By seven, I understood two things about myself:
I was Leria and Daren's son.
The city made more sense to me than it should have.
Not in a "child prodigy" way. I still tripped over loose stones and forgot chores and lost at games that involved throwing anything.
But when the wards shivered, I felt it.
That was not normal.
They took us to the Line Office on a clear morning when the air over the street looked perfectly ordinary.
"Index day," Daren said, like it was weather.
The Office sat where three big streets met, a low, wide building sunk into the ground like it didn't trust the sky. No banners, no statues. Just stone, glass, and lines cut deep into the walls, meeting in patterns my fingers itched to trace.
The air felt…tidy. Every breeze came in, turned once, and left. No stray gusts.
Inside was bright without lamps. The ceiling glowed softly. The light never flickered.
We sat on a bench with other families while clerks walked past with slates. A girl my age played with the ties on her mother's sleeve. Somewhere deeper in the building, something hummed.
Leria's hand rested on my shoulder. She wasn't squeezing, but she wasn't relaxed either.
"It's just checking," Daren said. "They need to know how close anyone is to Blaze."
"I know what they need," Leria answered. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."
They called my name—Glorius—and led us to a small room.
A woman in a gray coat waited there. Her hair was cropped short, her sleeves rolled up to show narrow wrists scribbled with ink sigils. She looked like someone who did not enjoy losing time.
"Hand," she said, sliding a flat pane of glass toward me.
It was framed in dark metal, patterns etched into it like roots.
I put my palm on it.
The first sensation was cold. Then warmth pushed back against my skin, like the glass was breathing in and out of me. Lines of faint color flickered under the surface.
The woman watched my face, not the glass.
"Do you get headaches when the wards shift?" she asked.
"No."
"Dizzy when the streets hum?"
"Sometimes," I admitted.
"Night terrors?"
"Yes."
She didn't blink.
"What happens?"
I tried to explain.
"I feel… squeezed. Like the whole room is trying to fit into my ribs." I hesitated. "It feels like the day I died the first time," the Kendrick part of me thought, but that wasn't for her. "And there's light, sometimes," I added instead. "But not from anywhere."
"Anyone with you in the dream?"
"No."
She wrote without looking down.
"Do you like watching the ward-lines?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, before I could edit it.
Leria made a small sound behind me.
"How often?" the woman continued.
"When they move," I said. "If I feel them pull, I look."
"From where?"
"Door or window."
She made another note.
The warmth under my hand faded. She lifted the pane, turned it toward herself, and studied whatever only she could see. Her brows tightened for a heartbeat, then smoothed.
She took out a round lens from her pocket and examined my eyes through it. From my side, it was just glass. From hers, light broke into thin threads.
"Breathe," she said.
I did.
"Again."
I did that, too.
"All right," she said. "You can go sit with your parents, Glorius."
We moved to the side while she spoke to them. Quietly, but walls in this city were never quiet enough.
"Index higher than cohort," she said. "Not in pull, not yet. No direct flares. He feels the lines, but there's no sign of self-driven surge."
"'Not yet'?" Leria repeated. The words sounded like they had splinters.
"We'll revisit in three years," the woman replied. "If he keeps to wards and routine, odds are he stays where he is. Don't let him chase flares for fun."
"Who would—?" Leria started.
The woman looked at me, then back at her.
"He's curious," she said. "Curious children with bright Indexes worry us more than frightened ones."
Daren put a hand on my shoulder. I wasn't sure if it was to steady me or himself.
Outside, the light looked normal again. I breathed easier once the Office was behind us.
"What's my number?" I asked.
Leria flinched.
"It's a range," Daren said. "Not a single number. You're higher than most."
"How high?" I pressed.
"High enough they'll look again," he said. "Low enough we walk out with you."
That was an answer and not an answer.
Leria picked up the pace until the Office wasn't visible between roofs anymore. Only then did she slow.
"They're wrong," she muttered.
"About what?" I asked.
"About how much they can measure from a child's hand," she said. "About how much they know." She blew air out through her nose. "It doesn't matter. They're the ones holding the lines. Until that changes, we play by their rules."
She wasn't talking to me. She was talking to the air.
Kendrick would have started designing a better Index right there in his head. Better inputs, better categories, less human damage.
Glorius walked between his parents and held his tongue.
I saw what "Index" really meant three days later.
