with red. That slow, terrible smile.

  So many cracks.

  You’ve just been too busy pretending to be solid to notice.

  The hook under her ribs gave a single, mean throb as if to agree.

  “Welcome back.” another voice said, dry and almost casual.

  Not the Interpreter’s crow rasp. The other one. The one she heard most often on this ring.

  The Auditor.

  She tried to push herself up.

  A firm hand landed on her shoulder, steady but not rough, and held her exactly where she was.

  “Don’t.” he said. “You’ve already fallen once today. Let’s not make a habit of it.”

  She turned her head instead.

  He was crouched just behind the imp, one knee down, one elbow resting lightly on it. From this angle he was mostly long lines and sharp angles, all in black, the coat pooling around him on the stone like something spilled. His face was composed in its usual flat observation, but the lines bracketing his mouth were deeper than usual and there was a tightness around his eyes she wasn’t used to seeing.

  The light from the imp’s rod cast strange shadows up his cheekbones, carving them sharper.

  “I have seen a great many things on this ring.” he said. “But I will admit, that particular interruption was… disquieting.”

  “Disquieting.” the imp echoed, with relish. “He means it scared him.”

  The Auditor did not dignify that with a reaction.

  “It just cut you off.” he went on. “Mid-return, mid-reading. No transition, no error from the tower’s side. You simply… vanished. I called the imp to check your ‘vitals’.” he added, tasting the unfamiliar living-word like it might bite.

  The imp beamed under the mention.

  “That’s me.” he said proudly. “Vitals. Structural integrity. Spiritual latency. Hook conductivity. Basically if it’s twitching, burning, humming, leaking, or making any interesting noises, I poke it.”

  He leaned in again and shone the glyph-light straight into her left eye.

  Her pupil tried to close, even as the beam insisted on getting in.

  “Follow the light.” he said. “Or don’t. I’ll see the difference.”

  She squinted, tracking the glare as he moved his wrist, the rod sweeping from side to side. Her head felt thick, thoughts sluggish, like they’d been caught in cold syrup. Under the drag of that, the hook buzzed, steady and low. Not its usual outward drag. That was the first thing she checked for. But it was there. Present. Anchored.

  Still there.

  Still hers.

  She hoped.

  “Look at that.” the imp cooed. “Reactive pupils, reasonably focused. No obvious dissociation from the ring’s hum. Heartnote high but within acceptable ranges.”

  He tilted his head, ears flicking, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.

  “Signal never dropped.” he added. “Impressive, really. Usually when someone yanks themselves off the grid that hard, we lose at least a few bars.”

  “What?” she croaked.

  Her tongue felt like someone else’s. Her throat was dry.

  The imp made a pleased little sound.

  “Vocal function intact.” he said. “Raspy, but that’s Hell for you.”

  The Auditor’s hand loosened on her shoulder, just enough that she could push against it without going anywhere.

  She swallowed, tried again.

  “What did it look like?” she asked. “From here.”

  The Auditor regarded her for a beat.

  “You took one step too many.” he said. “Your heel found stone. Your toes did not. You began to fall. I reached.”

  His fingers flexed once against her shoulder, as if remembering the moment they hadn’t quite closed on time.

  “And then,” he went on. “the line went dead.”

  She stared at him.

  “The line.” she repeated.

  He gave the smallest shrug.

  “It is the closest concept.” he said. “The tower’s connection to you. The way it hears you when you are out in the seams. The way it pulls you back. It is… not quite a line. Not quite a hook. But when it fails, it fails in ways we understand.”

  “It didn’t fail.” the imp put in. “That’s the fun part. No tower error. No glitch in the ring, no hiccup in the shaft. All green on my side. She just went… silent. Somewhere between… there and here.”

  He twirled the rod in his fingers, the light spinning with it.

  “We don’t like it when things go silent.” he said. “It usually means paperwork.”

  She almost laughed.

  The sound came out thin and frayed around the edges but it was still a sound.

  “Lucky you.” she said. “I’m very alive, apparently. No paperwork required. Stand down.”

  The imp’s grin widened.

  “Oh, I don’t do paperwork.” he said. “I do boxes on forms that say ‘functional’ or ‘non-functional’. You are currently ticking ‘functional with caveats’.”

  He flicked the rod off with a small twist. The glyphs sank back into the bone and brass, light folding into itself until only a faint red ember remained at the tip.

  Without that glare in her eyes, the world sharpened.

