Chapter 162 — "A Vein That Should Not Sing"
The song of the Fourth Vein didn't sound like music.
It sounded like laws breaking themselves.
Not words, not melody—just the pure vibration of a universe admitting it had made a mistake and begging somebody to fix it before anybody noticed.
Yue's knees dug into the scorched earth as she shielded Ne Job, bracing against the tremor. Arden planted her blade into the ground, anchoring herself as the barren field rippled like a sheet of parchment being crumpled by angry gods.
The Fourth Vein pulsed in the distance—an impossible scar carved across the sky, a wound of daylight inside midnight. It hummed with light, every pulse sending another shockwave across the jagged landscape.
Yue forced her lungs to work. "Ne Job—wake up!"
He didn't respond. His eyes fluttered, unfocused, as if he were looking at three different realities at once.
A voice drifted from the wound in the sky, long and low and unspeakable:
"…Return the balances…"
The statement wasn't sound. It was an instruction. A cosmic memo that had been lost for millennia.
Arden spat, pushing herself up, hair whipping from the magnetic storm around them. "The Vein… it's breaking protocol."
"No," Yue whispered. "It already broke it."
The wind whipped her hood aside. Every instinct screamed that this was wrong—this wasn't like Veins One, Two, or Three. The prior Veins tore space; they twisted entropy; they hissed with hidden bureaucracy.
But this one sang.
And only gods that died stupid deaths sang like this.
---
Ne Job POV
He dreamed of a desk.
Not the cracked bench they rode through mortal towns on. Not the floating administrative cubicle where gods monitored universe violations. A mundane desk—one he sat at in school. His fingers tapped a pencil. A soft, repetitive sound. Tick-tick-tick, like a heartbeat. No, like paperwork. Like a stamp that never stops.
Ne, have you filed your destiny compliance?
Ne, have you read Section 43 of the Fate Ledger?
Ne, if you continue to fail, retribution will be enacted.
Then came a sharp slam.
A red circular stamp struck the paper.
The world exploded into white.
His eyes opened.
Yue was screaming something, arms around his head as the sky tremor roared. Arden stood over them, sword pointed upward, blade vibrating like a tuning fork.
"…Job…?" Yue gasped.
He blinked. Just one blink.
Everything wrong snapped into focus.
The Fourth Vein was not singing—
it was screaming.
Screaming in bureaucratic language so old that even gods forgot how to write it.
VOIDED AUTHORITY
RETURN UNFILED DUTIES
PENALTY—FORFEIT DIVINE BEING
The messages hammered into his skull like iron stamps.
"Yue, get back," Ne rasped.
"But—"
"Back."
She froze at the tone. Not angry. Not panicked. Just… absolute.
He planted his hands on the ground and pushed himself up. Legs trembling. Blood leaking from one nostril.
The sky wound vibrated, every pulse peeling strips of reality like wet wallpaper. From its edges, script spiraled—glowing glyphs, unreadable strings, contracts written in languages older than sunlight.
Arden spoke under her breath. "Fourth Vein protocol: In the beginning there were three. A fourth was never meant to be."
Ne Job coughed once. "Because the fourth is… the Auditor."
Yue's heart stumbled. "The one Heaven erased?"
Arden didn't turn. "They didn't erase it. They misplaced it."
The sky rumbled.
Then the Vein moved.
It did not open.
It shifted vertically—like a throat, swallowing light, swallowing time, swallowing rules.
---
Third POV — The Auditor Descends
A figure drifted from the Vein.
Not falling.
Not walking.
Descending as if gravity belonged to him.
He was tall, cloaked in ledgers that moved like fur. Each feather was a page, each page covered with signatures and redacted names. An ink quill hung at his hip like a blade.
His face was calm—too calm—like the moment before a judge signs execution papers because the outcome was obvious.
Yue whispered, "He's… beautiful."
Arden corrected, voice frayed. "He is bureaucracy incarnate. There is nothing beautiful about it."
The Auditor spoke.
"Intern 0000-NE. Unfiled entity. Unauthorized reincarnation. You are overdue."
Ne Job clenched his jaw. "I'm not your case."
"Incorrect."
The Auditor raised a hand.
The ground beneath Ne Job bloomed with stamped seals—perfect circles appearing in patterns like lotus petals. Each burned through the soil, straight down to molten rock.
Ne grinned weakly. "Wow. They sent customer service."
The Auditor tilted his head. "When the system fails, customer service brings the noose."
Yue drew her glaive as instinct, stepping into the circle of stamps, weapon glowing with oath-light.
"Under Section Forty-Seven of the Mortal Exception Clause," she shouted, "Ne Job is under field protection by—"
The Auditor didn't even look at her.
He snapped his fingers.
Her oath-light died.
The glaive turned to wood.
