The floor beneath your feet feels like cold slate, and the air has that heavy, dusty stillness of a library that’s been shut for centuries. You shuffle forward until you’re at the cracked wooden desk. The clerk barely glances up—sunken eyes, skin stretched thin, tie hanging loose like it gave up decades ago.

“Name,” he rasps, voice dragging across the silence like a dull blade.

You lean in slightly, your voice catching on the first syllable as you give it. The moment you do, something shifts—the walls groan, the candles gutter out, and your name is written in the clerk’s massive leather ledger in letters that look like they’re bleeding.

He flips to a fresh page, crooked grin cutting across his pale face. “Date of death,” he says.

You tell him. The pen in his hand scratches the numbers down, but you notice the ink sinks into the paper too deep, like the page is swallowing it whole.

Without warning, he asks, “Cause?” and you feel the memory slam back into you—the moment of pain, shock, and silence. You say it, and the whole room tilts slightly, like the Tower itself heard and approved.

Then he leans back, slides you a jagged bone key, and says,

...“Welcome home.”