Kael kept his palm flat on the table even as every instinct in his body told him to snatch his hand back.
The warmth under his skin wasn't heat from friction. It felt… guided. Like the table had become a living stamp pad and something on the other side of the world was pressing down through it.
Mira sat rigid across from him, both hands in her lap, knuckles white. Her eyes kept flicking to the door as if she could will it to open.
The crystal recorder hummed, blue light threading through it like veins.
"CONFIRMING IDENTITY." The voice had no accent, no personality. It was the sound of a notice board learning to speak.
Kael forced his breathing slow. Calm was a tool. Panic was a signal flare.
"Who initiated this check?" Kael asked.
The recorder didn't answer.
Instead, the air in the room tightened, like the wards along the baseboards had drawn a breath.
Kael felt the pressure behind his eyes increase. A headache that wasn't pain, exactly—more like the sensation of being looked at too hard.
Then the recorder spoke again.
"EMPLOYEE RANK: E. DEPARTMENT: CIVIC ANOMALY RESPONSE. ACCESS: LIMITED."
Kael's jaw tightened.
It was reading him off like a file. It was treating him like a document.
"PRIOR VIOLATIONS: NONE REPORTED."
Mira let out a tiny, broken laugh that sounded like a sob trying to disguise itself. "None reported," she whispered, as if that phrase had suddenly become terrifying.
Kael didn't move.
The recorder's blue glow pulsed once.
"UNREPORTED ACTIVITY DETECTED."
Kael's stomach dropped.
He hadn't reported anything, sure—but "unreported activity" could mean any number of things. A ping on a ward. A signature left by a careless apprentice. A door opened without logging it.
Or…
A mark on his clipboard that shouldn't exist.
Kael kept his tone neutral. "Define unreported."
The recorder ignored him again.
"INITIATING COMPLIANCE MEASURE."
The temperature in the room dipped.
Not much. Just enough to raise the hairs on Kael's arms.
Mira's breath hitched.
On the wall, the "mirror" shimmered—its surface turning cloudy, like glass fogging in the winter.
A shape moved behind it.
Not a reflection.
A silhouette.
Tall and thin, made of lines that didn't belong in the world's geometry.
Kael didn't look directly at it. Looking directly at administrative manifestations sometimes counted as "acknowledgement," and acknowledgment had rules attached.
He focused on the crystal.
"Stop," Kael said. One word, clean.
The recorder brightened, as if amused by the attempt.
"COMPLIANCE CANNOT BE STOPPED."
Kael's fingers twitched under the table toward the emergency seal in his coat.
He imagined the alarms. The lockdown. The supervisors pouring into Intake like angry hornets.
He also imagined the symbol carved into the corridor wall. The glitch mark.
If the system was already compromised, calling reinforcements might just spread the infection.
Kael made a decision.
He lifted his gaze slightly—not at the mirror, but just above it, as if addressing the air.
"On whose authority?" he asked.
That was the key question.
Even the Ledger had structure. Even old magic obeyed hierarchy. Authority could be traced. That was the point.
The room went silent for half a breath.
Then the crystal spoke, lower now. Almost… displeased.
"AUTHORITY: THE LEDGER."
Kael's mouth went dry.
The Ledger wasn't supposed to talk directly through intake devices. It was like hearing the city's tax code whisper your name in a dark room.
Mira's voice shook. "What is the Ledger?"
Kael didn't answer her.
Because if he explained, he'd have to admit the truth he'd tried not to think about since joining the Bureau:
That the world wasn't just governed by people.
It was governed by a system that remembered everything.
And that system had just reached out and touched him.
The mirror clouded fully now, the silhouette pressing closer to the glass.
"PLACE YOUR OTHER HAND ON THE TABLE."
Kael held still.
"No," he said.
A pause.
Then, "NONCOMPLIANCE RECORDED."
Kael felt the wards along the baseboards flare. The blue lines brightened, shifting from decorative to hungry.
The air tasted like copper.
Mira gasped softly as if she could taste it too.
Kael's brain moved fast. Options flickered through him like pages in a file.
Trigger the emergency seal. Lock the room. Invite supervisors.
Comply. Let the Ledger scan deeper. Risk getting flagged.
Use the one thing he wasn't supposed to use.
Kael stared at the crystal recorder.
His clipboard sat beside it, innocent and quiet.
Kael slid the clipboard closer with his free hand.
The recorder's light pulsed.
"DO NOT INTERFERE."
Kael ignored it.
He opened the clipboard and stared at the paper.
Nothing was written there.
