The Hall of Records smelled the way old promises do — lemon oil on ledgers, dust clinging to ink, that clean, dry tang of paper that has lived too long under seal. Sunlight came in through the high windows like someone trying to be polite about revealing everything at once. The Registry clerks moved with the smooth competence of people who spend their lives making choices very small men call inevitable.
Kaito felt small in the middle of it: a dark smudge on a white page. He kept his shoulders square the way Haru had taught him, like a man who'd rehearsed bravery until it became posture. Rein walked at his side, fingers worrying the hem of his sleeve; Rein's neatness had not gone anywhere, but the measurement in his eyes had shifted into something watchful, like a bookkeeper who read the margins now.
Mira walked just ahead. She moved the way someone carries a lantern — steady, careful light. Her threadblade hung at her hip, not because she expected a fight but because she trusted the balance it gave her. When she glanced back at Kaito, there was something soft in her look that kept him steadier than any anchor Rein or Haru could draw in ink.
They were led into the Registry's inner chamber for the formal read: a room ringed with glass cases and shelves, a circle of ink-stained chairs, and, at the far end, a raised dais where assessments were made. Seated behind a low lectern was a woman whose robes were the difficult color of storm-smoke; she folded her hands and looked at Kaito as if he were the problem in a ledger she preferred balanced.
"Host Kaito Ashen," she said, voice dry as turned pages. "We appreciate your cooperation. Today we will take a more comprehensive thread-read. Lifewarders will examine the echo; Glyphkeepers will review the watch-thread's signature; and the Registry will decide the proper classification."
Kaito kept his grin even though it tasted like ink in his mouth. The lullaby buzzed under his ribs like a moth trapped in a jar. He had practiced the posture of being looked at. Practice, however, does not stop the weirdness of being considered by a room of people with pens.
They began the formalities: Rein signed a paper with the steady hand of a man who knew the cost of sloppy signatures; Haru gave an account of Kaito's guardianship that made everything sound older than it felt; Mira held her breath like a ward. The clerk with the hairpin — the same one from the first read — moved around the dais like a small, efficient shadow.
When the Lifewarder touched Kaito's wrist, the watch-thread hummed, like a string tightening. The Lifewarder's hair was clipped close; she had hands that had mended more than one life, and there was a steadiness in her touch that made Kaito want to tell her his whole story in a single breath. She pressed the hairpin to the thread and watched the silver light run along it.
"A Ninefold echo," she murmured into the record. "This host carries a pattern older than the Registry's current ledgers. His resonance is…duplicative. That is — the Shade isn't alone in how it answers. It mirrors."
The word mirror crawled through Kaito's bones. He had never thought of the Shade as anything but hunger and protection in uneven measures. Mirror was a strange thing to put next to a thing you wear beneath your ribs.
"Duplicative?" Rein asked, voice precise. "You mean it echoes in more than one pattern?"
The Lifewarder's eyes narrowed as if adjusting a lens. "Not exactly," she said. "Think of a bell struck twice very close together. One tone amplifies the other. The result is sharper, sometimes clearer, sometimes dangerously resonant. A Ninefold echo is…sensitive."
The Registry's Chief, she with storm-smoke robes, made a note that seemed to absorb light. "We will require a public classification," she said. "For hosts with unusual echoes, transparency is necessary. The Court will place a notice in the archives and the Guildmasters will be informed."
Kaito felt a small tightening at the mouth of his stomach. Not transparency. Exposure. He had tasted both in the market: cheers and then fear. He did not like the thought of more people reading his name like a headline.
"Transparency begets protection," the Chief intoned. "And records allow cooperation."
Haru's jaw tightened infinitesimally. "Records also invite collectors," he said. "We discussed this."
A pause like a held breath. The Chief's pen hovered and then dipped. "The Registry will request guarded custody for the ledger during the classification — a sealed reading in the Hall's safe, with lifewarder watch and Guild escorts."
Kaito swallowed. A guarded custody meant a reading where strangers would open the ledger to examine his file. The idea that other hands might leaf through the ledgers that carried him felt like someone removing a stitch from a shirt and watching it fray.
"You will have Haru and Mira as guardians present," the Chief added, "and permission to place sigil anchors for stability. The Registry will handle an invitation list."
Kaito's attention snagged on the word invitation. An invitation was a polished coin passed among people who knew how to count what you were worth. The hooded watcher at the dock had not left such coins. He had used a shard and a slip and a glance. Invitations were subtler, but more dangerous because they assumed civility.
"Fine," Haru said. "We will allow a sealed read with proper guard. But no open ledger in the square. No public auc—"
"Collectors will be present?" Rein asked.
The Chief's pen scratched like a small, polite knife. "Collectors are permitted to observe under Registry supervision. It is the only way to assure private inventories are cross-checked against Registry holdings."
Kaito felt the watch-thread pulse. The lullaby leaned in close enough to hum in his ear. He realized then why Haru had been so adamant. Collectors wearing cloaks and polite smiles will call for preservation and speak of history while writing your name in small print and finding a price.