Old Harun's grandson, Tilo, lived two doors down. We'd spent most of that summer racing tops and stones down the gutter. He ran the way some people breathe—automatically, constantly.
That afternoon, we were scratching a diagram into the dust—some game he'd made up that involved throwing pebbles into drawn circles—when a Line runner turned into the lane.
Light coat, travel dust on boots, Office sigil at the shoulder. He checked the ward-mark on the corner with a quick glance and then walked straight to Harun's door.
My chest went tight.
"Afternoon," Harun said when he answered the knock. He wiped his hands on his shirt and looked smaller than usual standing there.
"Harun son-of-Deril?" the runner asked. He was already checking a slate.
"Yes."
"Tilo's guardian?"
"Yes."
The runner nodded once.
"The Office has updated its policy," he said. "Second-tier minors in this section are being moved to inner wards for observation."
Harun's jaw clenched.
"Second tier?" he echoed. "He's never shown—"
"His last reading crossed the line," the runner said. "He isn't pull-marked. But after the east breaches, the Board changed thresholds. You know how it is."
"I know how it is," Harun repeated, but it meant something different when he said it.
Tilo's hand tightened around his stick next to me.
"I don't want to go," he said. Quiet, but the lane carried it.
The runner looked at him properly then. His voice softened, a little.
"It's not prison," he said. "Inner dorms. Strong wards. Tutors. If your lines never spike, you come home in a few years smarter and bored and complaining about the food."
"And if they spike?" Harun asked.
The runner didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
They gave Tilo time to pack a small bag.
An hour, maybe. Time moves strangely when you're watching someone try to decide which parts of their life can fit into their hands.
He chose a spare shirt, a carved bird, then put it back. Picked up his spinning top instead and turned it between his fingers.
"Take this," he said, shoving it at me.
"You'll need something to do," I said. "Keep it."
"I don't want their games," he muttered. "That's from here."
The weight of it in my palm was ridiculous. It was wood and twine. It felt heavier than any number on any slate.
When the runner came back and said it was time, Harun straightened up like he'd been pulling himself together in that hour and had finally finished.
"You walk," he told Tilo. "You don't get dragged."
"I know," Tilo said. His mouth trembled once and then set.
He didn't look back as he left the lane.
Maybe he thought if he did, his legs would stop.
Harun watched from the doorway with his hands linked behind him. The skin over his knuckles had gone white where his fingers gripped.
Leria stood very still. Daren glanced up at the ward-line sketched above the lane, then down at my hand gripping the top.
The runner and the boy turned the corner. The lane swallowed them.
It was quiet after that in the way it only is when someone has been taken away: ordinary sounds, wrong air.
That evening, I sat at the table while Leria cooked and Daren pretended to mend a harness and actually stared at the door.
"What happens to him?" I asked.
"He learns to sit still," Daren said. His voice was flat. "He lives under stronger wards. They watch him. If his lines stay calm, they send him home when he's older."
"And if his lines don't stay calm?" I asked.
Leria stirred the pot too hard. Broth sloshed over the rim.
"They're professionals," she said. "They know how to keep a flare from turning into a Scar."
That wasn't an answer to my question.
Maybe there wasn't an answer she wanted to say out loud in a house with two plates and one spinning top on the table.
Lying in bed that night, I listened to the house.
Once you notice the wards, you can't un-notice them. They thrum very low, like a deep note you feel more than hear. When Blaze hits somewhere in the web, the note tightens for a moment along the lines. The noise doesn't reach you, but the change does.
I felt three small flutters before sleep finally won. Somewhere out there, someone's street shivered. Someone like the man I'd watched fold in the road. Someone like Tilo, maybe, sitting under the careful eyes of the Office.
Under that sound, something else sat:
A shape Kendrick had carried into this life—a hatred of being the person in the room who understood what was happening but couldn't touch the controls.
I didn't phrase it that way then. At seven, the thought was simpler:
If they're going to put numbers next to people's names and move them around like stones on a board, one day I want to see that board.
Not tear it up.
Not bow to it.
Just stand close enough that, when a runner came for the next kid, someone in the room cared which door they walked back out of.
I tucked Tilo's top under my mattress so it wouldn't roll away in the night.
The wards thrummed.
The city lines held.
And far past our small house, in a building where the air acted like it had orders, my name and someone else's sat on a sheet next to numbers neither of us had chosen.