The first gate that refused me was aquatic. I knew it before we reached the seacoast, before the smell of swab crept into the air and the road smoothed into that long, straight stretch that always felt like an argument between land and ocean. The mark on my wrist did n't warm or pull. It went quiet in a way I had noway felt before, not dormant, not resting, but designedly closed, as if commodity on the other side had chosen not to admit me at all. The iron casket felt

The first name arrived written in ash. It appeared on my wrist one morning just after daylight, not burned into the skin but resting on it, argentine and fragile, as if a careless breath might scatter it. I set, hysterical that moving would abolish it before I understood what it meant. The mark beneath — the familiar branching lines had gone hugely still, holding the ash-

The iron casket began to conjure before it spoke. That was the only way I could explain the change. The house had settled into a brittle quiet after the listeners left, the kind of stillness that follows concession, when too important verity has been said audibly and the walls themselves feel to lean near to hear what comes next. Farhan slept in uneasy fractions, breath hitching now and also as if his body had n’t decided whether rest was safe. I stayed awake, seated on the bottom with my reverse against the wall, my wrist resting win- up on my knee like an immolation. The mark was dormant again, its lines faint and matte, but the

The mark stopped being silent the night the first gate stirred. I was partial asleep when the sensation snapped me awake, sharp and cold, like iron pressed straight against my modes. The room looked the same, the ceiling addict turning lazily above me, the murk unmoving, but commodity under all of it had shifted, like the ground settling after a deep fracture. I sat up, heart racing, formerly knowing this was n’t another

Sleep stopped being a place of rest after that night. It came a corridor I kept walking down whether I wanted to or not, every dream shaped by iron, gravestone, and the steady tolerance of commodity that had learned how to stay. I would wake just before dawn with the same sensation every time, the feeling that someone had been standing beside my bed, near enough to breathe, near enough to hear. Nothing was ever there when I opened my eyes, but the air always felt heavier, as if it had only just finished holding a secret. Farhan noticed it before I said anything. He said I looked like someone who had n’t just seen peril but had been

The staircase felt aged than the house above it, as if it had been sculpted long before the Rahman family ever erected their estate. Each step moaned beneath our weight, echoing into the darkness below, swallowed incontinently by air so still it felt untouched by time. My flashlight ray wobbled as we descended, the narrow walls closing in around us, the smell of iron growing thicker with every step. Farhan stayed behind me,