The wood wilted.
Yue staggered as if someone punched her ribs.
The Auditor's voice was velvet and poison.
"Field officers do not speak during audits."
Arden vaulted in, blade flashing, cutting through the air toward his throat.
The Auditor didn't move.
Instead, the attacks stopped mid-swing—frozen. Not slowed. Not parried. Archived.
The blade shimmered, wrapped in lines of text, then crumbled into ashes of expired contracts.
Arden choked. "You—"
The Auditor lifted one finger.
Arden was pinned to the ground like a stapled document.
Yue screamed, lunging toward her.
Gravity inverted.
The Auditor pointed at Yue.
"Silencio."
Sound vanished.
Her mouth opened, but nothing came out—not even breath.
Ne Job forced himself forward. "STOP!"
The Auditor looked at him.
The Vein behind him pulsed once.
Ne Job collapsed. His nerves felt like a searing fax line transmitting through his spine.
He screamed.
He felt everything he'd ever forgotten.
Flashes of the Celestial HR Department.
The Court of Redundant Gods.
The final interview where he failed.
The signing of his demotion and exile.
He remembered the moment he was dropped into mortality, stripped of divine scripts and told to "live, but not too well."
He remembered the clause.
The Auditor is summoned when the Intern becomes relevant.
---
Yue POV — Breaking Silence
Her voice was gone.
But her mind wasn't.
She slammed her palm to the dirt and carved with shaking fingers, tearing at the soil like parchment:
YOU ARE NOT GOD
She lifted it.
Ne Job read it through tears and pain.
He laughed.
"Yeah," he rasped. "Not anymore."
The Auditor cocked his head. "Then why do you still breathe celestial air?"
Ne Job blinked. "Because someone filed a protection protocol for me."
The Auditor's eyelid twitched.
"Who."
Ne Job forced himself upright, staggering, legs trembling like he was fighting gravity made of knives.
He raised a finger.
Pointed directly at Yue.
The Auditor faltered—not much, but enough to fracture the air.
"Impossible," the Auditor hissed. "Mortals cannot file protocols."
Yue wrote another desperate word in the dirt:
PROMISE
Ne Job nodded, expression hardening.
"She made an oath. She filed her will in the only currency that matters."
The Auditor's jaw tightened. "Emotion is not currency."
"Oh?" Ne Job said. "Tell that to Heaven. They've been taxing it since the dawn of suffering."
Something cracked overhead. The Vein pulsed again, louder, as though someone struck a cosmic bell.
"…BALANCE…"
Contracts rained from above—not paper, but full-blown decrees. Sheets of law that folded into origami angels, each one piercing the ground like spears.
Arden coughed through blood. "Ne… don't… provoke him."
Ne Job smiled, wild and broken. "Who said I was provoking?"
He stepped forward.
The Auditor raised his quill like a sword.
"Prepare your final record."
Ne Job lifted his fist.
"No."
The Auditor blinked. "No?"
"You're misfiled."
The words detonated.
Every contract in the field seized mid-air. A thousand stamps froze. Glyphs shattered like glass.
The Auditor's voice warped. "…What did you say?"
Ne Job pointed at the Vein.
"I've seen your type. The ones Heaven hides. You don't audit. You appease."
"Lies."
"No. Reality. They didn't erase you because you were dangerous. They erased you because you were a mistake."
The sky convulsed.
The Vein screamed, a sound like every rejected form in history burning at once.
Arden's eyes widened. Yue's nails dug into soil.
The Auditor shook, unreadable emotions flickering across his face—rage, shock, grief.
"You cannot speak of my origin."
Ne Job stepped into the circle of stamps.
"All I do is speak of what shouldn't be spoken."
He inhaled.
Channelled every ounce of bureaucratic fury he ever endured—
HR memos. script violations. quota failures.
The unpaid overtime of cosmic destiny.
And he roared:
"You are an UNAUTHORIZED PROCEDURE!"
The Auditor's scream tore through worlds.
The Vein behind him collapsed inward like a lung punctured from the inside.
Glyphs exploded outward.
Light devoured the horizon.
Yue lunged for Ne Job—
Arden reached toward them—
The Vein swallowed everything.
Silence.
White.
Then—
---
Ne Job opened his eyes.
He was floating.
Not in air.
Not in water.
In paperwork.
Millions of sheets drifting like dust, every one stamped with his name.
A voice whispered:
"Sign… or vanish."
He reached.
His fingers closed around a pen of lightning.
He looked at the first page.
The title:
INTERNSHIP — PHASE TWO.
A second line, handwritten in red ink:
If you sign, the Auditor dies.
If you refuse… he becomes your boss.
Ne Job laughed.
He didn't know if it was terror or relief.
He signed.
---
End Chapter 162