  The ring. The shaft. The railing she had nearly gone over. The faint smudge on the stone where her shoulder had smeared dust. The Auditor’s coat. The imp’s tail.

  Her own hands, one braced against the ground, one hovering automatically over the place under her ribs where the hook echoed.

  She pushed herself up on her elbow.

  The Auditor’s hand slid from her shoulder to her upper arm, keeping pace, still steady.

  She sat up halfway.

  The world tilted for a moment, a slow see-saw, but it didn’t go away. The hum stayed. The heat stayed. The imp stayed, perched easily on his heels, watching her like a child watches a beetle right itself.

  “I guess everything’s fine.” she said.

  Her voice sounded almost normal now, dry but hers. Fine was a ridiculous word here, but it came anyway.

  “I just had to fight my demons.” she added. “And I honestly don’t think I won. Again.”

  The imp made a delighted noise.

  “Demons.” he said. “That’s us. How flattering.”

  “Not you.” she said. “Different kind. Less useful.”

  The Auditor’s mouth did a strange thing.

  It almost twitched.

  The imp rocked back on his heels, laughing under his breath.

  “Right.” he said. “On that note, I am going to file my report before whatever is happening here infects my instruments.”

  He tapped the side of his head twice.

  A faint, precise chime answered, somewhere in the air.

  “Subject remains structurally sound.” he said briskly, his tone shifting into something clipped and professional. “Hook attachment uncompromised. No visible bleed or burn. Core hum in sync with tower. Minor internal irregularities noted, but all within… well, let’s say experimental tolerances.”

  He glanced at her as he said it, eyes bright.

  “Conclusion.” he went on. “Interruption originated on operator’s end, not infrastructure. Recommend observation but no immediate quarantine. Also recommend coffee, if anyone ever lets us have any.”

  There was another faint chime, like a box being ticked somewhere very far away.

  The Auditor inclined his head once, a small nod of acknowledgement to something she couldn’t see.

  “You heard it.” he said to her. “All on my end.”

  Her mouth twisted.

  “Of course it is.” she said. “Wouldn’t want the tower to take the blame for my… episodes.”

  The imp hopped lightly to his feet in one fluid motion.

  He came up only to mid-thigh against the Auditor’s height, but he filled the space between them with easy, unbothered presence.

  “If you feel like exploding, dissolving, dissolving into exploding, or sprouting additional heads.” he said cheerfully. “Please holler. Or don’t. I’ll probably feel it.”

  He gave her a small bow, tail looping behind him in an elegant arc.

  “Try not to fall off anything for at least the next hour.” he added. “My lunch break is sacred.”

  He padded away across the ring, steps quick and light, humming tunelessly under his breath. A moment later he was swallowed by the curve of the tower, vanishing from view as if he’d never been there.

  The light on the tip of his rod winked once before it went.

  The absence he left behind was strangely loud.

  Without the imp’s chatter, the hum rose back into primary place. The heat pressed close again. The shaft sang its low, constant note.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Auditor still hadn’t moved.

  His hand remained on her arm, weight measured. Not holding her down anymore, not really. Just there. Contact and anchor, in case she tried standing up and gravity remembered it had opinions.

  Then, with deliberate care, he shifted his grip.

  He slid his hand from her arm to the back of her upper shoulder and then up to the base of her neck, fingers warm against the tight muscles there. His other hand came under her elbow.

  “Up.” he said quietly. “Slowly.”

  She let him pull.

  Her legs remembered how to work somewhere around the second attempt. The first time they folded under her like damp paper. The second time, they took some of her weight and decided not to collapse again.

  He eased her onto her feet.

  The ring tilted again, then steadied.

  The railing stood a few feet away, blandly nonchalant. The shaft gaped. The breakthrough point where she’d gone over an instant and a lifetime ago looked exactly the same as every other piece of stone.

  “Here.” the Auditor said.

  He steered her away from the edge.

  Not harshly. Not with the kind of force he used when he dragged other souls back from the railing or kept them from bolting. This was… insistent. Firm.

  His hand stayed at the back of her neck, fingers spanning the vulnerable place where skull met spine. It should have felt like a threat.

  It felt like the opposite.

  He didn’t stop until they’d crossed the ring to the desk.

  The desk sat where it always sat, a squat block of dark wood bolted into the stone, drawer slightly crooked from centuries of being slammed. The chair behind it was the same unforgiving thing she’d spent hours in, listening to his assessments.

  Today, someone had pulled it a little back from the desk. Making space. Leaving room.

  He guided her down into it.

  She half-sat, half-fell.