He had a thought so childish and hot he wanted to laugh: what if he tore the ledger up right now? What if he walked up to the dais and punched the ink out of the papers? It was a ridiculous, two-year-old impulse. Instead Kaito kept his hands on his knees and let the sound of other people's decisions roll over him like winter rain.
The sealed reading was scheduled for dusk. That afternoon they spent sealing anchors into the dojo's courtyard; Rein sketched sigils in neat arcs and then practiced them until the ink looked like muscle memory on his fingers. Mira braided threads into small cords and taught Kaito how to feel the thread like a heartbeat when it found a stable line. Haru drilled breathing and cadence, making Kaito repeat a single phrase until the words felt like armor.
"Name it before it names you," Haru said when Kaito looked worried. "Take control of the first echo."
Kaito tried to keep that in his chest as he walked toward the Registry at dusk. The Hall was ringed in torches, and a small knot of people had gathered: Guild diplomats in patterned cloaks, a pair of Registry scribes with pale faces, and, tucked at the boundary, the same collectors' men with their practiced, polite smiles. A hush lay over the crowd as the guard pulled back the cordons. The air smelled of oil and the particular metallic tang of watchfulness.
They were led to the safe, a glassed room with a heavy lock and a ring of Lifewarders standing as living walls. Kaito sat opposite the open ledger while the clerks took the sealed files and began to recite what had been recorded: birth, foundling status, prior incidents. The voice of the reading was calm and flat as a stick.
Then the clerk paused. He turned the page.
There was a notation Kaito had not seen: a prior registry number, cross-referenced to an older entry. The clerk frowned. He read the old name aloud — a name that did not belong to anyone Kaito had been called — and then, softer, a location.
A ripple moved through the assembled. The collectors shifted like fish. Someone at the edge spoke in a voice that tried not to tremble: "That entry was sealed decades ago."
Sealed decades ago. Kaito's heart hammered. The lullaby in his chest folded itself into a single, narrower note like an arrow and sang.
"Unseal it," someone said — the demand soft and dangerous. "We have a right to verify provenance."
Haru stepped forward like a man whose bones had been learned to block. "Not without cause," he said.
"No," Kaito said before he could stop himself. "Don't unseal it."
All eyes turned to him like a column of ink flooding the room. He felt himself flush under the weight of being looked at. The Chief regarded him, then the ledger. "Host Ashen?"
Kaito set his jaw. In the moment there was only one truth he could give to a room that wanted to define him: "Some things aren't for strangers to read."
A Murmur, polite as faucets in a noble house. The collectors smiled as if pleased to be contradicted.
The Chief's pen paused. The Lifewarder at her flank shifted, a reed in cautious wind. "We will consider the request. For now the seal stays," she decided at last, voice like a practiced hand closing a box.
Kaito let himself exhale and felt his shoulders loosen by a hair. He had spoken and not been catalogued for it. For the first time since the market, his voice had altered the ledger's course.
They left the Hall with an official note that the seal would be reviewed and that private parties had been warned that the Registry guarded its protocols. Haru's face was set and unreadable. Rein's fingers trembled a little but not from fear — from the resolution of a man who had decided a measure and set it in ink. Mira walked beside Kaito and slipped her hand into his as they passed.
It was a small thing — a thread in a knot — but when she touched him it was like pressing a finger to a bruise and finding something that made the pain easier. "You did good," she said, low and true. "You kept a line."
Kaito had not expected comfort. He had expected lists and protocols and a hundred polite men who smile like blades. Mira's hand was real and warm.
"Did I?" he asked, smiling a little through the aftertaste of anxiousness. "Or did I just speak loud enough for them to hear?"
She squeezed his fingers. "Both."
They turned down a narrow lane that smelled of cooking oil and the sea. Lantern-light painted slow footprints on the walls. The hush of the city around them felt less like a crowd and more like a blanket. Kaito hummed the lullaby under his breath without meaning to; it slipped out as something private and solid.
Above them, a rooftop shadow shifted. The hooded watcher — the one who had set the slip at his feet at the docks — stood very still, watching them move away. He let a scrap of parchment fall from his sleeve like a leaf. It fluttered down the building and spattered into a gutter, face upward. On it, in an ink that smelled faintly of smoke, three words were written in a hand that looked like a claw:
OPEN THE LEDGER.
The scrap disappeared into the water, but the words did not. They drifted under the city the way a seed drifts under earth, and somewhere in an office with a glass case and a cautious man counting pen strokes, the sound of ink being read set gears to turning.
Kaito kept walking with Mira and Rein and Haru and the lullaby tucked like a promise in his chest. He had preserved a small line today. He had spoken in a room of measured men and made the ledger bend a little toward mercy.
He did not know then that a page had shifted on a shelf, or that someone had traced a finger along a name and remembered a story that involved locks and a very old key. He only knew the city hummed and the watch-thread at his wrist ticked, and that the word mirror had been spoken in a room that catalogued people and not beasts.
Being looked at might make you powerful.
Being read might make you something else entirely.