Rhea unlocked the back room at first dark. The key turned heavy in her hand. Inside, stone shelves lined the walls, and a chair waited under a lamp. She had a real room now. Her first client sat in the chair, a tired woman from the temple who wanted a sigil for safe sleep. Rhea set out her needles and the dark ink Melaina had left her. Then her stomach dropped. She had never bound a true Hekate blessing into ink. On her wall, on her own skin, the workings had been practice. If she failed now, the woman would carry a hollow or broken spell for life. Starfire whined outside the store, shut out as Melaina had ordered. Rhea's hands shook. She did not trust them. She drew the sigil stencil, but the lines felt dead. No warmth. No sign the blessing would take. Melaina stepped in without knocking. She moved like someone who had worked alone since childhood. She looked at the ink bottle, then at Rhea's face. "You're not sure," she said. Not a question. "I've never done it for real," Rhea admitted. "If the working is empty, she pays for nothing." Melaina set a bottle on the shelf. Dark, enchanted ink, its depths flickering with half-seen runes. "The temple's ink. Hekate is in it already. But the goddess answers the hand, not the bottle. If your hand lies, the ink stays dead." She left the room and shut the door. Rhea understood. She blew out the lamp. She sat in the dark, the way she had before her first tattoo, and held silence as an offering. The woman in the chair breathed slow. Outside, Starfire went still. No whining. No pawing. The dark thickened. Two points of fire bloomed near the shelves, like torches held low. A voice came, plain and cold. "You fear your own hand." Hekate did not step closer. The twin lights burned steady. "The ink shows what hides in the dark. Lie, and it shows a lie. Mean it, and it holds." "Will you let me bind it?" Rhea asked. "I let anyone who means it." The lights dimmed. "Mean it." The torches went out. Rhea lit the lamp. Her hands were steady now. She dipped the needle in the dark ink and worked the first line into the woman's shoulder. The ink drank the light and held. Warmth spread under the skin, real and alive. She finished the sigil clean. The working took. She felt it settle like a held breath let go. The woman thanked her and paid in silver. Rhea's first true blessing lived in another person's skin. Melaina returned as the woman left. She studied the fresh sigil and gave a single nod. Then she set down a dead offering, bloated and wrong-colored, pulled from the altar that morning. "It worked," she said. "Now earn the room. Three died today. The poisoner is still inside these walls."