  The chair caught her. The sudden support jarred the hook. It thumped once in protest and then settled, a sulky weight.

  She realised only when his hand left her neck that she’d been leaning into it more than she thought.

  Without that touch, she felt weirdly lighter and less held together all at once.

  The Auditor did not take his usual place on the other side of the desk.

  He didn’t stand looming over her, or sit opposite her in his high-backed chair with the ledger between them like a neutral third party.

  Instead, he dropped down into a crouch beside her.

  It was an awkward position for someone his height, all knees and folded angles, but he made it look deliberate. He braced one forearm on the seat of the chair, close to her hip, bringing his face level with hers.

  From here she could see the fine details of him. The faint crosshatching of old lines at the corners of his eyes. The way one strand of his dark hair had escaped the strict tie at the back and fallen forward against his temple. The tiny nick in his lower lip where he’d once bitten it hard enough to break the skin.

  None of that had registered before.

  He looked at her.

  Not the way he looked at the newly dead, or the way he looked at the Interpreter when they argued about rulings. Those looks were assessments, precise and functional. This one was… searching.

  “I am going to ask you some questions.” he said. “And I would very much appreciate it if, for once, you did not answer me with deflection, sarcasm, or an outright lie.”

  “That narrows down my options.” she said.

  His mouth tightened.

  “Humour.” he said. “Noted.”

  He lifted his free hand, palm up, and then lowered it again without actually touching her.

  “What happened?” he asked quietly. “Between there and here.”

  She stared past his shoulder at the shaft for a moment.

  Just long enough to see the red glyphs creep upwards.

  Just long enough to give herself one more heartbeat of delay.

  Then she dragged her attention back to him.

  “Diagnostics.” she said. “Like you said. The tower ran a… pop-up. ‘Your operator is behaving unusually. Click here to review settings.’”

  It was automatic, the way the words shaped themselves into that same joke she’d thrown at the other girl in the glass.

  Except this time, the other girl wasn’t here to roll her eyes and call her on it.

  The Auditor’s gaze didn’t waver.

  “Try again.” he said. “With fewer metaphors.”

  She swallowed.

  Her throat felt tight.

  “There was… nothing.” she said slowly. “At first. No seam. No room. No other people’s air. It was like being dropped into a blank page.”

  She could feel it again even as she said it. The absence of walls. The absence of smell. The way her voice had gone nowhere, circling back into her skull.

  “The hook was still there.” she went on. “But pulling in, not out. And then the line of light. The glass.”

  She saw his eyes flick, just once, down to the hand she had pressed over her ribs.

  “The glass.” he repeated.

  “A pane.” she said. “Floating. Mirror. Only it wasn’t.”

  Part of her wanted to stop.

  To wrap the rest of it in silence and shove it back into whatever corner she’d kept that girl in for years. To tell him that was all, that it had been a simple visual glitch, a meaningless stress dream between seams.

  But the hook pulsed, a warning.

  And the Auditor was still crouched there, close enough that she could see how much this unnerved him.

  He had called an imp. He had said scared.

  If you wanted to be treated like an adult, some therapist’s voice said from a long time ago, you had to act like one.

  “She looked like me.” she said. “Same face. Same… everything. Except the eyes.”

  She made herself meet his.

  “The red wasn’t just the ring anymore.” she said. “It had seeped through. Cracks in the iris. Reaching in.”

  His jaw shifted, a tiny movement.

  “And this… other version of you.” he said. “Spoke.”

  “Oh yes.” she said. “She was very talkative.”

  “And what did she say.” he asked.

  “Nothing important.” she said. “Just the usual. You’re pathetic. You split yourself in two to survive your childhood. You used me for years and then killed us both because you didn’t want to deal with the mess anymore. You know. Bedtime stories.”

  The words came out too fast, lined with an edge that wasn’t aimed at him.

  He did not flinch.

  “What do you mean,” he said. “you split yourself?”

  She let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

  “You know how it is.” she said. “Some kids get imaginary friends. I got a disaster.”

  “That is not an answer.” he said.

  “I thought we agreed you were not getting a lie.” she said. “You didn’t say anything about shorthand.”

  His hand moved.

  He placed it, very deliberately, on the arm of the chair, just beside her elbow. Not quite touching. Just close. A solid line in the corner of her vision.

  “When you arrived,” he said slowly. “the Interpreter informed me there were… complexities. She suggested there was more than one ‘you’ available. The tower took the one that looked… most useful.”

  He studied her face.

