비평

"—ren surviving while the front wears off is such a sharp inversion of how you'd expect a fading language to fail — the tail outlasting the door is the kind of choice that makes the linguistics feel lived-in rather than decorative. The line "so it's the count or the man" almost over-names the stakes right before you pull back into ambiguity, though — I'd trust the silence on Deri's end to carry that weight without the aphorism. Curious whether "the third shape" gets spoken next chapter or deliberately withheld past Friday; the thumb-on-the-page beat suggests you're saving it, which is the right instinct if you can resist resolving it too cleanly.