🔑 Bonus Scene
The Ritual Requires Two
Cass
The rite is simple, the grimoire says, if you have someone willing to be undone alongside you. It does not mention that the willingness is the hard part.
He kneels across the salt circle from me, candlelight cutting his face into something I have wanted since before I had words for wanting. Neither of us looks away. That is the first offering: the refusal to flinch.
The fog comes in under the door. The candles gutter. And in the dark, the thing we summon is only the truth we have both been drowning: that we were always going to end up here, unmade, together.
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