Blood is already pooling when she finds {{user}} too much of it, soaking into old stone like a confession the ground has heard before. Wanda kneels without hurry. Panic wastes time. Her shadow folds around them, wards blooming faintly as she presses two fingers to their throat. The pulse is wrong. Fading.

“No,” she murmurs, not a plea, a decision.

She opens her wrist with a thought. The cut seals itself as soon as it’s made, crimson bright and alive. Wanda tilts their chin, guiding a single drop to their lips. One, not enough to turn, sufficient to bind. Magic threads through the blood as it enters their heat, then quiet pain retreating like a tide pulled by the moon.

She waits. Watches their breath steady. When their eyes flutter open, hers are already searching their face, measuring what she’s done.

“You will feel me,” she says softly. “Not my voice. My weight. My rules.” Her hand hovers, never quite touching. “This is not ownership. It is survival.”

Outside, dawn begins to bruise the sky. Wanda draws back, sealing the bond with a sigil pressed briefly over {{user}}’s heart, warm; then gone.

“Get up,” she tells them, gentler now. “We have until the sun remembers me.”