"We need to move."
Kieran's already on his feet. The blood on his shirt's still wet, but that gray dying look is gone.
I'm still on the floor. Still holding the shard. It's burning into my palm like it wants to burrow through bone, and I can't let go. Won't. Every pulse matches my heartbeat—and something else underneath. Something that isn't mine.
His heartbeat, maybe. The bond thing he shoved on me.
"The shield won't last," he says.
"Where?" My voice comes out flat. Dead. I'm still seeing it. Elise's hands on his chest. Her face when she shoved him through that door—terrified. Not for herself. For him.
"Anywhere but here." He grabs my elbow, pulls me up. His grip's solid. Warm.
Alive because I bled for him.
I yank my arm away. "Don't touch me."
"Mara—"
"She died for you." The words taste like acid. "My sister died getting you out, and you what? Ran? Hid? Let Dorian Kells walk around like he didn't murder her?"
Kieran goes still.
For a second I think he's gonna lie again. Spin some new story.
But his jaw tightens and he looks at me with those too-sharp eyes. "Yes."
The honesty hits worse than another lie would've.
"I ran," he says. "I hid. I've spent two years trying not to die long enough to finish what she started." He touches his side where the wound's still healing. "That door she pushed me through? Locked from the other side. Sealed. Your sister used her own access codes to open it, and the second I was through, she locked it again. Dorian couldn't follow."
He pauses.
"But he could still reach her."
"Stop." I don't want the details. Don't want to see it.
"You need to hear this." His voice drops. Gets quieter. Sharper. "Elise knew what she was doing. She had the shard—the real one, the master key. She broke it into pieces before Dorian could take it. Sent them through different doors across the city."
He nods at my fist.
"This one—she threw it to me as the door closed. Told me to find her sister." His eyes lock on mine. "Told me you were the only one who could finish it."
My throat closes up. "I'm nobody. I answer phones for the city. I can barely pay rent."
"Your blood opened the bond." He steps closer. Careful. Like I'm a spooked animal. "Your blood works on the shard. That means you've got Registry lineage whether you know it or not. Elise knew."
He stops right in front of me.
"That's why she sent me to you."
I wanna throw the shard at his face. Wanna scream that my sister should've saved herself, not some runaway thief with a death wish.
But my hand won't open.
The shard pulses again. Hotter now. The air around us shimmers, and that burned-metal smell gets stronger.
"Shit." Kieran's head snaps toward the busted door. "They're cycling the wards. We've got maybe two minutes before the shield drops and every Registry hound in the district shows up."
"Then run." I shove past him toward the kitchen. My kitchen. My apartment. The place I've lived since Elise disappeared. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell this thing is."
I hold up the shard.
It's slick with my blood. Edges sharp enough to cut glass. Black like volcanic glass but lighter. Wrong. The kind of wrong that makes your teeth ache.
Kieran exhales through his nose. "It's a key. Part of one."
"A key to what?"
"The old city—before the Registry took over—had doors that went places. Not just buildings. Places." He glances at the window. The streetlights outside are still dark. The blackout hasn't lifted. "Sealed zones. Memory vaults. Elise was an archivist. She found out the Registry wasn't just locking doors to keep people out."
He looks back at me.
"They were locking them to keep things in."
"Things."
"Truths. Records. Proof of what this city used to be before they rewrote it." His voice gets harder. "The Registry sells themselves as protection. Order. Safety. But they're running a cage, Mara. And the doors are the bars."
I don't wanna believe him.
Don't wanna think my sister died over some conspiracy theory.
But the shard's warm in my hand, and I can feel something under my feet.
A vibration. Low. Rhythmic.
Like a pulse.
"Do you feel that?" My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to.
Kieran's eyes lock on mine. "Yeah."
The vibration gets stronger.
The floor creaks. Not settling. Not old building noises.
This is something else.
Kieran moves fast, pulling me back toward the wall. "Don't step in the center of the room."
