It wasn't the sudden shock of winter air in the lungs. It was steadier than that, deliberate and patient, pressing against his forehead as if someone had decided his thoughts needed to be kept down. A cloth, damp and heavy, laid across his brow. He became aware of it before he became aware of himself.
He did not open his eyes immediately.
For a while he listened. The room had a sound even when no one spoke. Paper settling. A faint draft moving through an old window seam. The smallest creak of wood that didn't repeat. He waited for the bell, for the familiar structure of time to announce itself, and heard nothing.
His throat was dry. He swallowed and felt the movement travel down slowly, as if distance inside him had changed too.
He opened his eyes in stages, not because he feared the light, but because he had learned in the last hours that looking was not the same as seeing.
The ceiling was where it should have been. That did not reassure him.
The room was the registry's side chamber, the one meant for fainting clerks and sudden nosebleeds, for the kind of damage that was obvious and short-lived. Bare walls. A narrow window set too high. A thin bed that had once been a cot and still wanted to be. The air smelled faintly of soap and old paper, and under that, the sharp tang of ink that had been spilled and cleaned badly.
A chair sat near the wall. Silas was in it.
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped. His posture suggested waiting, but not anxious waiting. He looked as though he could have been there ten minutes or ten hours and it would not have altered his expression. Abel stared at him.
Silas watched back without embarrassment, without apology, as if being watched was ordinary. "You're awake," Silas said.
Abel's mouth moved before his voice arrived. "How long."
Silas hesitated, then shrugged slightly. "Not long enough to make a story out of it. Long enough that the man who brought the water stopped pretending he was busy." Abel tried to sit up. The room answered.
Not with violence, not with drama. Just a subtle wrongness, like a chair leg shortened by a finger's width. The wall on his left seemed nearer than it had been a moment ago. The ceiling felt as if it had lowered. His stomach tightened. He stopped moving and held still until his breathing slowed again.
Silas watched him. "You're going to do that a few times," he said. "Do what." "Try to move as if the room is honest." Abel swallowed. "It's not." "No," Silas said. Then, after a pause that made it less like instruction and more like admission: "Not for you."
Abel pushed the cloth off his forehead with one careful hand. The dampness had warmed. He set it beside him and watched it for a moment, half expecting it to slide away on its own. It stayed.
He placed his palm on the mattress to steady himself, then slowly sat up again.
The bed seemed to shift beneath him as though it had decided to be elsewhere. His head swam. He closed his eyes instinctively and regretted it immediately. The darkness had weight. It pressed in and made the wrongness sharper, more intimate, as if without sight his body had to negotiate with space directly.
He opened his eyes quickly and kept them open. Silas made a small sound that might have been approval or might have been nothing at all. Abel's voice came out rough. "What happened."
Silas looked down at his hands as if the answer were there, then back up. "You wrote something down that shouldn't have been written. Your body noticed."
"That's not what I asked." Silas nodded once. "You collapsed. Then you didn't die. That's the order of it." Abel stared at him. He wanted to be angry and found he didn't have the strength. Anger required confidence. He did not feel confident. "Matthieu," Abel said. The name tasted strange. "Where is he."
Silas shifted in the chair, the wood creaking softly. "Back to his work. Probably."
"Probably."
Silas's mouth tightened, then loosened again, like someone abandoning a better lie. "He left quickly. He looked scared. I don't know if it was for you or for himself."
Abel looked at the door. It was shut, but not locked. He could tell because the latch sat a fraction crooked, a familiar imperfection he had noticed once and then never stopped noticing. The crookedness made him feel briefly comforted, then embarrassed at the comfort.
"So I was alone," Abel said. Silas's eyes held his. "No." Abel tried to look away and found the movement made the wall creep closer again. He stopped and stared straight ahead. "You were there," Abel said.
Silas nodded. "Yes." "And you knew," Abel said. "When it started." Silas hesitated. He rubbed his thumb across one knuckle, a small restless motion. "I didn't know. I guessed." "That's the same thing."
"It isn't," Silas said, then paused as if he heard himself sounding too tidy. He tried again. "Knowing is a luxury. I've had enough time to get used to not having it."
Abel's hands curled into the sheet. The fabric felt too far away from his fingers, then snapped closer. He tightened his grip until the texture stayed consistent.
