Chapter 7: The Fifth Locked Door and What Lives Behind It

The sound of the key was not repeated.

Maren sat in the kitchen for another twenty minutes, notebook closed on the table in front of her, waiting for it to come again — the click of tumblers, the soft protest of hinges unused to movement — but the house settled back into its particular afternoon silence and offered her nothing. Aldric did not emerge. The fog pressed against the windows with the steady patience of something that had nowhere else to be.

She made tea she did not want, because making tea gave her something to do with her hands, and because the kettle's noise covered the fact that she was listening.