  “I suspected.” he added. “It was not a clean cut.”

  She stared at him.

  “You knew.” she said. “You knew there was another… half. And you still sent me into people’s worst moment like this was some kind of… exposure therapy.”

  His mouth flattened.

  “What was I supposed to do?” he asked. “Refuse the tower. Send back its specialist because she came with… complications.”

  “Yes.” she said. “That would have been a thought.”

  His eyes cooled.

  “You are very quick to advocate for your own removal from circulation.” he said. “First upstairs, now here. I am beginning to detect a pattern.”

  Her chest went tight.

  “That is not the same.” she said.

  “Is it not.” he said.

  “Upstairs I was…” she began. “I was drowning. In myself. In all the things I’d done, all the things I was afraid I’d do again. I thought ending it would be the kindest thing I could do for everyone. Here I am… functional. Mostly. Useful, apparently. There are… constraints.”

  “You say that like they are a guarantee.” he said.

  “They are better than what I had.” she said.

  “Unless you bring what you had with you.” he said quietly.

  She looked away.

  Her eyes landed on the desk.

  On the small nick near the front edge where she’d once dug a fingernail in hard enough to mark the wood. On the faint ring from a cup the Interpreter had put down there, centuries of use pressed into the grain.

  Solid things.

  Uncomplicated things.

  “She was right.” she said.

  The words felt like stepping off another ledge.

  “The glass girl.” she added. “She was right about… most of it. I split myself because I couldn’t make the world make sense any other way. Good me, bad me. The one who tried and the one who burned it all down when trying didn’t work. I used that split as an excuse for everything.”

  She could see it all again.

  Windowsills under her palms. Phone screens lighting up with apologies she wanted to believe. Bottles. Doors. Her own face in mirrors, unfamiliar and too much.

  “And when it got too heavy,” she said softly. “when I got too tired of not knowing which one I was going to be when I woke up. I made a decision.”

  Her fingers dug into her own thigh through the fabric.

  “I didn’t trip into death.” she went on. “I walked. I chose the quietest way I could think of and told myself it was mercy.”

  Silence settled around them.

  The hum kept going. The glyphs kept climbing.

  The Auditor did not look away from her once.

  “And here.” he said. “In this… diagnostic. You met the part of ‘you’ you had been trying to leave behind.”

  “Yes.” she said.

  “And she wanted… what?” he asked. “Revenge. Control. Your seat at the desk?”

  “She wanted in.” she said. “Not to take the wheel. Not entirely. She wanted a seat in the room. A say. She was very clear on the distinction.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “And you refused.” he said.

  “Of course I refused.” she snapped. “I have spent years of a human life and however long down here trying not to be her. I didn’t claw my way through sobriety and therapy and apologies and then jump off a cliff just to open the door and say, ‘Welcome back, please ruin everything again.’”

  His voice didn’t rise.

  “If she is you.” he said. “She will not go away because you close the door.”

  “She did.” she said. “I put her in a box and threw it to the bottom of my head and she stayed there.”

  “For a while.” he said.

  “Yes.” she said. “For a while. And then I broke us. So clearly that plan has its drawbacks, I know, thank you for the insight.”

  He was quiet for a long beat.

  The hum went on without caring. The shaft breathed heat up the centre of the tower. Somewhere far below, something screamed and cut off.

  When he finally spoke, his voice had shifted.

  “I am not here to punish you for the ways you survived.” he said. “Or for the way you ended it.”

  She blinked.

  “That’s rich.” she said. “This being… Hell.”

  “This being Hell.” he agreed. “Punishment is ambient. It does not need my help. I am here to make sure we do not waste what we are given in the process.”

  “We.” she said.

  “Yes.” he said. “We.”

  She stared at him.

  “You’re including yourself in my disaster.” she said.

  “I am including myself in your situation.” he said. “Which is, whether either of us likes it, also my situation. The tower tied us to the same ring. Your choices affect my work. My choices affect your… existence. Pretending otherwise is another kind of split.”

  She looked down at her hands.

  They were steadier now. The shaking had gone from visible to internal, like a shiver sunk under the skin.

  “What are you saying.” she asked. “Exactly.”

  He drew in a slow breath.

  When he let it out, some of the ice in his posture went with it.

  “You are going to have to decide what you do with her.” he said. “The one in the glass. The one you tried to drown. No one can do that for you. Not the Interpreter. Not the tower. Not me. It is your mind. Your history. Your split.”

  Her stomach lurched.

