Memoria knew the ritualist's trail led out the broken door, but the people inside her would not let her go. She was many missing people pressed into one body. Her skin was pale blue, split open in places, and blood seeped through the cracks. She stood in the doorway of the jagged mansion where he had fused them. Bloody handprints marked the walls around her. She wanted to hunt the man who had done this. Every step toward the door tore the seams of her body wider. Some of the people inside her wanted to leave. She felt them lean forward, pushing her out the gate. But others wanted to stay. They pulled the other way, back into the house, back into the dark. Their pull frightened her more than anything outside. When she stepped forward, the two forces fought inside her chest. A crack along her arm widened. Blood ran down to her fingers. At the center of them all sat the child. She was small and quiet, tucked behind Memoria's ribs. Every other person had arranged themselves around her. The child did not want to leave. She only wanted someone to sit with her. When Memoria pushed toward the door, the child's fear spread through everyone who wanted to stay. That fear was the anchor. That was the thing tearing her open. Memoria stopped fighting. She sank to the floor near a fogged wall marked with gold and red handprints. Faint faces seemed to press out from the haze. She placed her hand flat against her ribs, over the child. "I'm here," she said. "I will sit with you." The pull inside her eased. The child settled. The people who wanted to stay grew calm, because the center of them was calm. The crack in Memoria's arm stopped spreading. She breathed, and for the first time her body did not fight itself. "You're doing it wrong." Memoria turned. A teenage girl stood in the doorway. Golden cracks ran across her pale blue skin, the same broken blue as Memoria's own. Her eyes were hollow and black, and blood leaked from them down her cheeks. She was one of the cracked ones. She had been split open the same way. "You can't drag them out," the girl said. Her voice was flat and sure. "They fight you. I've seen it. You have to bring the whole house with you." She wiped blood from her jaw with the back of her hand. "My name is Theyla. I've been hunting for someone cracked like me." Memoria stood slowly. This time the people inside did not tear at her. The child stayed calm, so the ones who wanted to stay stayed calm too. She could move. "Then you know who did this," Memoria said. "No," Theyla said. "But you came out of his house. So you're going to show me the way back in."

Memoria stood before the stitched bone door. The ritualist waited inside. She had followed his blood to this room, but she had nothing to fight him with. If she opened the door, he could split her open again with a word. She pressed her hand to her ribs and felt the child hold still, waiting. "We can't just walk in," Ellie said. She stared at the door with her black, weeping eyes. "He made me this way. He made all of us. He only needs to look at you." A new voice cut in from the dark hall behind them. "Then don't let him look first." A small hooded figure stepped forward. Broken horns rose from his hood. A long black scratch ran down his pale face. He carried a coil of iron thread and a pouch of salt, and he moved without fear. This was Lucian, a spirit hunter. Memoria had never met him, but she knew the look of someone who killed things like the ritualist for a living. "Who are you," Theyla said. Blood dripped from her hollow eyes. Her voice held a knife's edge. "Lucian. I trap spirits." He knelt and poured salt in a wide ring before the door. "He's a spirit now. Not a man. I've bound worse." He threaded iron through the salt in a tight circle. "Three things. Salt. Iron. His name carved on something he touched. All three, or nothing." Memoria remembered the walls. "His victims' names are cut into the bone out front," she said. "But not his." Lucian looked at her ribs. "He touched you. He touched all of you." He drew a horn shard and a small blade from his robe. "Say the room where he worked last. The freshest name. That's his mark on the world." Ellie whispered the wet name she had read on the wall. Lucian scratched it into the shard, then pressed the shard against the door where the ritualist's hand had left a smear of red. The door groaned. It swung inward on its own. The ritualist stood among blue flame faces that grinned and flickered on the walls. He lifted a hand toward Memoria. Her ribs cracked. The child screamed inside her. "Stay," Memoria gasped. "I'm wrapped around you. I won't let go." The crack held. She did not split. Lucian threw the last of the salt. The ring closed. Iron thread snapped tight around the ritualist's feet. He pulled, and could not move. His mouth opened but no word came out. The salt drank it. Theyla walked into the ring and looked at him bound and silent. "Now you can't do anything," she said. He was caught. He could not split anyone again. But bound was not dead, and he still held the ritual that stitched their names into stolen bodies. To free the missing, they needed the words to undo it. And only he knew them.