His voice lowered. "What am I." Silas exhaled through his nose, a quiet breath that sounded almost amused and almost tired. "You already know the word." Abel swallowed hard. "No." "You do," Silas said. "You've heard it. You've pretended it's someone else's problem." Abel stared at him. "Soulkind." Silas nodded. "Yes."
The word sat in the room. It did not feel dramatic. It felt practical, like a tool laid on a table.
Abel tried to make it smaller by speaking again. "I'm not like you." Silas looked at him for a moment as if weighing whether to argue, then shrugged. "Maybe not. But you broke. That's the important part." Abel's stomach turned slightly at the word broke. He wanted to correct it. He could not think of a better word that was honest.
Silas leaned back in the chair. His posture loosened, and for a moment Abel saw something that looked like fatigue in him, not theatrical, not weaponized, just present.
"You want me to explain it," Silas said. Abel did not answer. His silence was answer enough.
Silas nodded again, as if accepting the burden, then began, and Abel could tell almost immediately that Silas hated the shape of what he was about to say.
"There are people," Silas said, "who go through something, and something in them doesn't go back to how it was. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it looks like luck until you're close enough to see the cost."
Abel listened, trying to catch at the edges for certainty. The language was ordinary. That was what made it worse. Ordinary language had no place for what he had felt.
"What happened to me," Abel said. Silas looked toward the window, then back. "Your body stopped trusting distance." Abel's fingers loosened slightly on the sheet. "That's not possible." Silas's expression sharpened. "It is. You're sitting in it."
Abel shifted one foot and felt the floor meet it too soon. He flinched. The sensation was mild, almost nothing, yet his body reacted like it mattered.
"It feels like the room is lying," Abel said. Silas nodded. "Good." Abel let out a breath that was half laugh and half something else. "You keep saying that." Silas tilted his head. "Because it's true." "It doesn't feel good."
Silas's mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile. "I didn't mean it as comfort."
Abel stared at him. "Why are you here, then."
Silas hesitated long enough for the question to feel heavier, then answered too quickly, as if he wanted it over with. "Because you're going to do something stupid, and I'd rather be there when you do it than hear about it later."
Abel blinked. The line landed, not because it was kind, but because it sounded like a real person had said it. "Stupid like what," Abel asked.
"Try to go back to your desk," Silas said. "Write as if your hand knows where the page is. Walk as if the corridor keeps its promise. Pretend that if you act carefully enough, the world will respect it."
Abel felt his face tighten. "I am careful." Silas nodded. "You were." Abel swallowed. "So what now." Silas's gaze drifted briefly to Abel's hands, then to his feet, then returned to his face. Abel felt inspected, not judged. It was worse.
"Now you learn," Silas said, and then stopped, as if the sentence had become too clean. He tried again. "No. Not learn. You adjust. And if you can't adjust, you get removed."
His throat constricted. "Removed." Silas's eyes stayed on him. "Yes." Abel waited for him to soften it. He did not. "By who," Abel asked.
Silas shrugged slightly. "Whoever notices first. Whoever has a reason. Whoever thinks you're a problem."
Abel thought of clean boots. Of the way the registry had run smoothly with fewer people. Of names disappearing from boards. Of Matthieu's careful hands.
"The visitor," Abel said quietly. Silas's face shifted, subtle but immediate, like a man hearing a familiar knife being placed on a table. "He came back." Abel watched him. "You know him." Silas's lips pressed together, then parted again. "I know the type." "That's not an answer."
Silas nodded once. "No. It isn't." He looked down briefly, then back up, as if deciding what he could say without making it worse. "He's not here to help you. He's here to decide whether you're allowed to remain where you are."
Abel's pulse quickened. He felt it in his throat. "And Matthieu," Abel said.
Silas let out a short breath. "Matthieu is a clerk. A good one. The kind who thinks the world can be fixed by keeping it tidy."
"He's not like that," Abel said immediately, then realized he did not know whether he meant it.
Silas shrugged. "He's like that enough." Abel sat very still. Even stillness felt like negotiation now. "Why did it happen," Abel asked. Silas frowned slightly. Not annoyed. Concentrating. "You want a reason that makes it fair."
"No," Abel said, and the lie came out too quickly. "I want to understand."
