The magistrate's hall was the most imposing building in Oakhaven, a structure of stern grey stone where the Law of Civic Authority was so deeply engraved it felt like the air itself was heavier. I stood alone in the center of the tiled floor, the geometric patterns seeming to constrict around my feet. My parents were forced to wait outside the great oak doors. This was not a family matter; it was a matter for the Realm.
Regulator Elrin stood to the side, his earlier fear now replaced by a nervous eagerness to please. On a raised dais sat Magistrate Borlin, a portly man who usually dealt with tax disputes and stolen livestock. He looked deeply uncomfortable, his fingers fiddling with the seal of his office.
But the true power in the room did not sit on the dais.
He stood beside it, a man so still he seemed like another piece of the hall's architecture. He was tall and gaunt, clad in robes of deep, starless blue. Silver runes, too fine and complex to read, were embroidered along the cuffs and hem, shimmering with a faint internal light. In his hands, he held not a weapon, but a large, open tome bound in what looked like pale leather. A single, flawless white quill was tucked behind his ear. This was a Lexicon.
He had given no name. He simply was what he was: an investigator of reality's flaws.
"The report is… unusual, Lexicon," Magistrate Borlin began, his voice echoing in the tense silence. "Young Alex here is a good lad. A craftsman. There must be some mistake."
The Lexicon's eyes, the color of a winter sky, slid from the tome to me. They held no anger, no curiosity, no emotion at all. They were the eyes of a scholar examining a rare, potentially dangerous insect.
"There is no mistake, Magistrate," the Lexicon said. His voice was soft, yet it carried, each word precise and perfectly formed. "A Law was broken. Not circumvented. Not overpowered. Un-written. The event is logged in the local Aetheric register as a 'localized reality anomaly.' My purpose is to categorize it."
He took a step down from the dais, his movements fluid and silent. The air grew colder. Elrin shrank back.
"Describe the event, subject," the Lexicon said, his gaze pinning me in place.
I swallowed, my mouth dry. "The loom was frozen. It didn't seem right. I touched it, and the… the light around it broke."
" 'The light,' " the Lexicon repeated, not as a question, but as a note for his records. He lifted his free hand, and above his palm, a complex, three-dimensional pattern of light wove itself into existence. It was the Law of Ignition, a simple spell to create a flame. The air above his hand shimmered with heat. "Describe this."
I could see it. The elegant logic of it, the flow of thermal energy from the Aether into a focused point. And I could see the single, flawed thread in its weave, the keyhole. My fingers twitched with the instinct to reach out and pluck it.
"It's… a fire-making spell," I said, forcing my eyes to stay on his, not on the beautiful, breakable construct.
"Is it stable?" he asked, his tone devoid of any leading inflection. It was a test.
"It seems to be," I lied.
He watched me for a long moment. Then, he did something terrifying. He took the white quill from behind his ear. He didn't dip it in ink. He simply made a small, precise strike in his tome. As he did, a corresponding line of silver light scored itself across the Law of Ignition hovering in the air.
The spell flickered, the heat stuttered, and the flame died instantly, leaving not even a wisp of smoke. He hadn't dispelled it. He had edited it. He had introduced a single logical error that caused the entire structure to collapse.
My blood ran cold. He wasn't just an enforcer. He was a programmer. And he was showing me that he understood the code far better than I did.
"Anomalies are rare," he said, closing his tome with a soft thud that echoed like a verdict. "They are statistical errors in the Grand Equation. They are typically self-correcting." His wintery eyes met mine. "Or they are corrected."
This was it. He was going to try to "correct" me. I braced myself, my mind screaming, searching for the keyhole in the man himself, in the oppressive Law of the Hall that held me here.
But he didn't raise a hand. He didn't chant a spell.
He simply looked at Magistrate Borlin. "The subject displays no overt hostile intent. The anomaly appears to be a passive, reactive phenomenon. It is my judgment that the event was an isolated Aetheric resonance unique to the subject and the specific, poorly-cast Law of Stasis applied by Regulator Elrin."
Elrin flinched.
The Lexicon's gaze returned to me, and for a fraction of a second, I saw something in those cold eyes. Not mercy. Not understanding. It was… deferral.
"The subject is to be recorded as a 'Class-Zero Anomaly.' He is to be monitored. No further action is required at this time."
Magistrate Borlin let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for an hour. "So he can go?"
"He can go," the Lexicon confirmed.
I stood there, stunned. I was free? It was a trick. It had to be.
I walked out of the hall on unsteady legs, my parents rushing to meet me, their faces etched with relief. But as I stepped into the sunlight, I glanced back.
The Lexicon was standing in the shadowed doorway, his tome held closed before him. He wasn't watching me leave. He was watching the space around me. And as our eyes met one last time, he gave me the faintest, most imperceptible nod.
It wasn't an absolution. It was an acknowledgment.
He hadn't found me innocent. He had found me interesting. And he was letting the experiment continue to see what I would do next. The fear that had chilled me in the hall was gone, replaced by a new, more profound dread. I wasn't a criminal to be executed.
I was a specimen, released back into its habitat to be observed. My cage was now the entire town of Oakhaven, and my keeper was a man who could edit reality with a flick of his wrist. The silence he left behind was more threatening than any accusation.