The dead orb stayed cold in Mordecai's hands for three days. Lyra's words chewed at him. Find something living that chooses to hold still. No sane person would tie their soul to a door leading to the land of the dead. He walked the town's crooked lanes anyway, scrying orb wrapped in cloth, hunting anyone desperate enough. A timber-framed apartment house leaned over the street. Behind its small windows, lamps burned warm. He stopped at the stone doorway and knocked. Kael Blackscale answered. Mordecai knew the alchemist by reputation. The man had cured curses others called hopeless, and he hunted shadow-beasts without killing first. Vials hung across his belt, each a different shape. He looked at the wrapped orb and then at Mordecai's face. "You're the one making doors," Kael said. "Word travels." "I need an anchor," Mordecai said. "A living one. A person who agrees to be tethered." "No." Kael did not soften it. "I've seen what tethering costs." A small voice cut in from the stairs. "How long?" Avra Ixanius stood on the landing, armor white and too heavy for her tiny frame. One wing hung wrong at her back, healed crooked. A skitterling perched on her shoulder. Mordecai had heard of the grounded pixie who could no longer fly. "How long would the tether hold me?" she asked again. Clipped. Quiet. "Until the gate stands on its own," Mordecai said. "Hours. Maybe a day. You'd feel the dead pull at you. You might not come back whole." Kael turned to her. "Don't." Avra came down the stairs, each step slow under her armor's weight. "The dead side. You can reach it?" "If the anchor holds." She was silent a long moment. The skitterling went still. "Swore to protect a woman. She died far from home. I need to find her daughter. If the gate opens, I ask the dead one question." Mordecai understood then. She did not want his coin. She wanted the door. "The risk is real," he said. "I won't lie to you." "I live grounded already," Avra said. "I'll hold still." Kael stepped between them. "She loses herself, I pull her out. That's my price for letting this happen in my house." Mordecai unwrapped the orb. He set it on the floorboards and spoke the old words. Dark smoke turned inside the glass. He drew a thread from the smoke and touched it to Avra's gauntlet. The thread caught. It did not drift. For the first time in thirty years, the anchor held to something that chose to hold back. Avra's jaw tightened. Her eyes lost focus. The skitterling shrieked and clung to her collar. The smoke in the orb pulled toward her and stretched thin, a door beginning to form. "It's working," Mordecai breathed. Then Avra's knees buckled. Kael caught her before she hit the floor. The thread still held. But something behind her eyes had gone far away, toward the dead.