The Clerk-Under-Mask points at the red flicker on the floor, where the fading script seems almost harmless. Then the pattern tightens, like a hand closing around a hidden key.

Bren stiffens in the doorway as the script flares once, showing Kynes's command shape inside it, clean and exact. The lattice has not lost the order, it has memorized it.

The red lines crawl back into the cracks, leaving only a dim stain. But the stain now feels like a mask, ready to wear Kynes's authority in his place.

Bren turns to Kynes, alarm sharp on her face, while the floor keeps its innocent silence. House Xar's retaliation has been here all along, hiding inside the thing they thought was breaking.

Kynes lowers to one knee and presses his palm flat to the stained stone. The seal on his hand answers at once, cold and clean, and the hidden syntax loosens from the floor like ink pulled from wet cloth.

Red threads climb his fingers, then vanish under the skin of the seal. The dormant trap loses its grip, its copied pattern thinning into harmless ash-dark flecks.

Bren exhales hard, one hand still half-raised as if expecting the floor to bite back. Instead, the crackled script goes slack, the command shape collapsing into a dull stain with no bite left in it.

Across the room, the Clerk-Under-Mask watches the last red flicker die. The hall keeps its silence, but it feels different now, emptied of a borrowed authority and waiting for Kynes's next move.