The hallway lights flickered as soon as Kael stepped out of Unit 3B.
Not the usual kind of flicker, either. Not the tired, half-dead bulbs the building manager swore he'd replace "next week."
This was a deliberate stutter—three beats, like a knock.
Kael didn't look up at them. He didn't quicken his pace. He didn't do anything that would tell whatever was watching that it had succeeded in rattling him.
He just walked.
Behind him, the woman—Mira, according to the resident log—kept a death grip on her purse strap like it was a weapon. She stared at Kael's back as if she expected him to explain reality to her with every step.
In front of them, two Bureau containment techs maneuvered the sofa out the door with the careful irritation of men who'd moved a hundred cursed objects and hated every single one.
The sofa was wrapped in white binding cloth covered in pale blue stamps. The stamps were supposed to mute sentience, dull enchantments, and—most importantly—stop things from naming government employees out loud.
It had worked. Mostly.
"THIS IS UNLAWFUL DETENTION," the sofa mumbled from inside the wrap, voice muffled like a complaint through a pillow.
Kael didn't break stride. "You're a couch," he said. "You don't have rights."
"I HAVE SEEN THE FORMS."
The tech on the left, a stocky man with a shaved head and a permanent scowl, grunted. "It's mouthy."
"It's a sofa," the other tech replied. "Mouthy is all it can be."
Kael listened to the building around them the way some people listened to a crowd. The creak of old wood. The distant hiss of a radiator. The muted thump of someone walking above.
Normal sounds.
Too normal.
That was the trick. When magic wanted you complacent, it didn't roar. It blended. It acted like your own nerves.
Kael glanced at the exit stairwell door.
The metal plate above it read: STAIR A — ROOF ACCESS RESTRICTED.
Underneath, in a newer hand, someone had scratched a line into the paint.
Not deep. Not obvious. Like they hadn't wanted it noticed.
WE SEE YOU.
Kael stopped.
The techs stopped too, the sofa dipping slightly between them.
Mira bumped into Kael's shoulder. "What is it?"
Kael stared at the scratched words for one breath. Two.
Then he leaned closer, running his finger over the grooves without touching the bare metal.
Cold.
Fresh.
A message left recently enough that the paint dust hadn't even settled.
Kael stepped back and forced his face into bored annoyance. "Nothing," he said, loud enough for the hallway. "Just vandalism."
Mira's voice came out thin. "That's… the same thing my mirror wrote."
"I know."
"So why are you acting like it's—"
Kael turned and gave her a look. Not harsh. Not angry.
Quiet, controlled warning.
"Because," he murmured, "if it wants attention, we don't feed it."
Mira's mouth opened. Closed. She nodded once.
The tech with the shaved head cleared his throat. "We still taking this through the main lobby? Building's got cameras."
Kael's fingers tightened around his clipboard. He had a Bureau-issued access token for most municipal cameras, but he didn't trust cameras when the Ledger was glitching. Too many ways to rewrite footage. Too many ways to flag a face.
"No," Kael said. "Service exit."
The tech frowned. "That door sticks."
"I'll unstick it."
They moved again, slower now.
As they passed Unit 3C, Kael's clipboard buzzed once, like a phone vibrating—except it wasn't a phone. It was treated paper, bound with spell-thread and stubborn regulations.
He looked down.
A new line of ink crawled across the page.
CASE STATUS: ACTIVE OBSERVATION.
Kael felt a tight knot form behind his ribs.
He hadn't filed the case. He hadn't submitted anything. Intake protocol required three signatures and a departmental seal.
So why was the case marked active?
He flipped the clipboard over.
The runic grid was stable again—almost too stable.
The glitch mark from earlier was gone, as if it had never existed.
Kael stared at the blank space where it had been.
That was worse.
A mistake that stayed visible could be documented. Contained. Argued with.
A mistake that erased itself meant someone—or something—was cleaning up after the error.
Kael slid the clipboard back under his arm and kept walking.
The service exit did stick.
Kael shoved it open anyway.
Cold February air slapped them all at once. The alley behind the building smelled like damp trash and old brick, but it felt honest compared to the hallway.
A Bureau van waited at the curb: plain gray paint, no markings, plates that didn't reflect light properly.
Kael liked Bureau vans. They were ugly and practical, like the Bureau itself. Nobody romanticized them. Nobody wrote songs about them.
The techs maneuvered the sofa toward the back doors.
Mira hesitated at the curb. "Where are we going?"
Kael looked at her. "Central Intake."
Her eyes widened. "Is that… like jail?"
"It's like a DMV," Kael said. "If the DMV also had containment wards and a basement that hums at night."
She didn't laugh.
Kael sighed. "You'll be fine. We take a statement, make sure you're not contaminated, and then you go home."
"And the couch?"
Kael glanced at the wrapped lump being shoved into the van. The binding cloth strained slightly as if something inside it wanted to breathe.
"The couch," he said, "is going to sit in a warded room until I figure out why a piece of furniture knows spell-tax law and who carved Ledger marks into its spine."
Mira swallowed hard. "And if you don't figure it out?"
Kael's expression didn't change, but his voice went lower.
"Then we'll be reading about this in a report," he said, "right before the city pretends it never happened."
The van ride took twenty minutes, but it felt longer.
