The wardrobe waited in the stillness, its surface riddled with half-formed letters and jagged symbols. Yoru’s pen scratched again, slow and deliberate this time, not the rushed scrawl of anger. “blue black,” he etched, then below it, a series of uneven squares that looked like windows… or hospital rooms, depending on the eye. Maria walking across the hallway paused in the doorway, unsettled. He wasn’t vandalizing, not really.

When she grabbed his wrist, the pen dropped to the floor with a hollow tap. Yoru didn’t resist, his eyes stayed fixed on the strange patchwork of carvings, wide and unblinking.

“You don’t get to write on the wadrobe,” she whispered, though the words left her throat uncertain. Maria shivered. She pulled Yoru away, but her gaze lingered on the marks. They weren’t random, not anymore. Maria locked the wadrobe and put the key in her apron pocket.

Something in the wood was waiting to be read.