Silas studied him. "Those are often the same thing." Abel's hands clenched again, then loosened. He could feel the cloth of the sheet without trusting where it was. Silas spoke again, slower. "You were made to write something that wasn't true." Abel's jaw tightened. "It was already happening." Silas nodded. "Yes." "So it wasn't my fault."
Silas hesitated. The hesitation was human. It was the first time he looked uncertain, not because he didn't know, but because he didn't like the shape of what he knew.
"Fault is a useless word," Silas said. Abel's eyes narrowed. "That's convenient." Silas's mouth twitched, not smiling. "Yes. It is."
He held Abel's gaze, and Abel realized with a faint shock that Silas wasn't trying to win the argument. He was letting Abel be angry because it was honest.
Silas continued. "You wrote it down. The world likes things written down. Some people build their lives on that. You've been one of them."
Abel felt his throat constrict. "And now I can't." Silas nodded. "Now you can't. Not the same way." Abel stared at the wall. The plaster looked rougher than it should. Or smoother. He could not tell. He tried to stand.
His feet touched the floor and the floor met them too soon, a subtle bump of wrong timing. He steadied himself on the bedframe. The bedframe felt slightly farther away than his hand expected. His fingers closed on air for a fraction of a moment before they closed on wood. That fraction was enough to make his stomach churn. He sat back down. Silas watched without comment.
Abel breathed slowly until the nausea loosened. "How do you live like this," Abel asked. Silas blinked, as if the question surprised him. "Badly." Abel looked up. Silas's expression was flat, but not cold. The flatness was what a person wore when they had no use for performance.
"You get used to it," Silas added, then frowned as if he disliked that too. "Or you get injured until you do. That's the first part."
"And the second part." Silas's eyes moved to the window again. "You start noticing what else the world does when it thinks no one is watching." Abel's mouth felt dry again. "Like what."
Silas shrugged. "Like how people disappear cleanly. Like how documents matter more than bodies. Like how wars keep happening even when everyone says they're tired."
Abel's mind snagged on the word wars. It didn't feel like conversation anymore. It felt like the edge of something larger brushing his skin.
"You talk like you know," Abel said. Silas nodded. "I know enough." Abel watched him. "Do you work for someone." Silas's mouth tightened. "No." The answer came too quickly.
Abel stared harder. "You hesitated." Silas rubbed his thumb along his knuckle again. "I work with reality. That's enough trouble." Abel heard the evasion and, strangely, appreciated it. It sounded like a person protecting something he did not want to explain.
Outside the room, a sound. Footsteps. A pause. A murmur of voices too quiet to catch words.
Abel's body reacted first. The room seemed to contract around him, not physically, but in his sense of it, as if the air itself had become too close. His hand went to the edge of the mattress and he gripped it. Silas tilted his head, listening. The footsteps moved away.
Abel's shoulders loosened slightly. Silas watched him. "You're going to start doing that," he said. "Doing what." "Listening for decisions," Silas said. "Not sounds. Decisions." Abel swallowed. "Are they deciding now."
Silas shrugged, and the shrug was imperfect, not theatrical, not indifferent, just uncertain. "Someone is always deciding. The difference is whether they know your name."
Abel stared at him. "Do they." Silas did not answer immediately. He looked down as if he might find the answer on the floorboards. "I don't know," he said finally. "But the visitor will. He'll put it together." He swallowed and tasted salt. "So I'm already condemned." Silas's eyes flicked up sharply. "Stop." Abel blinked. "Stop what."
"Stop talking like you're already dead," Silas said, then exhaled as if irritated at himself for raising his voice at all. His tone dropped again. "It makes you easier to handle."
Abel stared at him. The line felt cruel and protective at once, and that contradiction made it feel real.
Abel tried to stand again, more carefully. He placed his feet deliberately. The floor still met them too soon. He adjusted. He stood, swaying slightly, then steadied himself.
Silas watched, then nodded as if confirming something. "Better." Abel frowned. "That's what you call better." Silas's mouth shifted. "Yes." Abel took one step toward the door.
The space between him and the door stretched. Not visually. The door stayed the same. It was his body's sense of the path that changed, as if the corridor had become longer behind his eyes. He paused, breathed, took another step.
The door did not move. He did. He reached the doorframe and touched it. The wood was solid. That helped.
He turned back toward the bed and the room seemed to widen, as if making space for him out of reluctant courtesy. His stomach rolled. He swallowed and forced himself to remain standing.
