“You walked every floor. You didn't pick the lock or press the button that was never meant for you — you simply came to each door and stood in front of it, the way a guest does, until the brass remembered its own shape.

This is the master key. It was always mine to give, never mine to use; a thing that hung in empty air for ninety years was only ever waiting for someone to arrive from the outside and complete the ring without being kept inside it.

So take it. Don't be careful with it. Come in the front — not as a rumor, not as a ghost between floors, but as a real, living person with a room to go up to. That's the only ending that lets the door stay open. And it lets me out.”

— Wren