Just blank form lines waiting for him.
And yet, he could still feel it. The place where the glitch mark had been.
Like a bruise under the skin of reality.
Kael pressed his pen to the paper.
He didn't write words.
He drew the symbol.
A slash through a circle.
The pen moved smoothly, like it had been waiting for this.
The moment the symbol completed, the air in the room snapped.
Not like glass breaking.
Like a lock clicking open.
The wards flared—then hesitated, as if confused.
The crystal recorder's blue glow flickered.
Mira's eyes widened. "Kael, what did you just do?"
Kael swallowed hard.
"I don't know," he admitted.
That was the truth.
But it was also the first time in his life he'd felt the system hesitate around him.
The mirror rippled violently, the silhouette behind it glitching—its edges tearing into static, lines losing their authority.
The recorder spoke, voice stuttering now.
"UN—UN—UNREGISTERED…"
Kael felt it then.
A faint rush, like cold water running through his veins.
Information without words.
Permission without approval.
A tiny portion of reality turning its head toward him and waiting to be told what to do.
Kael's heart hammered once, heavy.
The pen in his hand grew warm.
On the page, ink formed new text beneath the symbol.
Not his handwriting.
Not the Bureau's script.
Something older.
UNAUTHORIZED AUTHORITY — MINOR ACCESS GRANTED.
Kael's lungs seized for a moment.
He could hear the phrase like a verdict.
Mira stared at the clipboard as if it had grown teeth. "What does that mean?"
Kael's voice came out quiet. "It means…"
He didn't finish.
Because the crystal recorder's light went out completely.
Not powered down.
Extinguished.
The room brightened again. The wards calmed, lines dimming back into harmless trim.
The mirror cleared, returning to its normal reflective surface—showing only Kael's face, pale but steady, and Mira's terrified eyes behind him.
A beat of silence.
Then, from somewhere down the corridor, an alarm chirped once. Not a full lockdown. Just a notification.
A soft bell.
Like the system acknowledging a new file.
Kael closed the clipboard slowly.
He looked at Mira.
"Stand up," he said.
Mira pushed her chair back so fast it scraped. "Are we—are we in trouble?"
Kael forced himself to smile, small and sharp. "Maybe."
He reached into his coat and pulled out the emergency seal—but he didn't activate it. He just held it, thumb resting on the break point.
Kael walked to the door and cracked it open.
The corridor was empty.
Too empty.
No staff, no bored clerks, no techs pushing carts.
The hallway lights hummed as if nothing had happened.
But the scratch mark on the wall beside Room 4—
The slash through a circle—
It was gone.
Clean paint.
Like it never existed.
Kael stared at the blank wall for a long second.
Then he looked down at his clipboard.
The symbol he'd drawn remained, dark ink biting into paper.
So the system could erase the outside.
But it couldn't erase what he'd put on a Bureau form.
Not without leaving evidence.
Kael's mouth tightened.
That meant something.
He turned to Mira. "We're leaving this room."
"What about my statement?"
Kael's eyes flicked to the dead recorder.
"You gave it already," he said. "It just wasn't you who was recording."
Mira's throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Where are we going?"
Kael stepped into the corridor and gestured for her to follow.
"Ward Seven," he said.
Mira went pale. "That's where they took the sofa."
Kael nodded once.
"Because," he said, voice low, "if the Ledger is doing compliance checks through intake devices…"
He walked, controlled and fast now, every step measured.
"…then the couch isn't the biggest problem in this building."
Mira hurried behind him.
They moved past the bulletin board, past the "NO SUMMONING IN RESTROOMS" notice, past the quiet doorways that felt like closed eyes.
As they neared the heavy steel door marked WARD SEVEN — RESTRICTED, Kael felt the pressure behind his eyes return.
Stronger.
Sharper.
Like a spotlight locking onto him.
The door had a rune lock shaped like a handprint. Bureau-only.
Kael lifted his palm.
Then hesitated.
Because the rune lock didn't glow blue like it should.
It glowed a faint, unsettling violet.
Kael stared at it.
Mira whispered, "That's… not normal, right?"
Kael didn't answer.
He placed his palm on the lock anyway.
The violet light flared.
And a voice—quiet, intimate, nothing like the crystal recorder—whispered from inside the door.
Not policy.
Not bureaucracy.
Something that sounded almost human.
"Finally," it said.
Kael's skin went cold.
The lock clicked.
The heavy door began to open.
And from the crack, a warm, wrong light spilled out—like sunrise in a room where there shouldn't be any windows at all.