"I'm not going back to my desk," Abel said. Silas nodded. "Good." Abel stared at him. "You said that before. That word." Silas shrugged. "It applies."
Abel leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. The contact grounded him. He could feel the edge of wood, the resistance, the certainty of a surface. He kept his weight there as if he were afraid the room would rearrange itself if he didn't.
"What do they do to Soulkind," Abel asked. Silas was quiet. Abel waited.
Silas finally said, "Depends." "On what."
Silas's gaze moved to Abel's face, then away again. He seemed to choose his words and dislike them as he chose them. "On how useful you are. On how visible you are. On whether you can be put somewhere that makes you someone else's problem."
Abel's fingers tightened against the wood. "Someone else's problem." Silas nodded. "Yes." Abel's voice dropped. "And if you can't." Silas did not answer at once. When he spoke, it was quieter. "Then you get cleaned up." Abel's stomach turned. "Killed."
Silas frowned slightly. "Not always. Sometimes you vanish so well that killing is unnecessary."
The phrase was so calm that it took Abel a moment to understand what it meant.
He closed his eyes, forgot, and felt the room press inward, dark and close. He opened them quickly again.
Silas watched without comment, but Abel saw something in his expression now that looked like recognition. Not pity. Recognition.
"You were cleaned up," Abel said suddenly. Silas's eyes narrowed. "Almost." Abel stared at him. "How did you avoid it." Silas leaned back in his chair, and the movement was careless enough to feel human. "I moved." Abel felt the word hit him, simple and brutal. "You mean you ran."
Silas shook his head. "No. Running is emotional. I mean I didn't stay where the record could catch me."
Abel swallowed hard. "Where do you go." Silas paused. "Places where the record is weaker." Abel thought of docks. Of ships that came and left. Of names that mattered less than rope strength and weather. "You're talking about the sea," Abel said. A small twitch touched Silas's mouth. "I'm talking about motion." Abel looked at him. "You're telling me to become a pirate."
Silas blinked as if genuinely surprised, then laughed once, quietly. The laugh wasn't warm, but it wasn't cruel either. It was what someone did when they were tired of other people's words.
"I'm not telling you anything," Silas said. "I'm describing where people like you don't get smoothed out."
Abel's hands trembled slightly on the doorframe. He tightened them until the tremor stopped.
"You're coming with me," Abel said, and the statement came out before he had decided it was a statement.
Silas lifted his eyebrows. "Am I." Abel swallowed. "You're already here." Silas looked down, then back up. "That doesn't mean much." "It does," Abel said, and felt anger rise again, not at Silas, but at the instability of his own voice. "You stayed."
Silas's expression softened by a fraction, then hardened again, as if he regretted allowing even that much. "I was nearby," he said. "And it was interesting."
Abel stared. "Interesting." Silas shrugged. "Yes." The honesty was irritating. That, too, made it real.
Abel pushed himself away from the doorframe and took two careful steps back toward the bed. The room wavered, then settled. He sat down slowly.
His breathing came steadier now. The nausea remained, but it was manageable, like a bruise you could avoid touching if you moved correctly.
He looked at Silas. "What do I do."
Silas opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked as though he was about to offer something clean and hated himself for it. When he spoke, the words were less arranged.
"You don't do anything big," Silas said. "Not yet. You do small things. You stay alive. You don't hand them a neat reason."
Abel frowned. "That's it." Silas's eyes narrowed. "What did you expect. A plan." "A plan is what people make," Abel said, and felt the bitterness of it. Silas nodded. "Yes. And then reality makes a joke out of it." Abel stared at him, and for a moment he felt the urge to laugh, not because it was funny, but because it was true in a way that hurt.
Outside the room, another sound. A door opening. Voices again, closer this time, then fading.
Silas did not look toward the door, but Abel saw his shoulders tighten slightly. The movement was almost invisible. Abel's stomach tightened in response.
Silas leaned forward. "Listen," he said. Abel met his gaze.
Silas's voice dropped. It did not become dramatic. It became practical. "They won't come in here and drag you out. Not if they're careful. They'll make you walk somewhere. They'll make you sign something. They'll send you to a place you're supposed to survive."
His throat constricted. "And I won't."
Silas shrugged, then stopped as if he disliked the gesture, as if it was too close to helplessness. "You might," he said. "If you're lucky." "Luck," Abel repeated.
