Hajin slept with warm tattoo pathways, while Aria's six-Ring ledger rested beneath a stone paperweight on the table beside his bed.
Outside the room, the Watcher sat beneath the registry wall with Ash asleep against her folded arm, because six soldiers couldn't watch him better.
Hajin woke before dawn and thought, 'The body keeps the test after the numbers are written,' touching his warm wrist, 'so a record isn't recovery.'
He entered the inner Fragment only after the Goddess opened the path herself, and the familiar darkness had changed around the broken seat.
Pale threads crossed the space above him, while gold pressure moved through them like a network deciding whether it could wake.
The Goddess stood beside the broken seat with her missing sixty percent refusing to become a face, her outline thinning wherever the darkness reached.
