"What did he do?" Satou asked.
"He lived another sixty years. He bricked up his workshop and never spoke of it. When he was dying I asked him a single question: what do I do if it ever opens again."
She drew the knot tight.
"He said: Whatever looks back, don't give it a name."
Satou let that settle.
Then, very evenly: "It already has mine."
Morgana did not answer. She closed the trunk. The iron bands shut with a sound like a quiet door.
"Then I hope," she said, "it's polite."
——
He walked back through the dark corridor alone.
He had built a settlement out of names. Every person in it carried one he'd given them, held by him, a thousand small ropes tied to the same post.
'This,' he thought, 'is going to be an awkward conversation.'
====
Senna found it.
That was how Satou would remember the morning: not the message, but the sound Senna made at the fourth bell, which was no sound at all. A held breath, in a room where nobody had been breathing.