Central Intake was buried in the older part of the city, where stone buildings pressed close and the streetlamps glowed a warmer yellow. It sat behind an innocent sign that read:
CIVIC MAINTENANCE OFFICE — PUBLIC SERVICES
That sign was a lie so polite it almost deserved respect.
Inside, the air smelled like stale coffee, dry parchment, and magic scrubbed too clean. The lobby looked like any government office: chairs bolted to the floor, a ticket counter, a bored receptionist with a stack of forms taller than her patience.
The only difference was the wards.
Blue lines ran along the baseboards like decorative trim. Sigils were carved into the pillars, hidden under layers of paint. A glass bowl of salt sat on the corner of the counter, and the salt was never still.
Kael led Mira through the metal detector.
It beeped once.
The receptionist didn't even look up. "Phone in the tray."
Mira's hands trembled as she dropped her phone and keys.
Kael stepped through. No beep. His badge held the detector quiet the way a predator holds a room quiet.
Behind them, the techs rolled the sofa through.
The detector screamed.
The receptionist finally looked up. "Seriously?"
The shaved-head tech lifted his hands. "Cursed upholstery."
"Ward Seven," the receptionist said, instantly awake now. Her fingers darted across a rune-keyboard embedded in the desk. "And don't roll it past the fish tank this time."
The tech snorted. "That was one time."
Kael didn't ask about the fish tank.
He'd learned not to.
They were halfway down the main corridor when Kael felt it again.
That pressure behind his eyes.
Not pain.
Recognition.
Like a lens focusing on him.
He slowed, scanning the corridor.
Standard intake rooms with numbered doors. A bulletin board covered in notices:
NO SUMMONING IN RESTROOMS.
PLEASE REPORT ALL UNAUTHORIZED PRAYER.
COFFEE MACHINE IS NOT SENTIENT. STOP ASKING.
Normal Bureau chaos.
But under the fluorescent hum, Kael sensed a faint vibration in the wards. Almost like they were… listening.
He stopped at Room 4.
Mira stopped too, looking around nervously. "What's wrong now?"
Kael ignored her question and looked at the wall beside the door.
There was a scratch on the paint—thin, almost invisible.
Not words this time.
A symbol.
A slash through a circle.
Kael's stomach sank.
The same glitch-mark that had appeared on his clipboard.
He leaned close, heart steady, brain cold.
The symbol wasn't carved. It wasn't drawn. It looked like it had simply… happened, like a crack in reality that decided to leave a signature.
Kael straightened slowly.
Mira whispered, "Is that… bad?"
"It's new," Kael said. "And it's inside Intake."
"That's… worse, right?"
Kael didn't answer immediately.
Because he was thinking of all the things Central Intake was built to keep out.
Because if the glitch-mark was already here…
Then whatever was causing the Ledger errors wasn't outside the system.
It was in it.
Kael turned and pushed open the door to Room 4.
Inside, a table and two chairs. A mirror on the wall that was not a mirror, no matter what the paperwork called it. A small crystal recorder sat in the center of the table, inert and patient.
Kael gestured for Mira to sit.
She sat like she expected the chair to bite.
Kael set his clipboard down and took the seat across from her.
He kept his tone gentle. Human.
"State your name," he said.
"Mira Solen," she replied automatically.
"Date of birth."
She answered.
He nodded, writing it down. The ink behaved this time—no crawling, no rearranging.
Kael allowed himself one thin breath of relief.
Then the crystal recorder lit up by itself.
Kael froze.
The recorder was supposed to activate only when the Bureau employee pressed it. Not when it felt like it.
A single line of blue light ran through the crystal like a vein.
A voice—neither Mira's nor Kael's—spoke from it in a calm, neutral tone:
"SUBJECT IDENTIFIED."
Kael stared at the crystal.
Mira's face went pale. "That's not you."
"No," Kael said quietly. "It's not."
The crystal continued, clinical as a judge.
"UNREGISTERED AUTHORITY DETECTED. INITIATING COMPLIANCE CHECK."
Kael's hand moved under the table toward the emergency seal tucked into his coat.
He didn't pull it yet.
If he triggered a seal, alarms would go off. Doors would lock. His supervisor would show up, irritated and suspicious.
And if the system itself was compromised…
Locking the doors might just trap them with whatever was speaking.
Kael kept his voice steady. "Who are you?"
The recorder paused.
Then: "AUDIT IN PROGRESS. DO NOT INTERFERE."
Kael swallowed.
That wasn't a person speaking.
That was policy.
And policy didn't speak unless the Ledger was using it like a mouth.
Mira's eyes darted between Kael and the crystal. "Kael… what is happening?"
Kael met her gaze.
He couldn't lie to her anymore, not with the room tightening around them like a held breath.
"Something inside the system noticed us," he said. "And it doesn't like being noticed back."
The recorder's blue light brightened.
"PLEASE PLACE YOUR HAND ON THE TABLE, KAEL MICAH RYN."
Kael's heart gave one slow, heavy beat.
It used his middle name again.
Kael looked at the door.
At the thin crack underneath it.
For a moment, he imagined the entire building as a living thing—an organism made of wards and rules and forms—and he was a splinter under its skin.
Then he placed his hand on the table.
Not because he wanted to.
Because sometimes the only way to understand a trap was to step into it on purpose.
The crystal hummed.
The room dimmed slightly.
And beneath Kael's palm, the wood of the table warmed like it had a pulse.