Silas's lip moved, restrained. "Yes. That's what people call it when the world fails to be tidy."
Abel stared at the cloth on the bed where he had set it. It lay there harmlessly. He thought of how warm it had gotten. How quickly even cold could become ordinary.
He looked back at Silas. "Soulkind," he said again, as if repeating the word might change it.
Silas nodded. "Yes." Abel swallowed. "Does everyone know." Silas shook his head. "Most people don't want to. Some people know too much." "And the visitor." Silas's eyes tightened. "He knows enough." Abel's hands clenched. "Why didn't he kill me in the first chapter if he suspected."
Silas stared at him for a moment, and Abel realized he had asked the wrong kind of question. He had asked as if killing was the first solution.
Silas answered anyway, and the answer came out uneven, like something he hadn't said in a while. "Because killing makes problems. Because the port notices corpses. Because records become messy. Because factions don't like mess."
Abel felt his throat constrict. "Factions." Silas looked at him. "You're hearing the word now. That's unfortunate." Abel stared. "You know about them." Silas nodded. "Of course." "You belong to one," Abel said. Silas hesitated, and the hesitation was long enough to feel like thought rather than theatrics. "No," he said finally. "Not anymore." Abel watched him. "That's not an answer I trust." Silas almost smiled. "You shouldn't."
Abel sat in silence for a while. He listened to his own breathing. He watched the window's pale stripe of light creep a fraction across the floor. He tried to feel the room as it was, not as his body insisted it might become.
He failed. Then he succeeded a little. Then he failed again. Silas did not speak. He did not fill the silence with philosophy. He waited like someone who knew silence was part of the process. Abel finally said, "If I leave, they win." Silas looked at him. "They don't win. They continue." "That's the same thing."
Silas frowned slightly. "No. It isn't. Winning implies they wanted something particular from you. Most of the time they just want you gone cleanly."
Abel felt the words land with a cold clarity. Gone cleanly. He imagined blank pages again.
He said, quietly, "I don't want to be blank." Silas's expression changed, almost imperceptibly. "Then don't make it easy." Abel swallowed. "How."
Silas leaned forward again, elbows on knees, hands clasped, the posture returning as if it belonged to him more than any other. His voice was calm, but not polished.
"You leave before they can turn leaving into procedure," Silas said. "That's the whole trick. You move while your name is still yours."
Abel stared. "And if I can't."
Silas shrugged, then caught himself and stopped, as if the gesture annoyed him. "Then you learn what your body can do," he said. "And you learn fast. Or you get carried."
Abel's gaze dropped to his own hands. They looked normal. That, too, felt like a lie.
He took a breath. "You'll come." Silas blinked, then looked away briefly, as if irritated by the expectation. When he looked back, his answer was not clean. "I don't know," Silas said. Nausea rose in his gut. "Why not." Silas's mouth twisted slightly. "Because I don't like promises." "That's convenient." Silas nodded. "Yes."
Abel stared, and then, despite himself, felt something in his chest loosen. The exchange was ugly. It was imperfect. It sounded like two people in a room rather than two ideas arguing through mouths.
Abel said, "Stay, at least until I can stand." Silas looked at him for a long moment, then nodded once. "All right."
Abel lay back slowly, not because he was tired, but because sitting up felt like work that did not end. He placed the cloth back on his forehead. It was not cold anymore. That annoyed him. He wanted the cold.
Silas sat in the chair and watched without making it into anything noble.
Abel stared at the ceiling and listened to the room. It behaved.
Not honestly. Not reliably. But it held its shape long enough for him to breathe.
And as he lay there, he understood something that would have terrified him yesterday and now only made him feel tired. This was not a moment. This was a condition.
Outside, somewhere in the registry, papers were being written. Names were being moved. Decisions were being made that would later be called routine.
Abel closed his eyes for half a second, then opened them again before the darkness could press too close.
Silas's voice came, almost casually, from the chair. "When you can walk without vomiting, we should leave."
Abel stared at the ceiling and spoke without looking at him. "Where." Silas paused. Long enough to feel like thought. "Somewhere that doesn't pretend the world is stable," he said. "The docks, for a start." He swallowed and tasted salt. The docks. Motion. Rope and salt and names that mattered less. He did not say yes. He did not say no.
He lay there, feeling the room, and realized he had already begun to move.