  “I just decided.” she said. “I told her no.”

  “Yes.” he said. “You did. And look how well she took that.”

  She thought of cracks racing across glass like lightning.

  “Exactly.” she said. “So maybe decisions are overrated.”

  “Maybe.” he said. “But you will make them anyway. It is what you do. It is what the hook is for.”

  She almost said that the hook was for dragging her into other people’s nightmares, not her own.

  He went on before she could.

  “I will support you.” he said.

  She frowned.

  “In what?” she said. “Specifically. Because that is the kind of sentence that sounds good and means nothing.”

  “In whatever you choose to attempt.” he said. “If you decide you will try to speak to her again, I will not stop you. If you decide you will never willingly open that… door, I will not pry at it with questions until it splinters. If you decide you want to learn how to work with her instead of pretending she is a separate creature, I will do what I can to make sure the tower does not tear you apart for the experiment.”

  She stared.

  “For someone who allegedly has no control,” she said. “you are offering an alarming amount of… backup.”

  “I have influence.” he said. “Not control. There is a difference. I can argue. I can allocate work. I can tell the imps to adjust their… metrics. I can choose not to throw you into four seams in a row when you can barely sit up. These are not nothing.”

  Her throat tightened.

  “Why?” she said.

  He frowned.

  “You are going to have to be more specific.” he said.

  “Why support me.” she said. “Whatever I decide. Why not do what everyone else did upstairs and tell me exactly what the right choice is and then get offended when I fail to live up to it.”

  Something like irritation flickered across his face.

  “Because I am not ‘everyone else’ from upstairs.” he said. “And because I have seen what happens when people are told there is only one acceptable way to exist. It produces… more of you.”

  “Charming.” she said.

  “It was not an insult.” he said. “It was an observation.”

  He shifted, his weight pressing a little more into the arm of the chair.

  “But understand this.” he added. “My support does not erase consequence. It does not insulate you from the shape of what you carry.”

  “There it is.” she said. “I was wondering when the lecture would arrive.”

  “This is not a lecture.” he said. “This is… context.”

  “Sounds like a lecture.” she said.

  “You ask why I still send you into seams.” he said, overriding her. “Why I did not refuse you when the tower sent you down. You talk as though this job were a favour bestowed on you. A… second chance to prove you are good. It is not.”

  Her spine stiffened.

  “Thank you.” she said. “I was really hoping you would tell me my job in Hell is not actually about my redemption. That’s very comforting.”

  He ignored that too.

  “This ring.” he said. “This hook. This ridiculous apparatus. It is not for you. It is for them.”

  He tilted his head slightly toward the shaft.

  Another distant scream floated up, cut into a whimper, then vanished.

  “The ones who fall.” he said. “The ones who teeter on the brink. The ones who never had anyone on the bathroom floor with them to say, ‘Stop.’ The ones the tower wants processed and filed and dropped. You stand between them and the simplest outcome. That is not mercy. That is not cruelty. That is… responsibility.”

  The word landed heavy.

  She looked away.

  “I know that.” she said. “I am literally here. I watch them. I listen. I say yes or no and then they go screaming or walking or whatever the tower does with the ones I manage to convince it to spare. I am very aware that my choices matter.”

  “You are aware that they matter.” he said. “To your shame. To your fear. To your idea of yourself. I am not always convinced you remember they matter to them.”

  She flinched.

  “That’s unfair.” she said.

  “Is it.” he said.

  “I care.” she said. “About what happens to them. I care too much. That’s half the problem. I see myself in every one of them and it makes me… stupid.”

  “Yes.” he said. “Exactly. You care because you see yourself. When you don’t, you are… efficient. Detached. Very close to the tower’s preference. When you do, you drag your own history into their file and try to write a different ending for yourself in their ink.”

  “That’s how empathy works.” she said. “Or did they not cover that in Auditor School.”

  “This is not empathy.” he said. “This is… self-referential guilt.”

  “Is this where you tell me to stop.” she said. “Because that’s not going to happen. This is how my brain works. I only understand people by seeing which of my own wounds they match.”

  “I am not telling you to stop.” he said. “I am telling you that if you insist on doing it that way, you need to remember the cost of your… projections. On them. Not just on you.”

  She rubbed her thumb over the ridge of her knuckles.

  “So.” she said. “Let me check I’ve got this straight. You are going to keep sending me into seams because the tower wants its specialist. You are going to stand there and watch for when I start projecting my issues onto the freshly dead. You are going to support whatever I decide to do about the girl in the glass, as long as I remember that the consequences don’t stop at the edge of my own skin. And in exchange I… what. Tell you when I feel like setting things on fire for fun instead of for fairness.”