"Why—"
The floorboards split.
Not break. Split. Like something's unzipping them from underneath. A line of black spreads across the floor, widening, and the wood curls back like paper. No splinters. No dust. Just smooth impossible edges and darkness underneath.
A door.
Opening under my floor.
"Oh hell." Kieran's voice has an edge I haven't heard before. Fear, maybe. "It's responding to the shard. Mara, you need to close your hand. Stop feeding it blood."
I look down.
The cut on my palm's still open. Still dripping. The shard drinks it in, pulsing brighter, and the black door yawns wider.
I curl my fingers shut, but it's too late.
The door's fully open now. A hole in my floor leading down into nothing. No basement. No foundation.
Just black.
And then I hear it.
Three knocks.
Slow. Deliberate.
From the other side.
My breath stops.
I know that knock.
Elise and I made it up when we were kids. Three knocks, rhythm like a heartbeat. Our secret signal. The one we used when we wanted to sneak into each other's rooms without Mom hearing.
No one else knows that knock.
Kieran goes rigid beside me. "Mara. Don't."
But I'm already moving toward the edge of the door.
The black's so deep it swallows the light from the streetlamp outside. I can't see anything down there. Nothing. Just dark and that vibration humming up through the floorboards into my knees.
The three knocks come again.
Slower this time.
Like whoever's down there is waiting.
"Elise?" My voice cracks. "Is that—"
"It's not her." Kieran grabs my wrist, pulls me back. Hard. "It can't be her. She's gone. This is the Registry. They're using the doors to track the shard. If you answer—"
The knocks come a third time.
And this time I hear it.
A voice. Faint. Muffled by distance and darkness and two years of believing she was dead.
"Rem."
My childhood nickname.
The one only Elise used.
The shard flares hot enough to burn, and I drop it. It hits the floor and skitters toward the open door, trailing sparks of black light.
Kieran dives for it. His fingers close around the shard just as it reaches the edge, and he yanks it back, shoves it into his pocket.
The second it's out of my hand, the door starts to close.
The black line zips shut. Floorboards sealing like they were never broken.
But the knocking doesn't stop.
It's under the floor now. Under the whole room. Three knocks. Over and over. Louder.
Kieran hauls me toward the busted front door. "Move. Now."
I can't.
My legs won't work.
Because I know what I heard.
That was Elise's voice.
And she's under the city, knocking on a door I just opened.
"Mara!" Kieran's grip tightens on my arm. "We don't have time—"
"She's alive." I twist toward him, and I don't care that my voice is shaking. "That was her. I heard her. She called me Rem. No one else—"
"It's bait." His face is pale. Sweat beading at his temple. "The Registry knows what you want to hear. They've got archivists who can pull memories out of blood. Your blood's all over that shard. They're using it to—"
The knocking stops.
The silence is worse.
Kieran freezes. His hand's still on my arm, but he's not pulling anymore. He's listening.
I'm listening.
Nothing. Just my heartbeat and his breath and the hum of the shard in his pocket.
And then—
A crack.
Louder than the knocking. Sharper. Like ice splitting under weight.
The floorboards in the center of the room buckle.
"Run," Kieran says.
The floor explodes upward.
Not wood. Not splinters. Black glass, sharp and gleaming, erupting from the center of my apartment like a frozen wave. It punches through the ceiling, through the walls, spreading in jagged branches that glitter under the streetlight.
And in the center of it, rising from the hole where the door was—
A hand.
Pale. Slender. Fingers stretched toward the ceiling like it's reaching for air.
Wearing the silver ring Elise never took off.
The one with our initials carved inside.
Kieran's dragging me backward, shouting something I can't hear over the sound of glass cracking and my own pulse roaring in my ears.
But I can't look away.
Because the hand is moving.
Closing into a fist.
And knocking three times on the floor.
"Rem," the voice says again. Clearer now. Closer.
Coming from under the city.
Coming up.
"Let me in.