The file appeared on Elior Graves' desk at exactly 09:17 a.m.
That was the first anomaly.
At the Bureau of Anomalous Records, nothing appeared. Every document arrived through a logged channel, stamped, indexed, and verified by two independent clerks. Elior knew this because he was one of them. He had spent three years ensuring that paper obeyed rules better than people ever did.
This file did not.
It was thin, grey, and slightly warped, as if it had been soaked and dried more than once. No clearance stamp marked its corner. No routing code. No departmental seal. Just a handwritten label that made his stomach tighten.
SUBJECT: —REDACTED—
STATUS: —REDACTED—
INCIDENT DATE: —REDACTED—
Handwritten labels were prohibited. Redactions without authorisation were impossible.
Elior glanced around the archive floor. Long iron shelves stretched into the gloom beneath gas lamps that never flickered. Clerks sat at their desks in practised silence, eyes down, pens moving. No one looked at him. No one noticed the file.
He opened the registry terminal and typed the intake query.
ACCESS DENIED
REASON: SUBJECT DOES NOT EXIST
Elior's fingers froze.
The registry did not deny access. It escalated violations. It alerted supervisors. It summoned Internal Containment. It did not—could not—declare a subject nonexistent.
Slowly, he opened the folder.
Inside lay a single page.
A report.
Written in his own handwriting.
He recognised the sharp downward slant of the letters, the way he crossed his t's too high. His breath caught as his eyes fell to the date at the bottom of the page.
Thirty-seven years from now.
The final line was underlined twice.
If you are reading this, the god has noticed you.
Behind him, a bell rang.
Not the hourly chime.
The Containment Alarm