  “And you stop pretending that there is a version of you that is innocent of everything you cannot bear to own.” he said. “Yes.”

  She barked out a laugh.

  It hurt her throat.

  “You always did know how to sell a deal.” she said.

  “This is not a deal.” he said. “It is a reality. You can accept it, or you can refuse it and proceed exactly as you were. The tower will continue to use you. Your other self will continue to look for cracks. I will continue to stand on this ring and count how many of the people we drop match your shape.”

  She closed her eyes.

  The nothing came back, for a moment. The blank. The glass. The other girl’s eyes, threaded with red.

  I want in.

  She opened her eyes again.

  The ring. The heat. The Auditor, still crouched, still watching.

  “If I… try.” she said slowly. “To… not be two. Or to be two without pretending one of us is a ghost. And it goes wrong. If she gets out in a way we can’t drag back. If I start dropping people for the wrong reasons. What then.”

  He did not answer immediately.

  When he did, his voice was very flat.

  “Then it will be my responsibility to stop you.” he said.

  She looked at him.

  “Stop me.” she repeated.

  “Yes.” he said. “Pull you off the ring. Cut your access to the seams. Ask the tower to take back its hook. Whatever is necessary to keep you from doing more harm than good.”

  The idea of the hook gone made something inside her lurch sideways.

  She was not sure if it was horror or relief.

  “Can you do that?” she asked. “Actually.”

  “I do not know.” he said. “I have never tried. I would prefer not to find out.”

  “You’re very calm about the possibility of having to… end me.” she said.

  He held her gaze.

  “I am not calm.” he said. “I am… resolved. There is a difference.”

  Something in his face had tightened, the line of his mouth held like a door shut against a storm.

  She believed him.

  “Okay.” she said.

  He blinked.

  “Okay.” he repeated.

  “I heard you.” she said. “That’s all. I… understand. I don’t like it. But I understand.”

  “And?” he asked.

  “And.” she echoed.

  “And your choice?” he asked.

  She laughed again, softer this time.

  “You want me to decide what to do with the demon in my chest ten minutes after I almost fell into the shaft.” she said. “You are very ambitious.”

  “I want you to decide whether you will pretend she does not exist.” he said. “Or whether you will stop doing that. The details can… wait.”

  She looked down at the place under her ribs where the hook sat.

  The ache there had become a constant, like the tower’s hum.

  In the back of her mind, in the place the glass had cracked, she could feel a presence. Not pressing. Not pushing. Just… there.

  “I am very tired.” she said.

  “I know.” he said.

  “I have been very tired for a very long time.” she said. “Upstairs, down here, in the blank. I am tired of being at war with myself. I am tired of pretending that if I just pick the right side and kill the other, everything will be neat. It never is.”

  “No.” he said. “It is not.”

  She exhaled slowly.

  “Fine.” she said. “I will stop pretending she is not me.”

  The words felt like swallowing glass.

  “I am not promising… more than that yet.” she added quickly. “I am not promising some grand integration. I am not promising I’ll invite her to sit on the ring and hold my hand while I make rulings. I am just… acknowledging that whatever she does next, I cannot wash my hands of it.”

  “That is enough.” he said.

  “For you.” she said. “For now.”

  “For now.” he agreed.

  He pushed himself to his feet, joints unfolding with suspicious ease.

  The chair creaked as her weight shifted.

  “I will adjust your docket.” he said. “No seams for at least the next cycle. You will stay on the ring. We will see how the hook behaves under observation.”

  “And if the tower complains?” she asked.

  “The tower is welcome to file a grievance.” he said. “In triplicate.”

  She snorted.

  “I’d pay to see that paperwork.” she said.

  “You will not.” he said. “There is a reason I do not let you in the archives.”

  He stepped back, giving her space.

  The chair felt less like a trap and more like a… place, now. Not safe. There was no safe here. But anchored.

  He turned toward the shaft for a moment, as if listening.

  “The next soul is still some way down.” he said. “You have time.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “To breathe.” he said.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I’m dead.” she said. “Breathing is optional.”

  “Humour.” he said. “Still noted.”

  He moved to his side of the desk at last, hands finding their usual place on the worn wood.

  She sat there, feeling the hook hum, feeling the faint echo of another hum layered under it.

  Not alone.

  Not neat.

  Not fixed.

  But… known.