The Underwake never pretended to be welcoming.
Eiran descended into it the way he always did—quietly, deliberately—boots ringing soft and hollow against old stone stairs worn smooth by centuries of weight and reweighting. Above him, the city breathed. Below, it remembered.
The Underwake was where Ardent’s Reach hid the things it didn’t want cluttering its surface: necromantic offices, maintenance wards, sealed Veins, the Ledger House itself. The air was cooler here, tinged faintly with iron and ink and something older that never quite washed out of the stone.
He passed through the intake checkpoint without slowing.
Wards brushed over him, recognized his signature, logged his presence.
EIRAN VALE — LEDGERKEEPER — AUTHORIZED.
The corridor beyond narrowed, ceiling dropping just enough to make taller visitors unconsciously duck. Eiran didn’t. He knew this place too well.
The briefing room waited at the end of the hall.
No windows. No ornamentation. Just a long table of dark stone and three chairs arranged with deliberate asymmetry—one at the head, two flanking the sides. Power seating, subtle and unmistakable.
Director Halvek sat at the head.
He looked exactly as Eiran remembered: immaculately composed, hair silvering at the temples, hands folded loosely on the table as if nothing in the world had ever surprised him. Two Oversight auditors occupied the side chairs, datapads already active, eyes sharp and incurious in the way of people trained not to react.
“Ledgerkeeper Vale,” Halvek said, rising just enough to be polite. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
“You requested my presence,” Eiran replied evenly. “I came.”
Halvek smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“Please,” he said, gesturing. “Sit.”
Eiran did.
The room’s wards hummed faintly as he settled—privacy seals, truth dampeners, recording glyphs keyed to Oversight clearance. Nothing unusual. Nothing overtly hostile.
That made it worse.
Halvek tapped the table once, and a projection bloomed into the air between them: a simplified map of Wardline 7 and its surrounding districts.
“We’ve been reviewing your recent activity,” Halvek said. “The market stabilization. The Unfiled incident. Your response times have been… impressive.”
Eiran said nothing.
“One might even say exemplary,” Halvek continued. “Especially given your choice to contain without escalating to combat necromancers.”
Auditor One glanced up. “A deviation from standard protocol.”
“A calculated one,” Eiran replied. “The anomaly was localized. Escalation would have increased civilian exposure.”
Halvek nodded, as if indulging a student. “A fair assessment. And one Oversight has accepted—for now.”
The map shifted, isolating the alley where the Unfiled had manifested.
“You were closest,” Halvek said. “Again.”
Eiran met his gaze. “I am assigned to that sector.”
“Yes,” Halvek agreed lightly. “And you seem to be assigned to quite a few interesting sectors lately.”
The implication hung in the air.
Halvek waved a hand, dismissing the projection, and replaced it with a different file—older, thinner. Its header flickered briefly before settling.
GLASSFALL COURT — INCIDENT 7C9
STATUS: INCONCLUSIVE
Eiran felt something cold slide into his chest.
“This predates your current posting,” Halvek said. “A minor disturbance, years ago. No fatalities. Several injuries. Spatial inconsistencies reported by witnesses.”
Auditor Two spoke without looking up. “Three assailants hospitalized with compound fractures inconsistent with recorded force vectors.”
“Walls misaligned,” Halvek added. “Veins activity logged but never substantiated. No registered attuned on-site.”
The file scrolled.
It was sparse. Too sparse.
Eiran recognized the pattern immediately: an event that didn’t fit any known category, quietly set aside rather than investigated.
“A curiosity,” Halvek said. “One we dismissed at the time.”
“And now?” Eiran asked.
“And now,” Halvek replied, folding his hands again, “we are revisiting a number of curiosities.”
The auditors’ datapads chimed softly as they cross-referenced something Eiran couldn’t see.
“Ledgerkeeper Vale,” Halvek said, “in your professional opinion—if a necromancer of your specialization had been present during the Glassfall incident… would the outcome have escalated?”
Eiran considered the question carefully.
“No,” he said at last. “Proper accounting stabilizes systems. When near-death events go unfiled, distortions propagate.”
“Meaning?” Halvek prompted.
“Meaning the longer an anomaly goes unacknowledged,” Eiran said, “the more likely it is to recur.”
Halvek smiled again. “Exactly.”
He tapped the file, and it minimized, sliding to the side of the projection space instead of disappearing.
“We’re increasing the fidelity of our monitoring,” Halvek continued. “Your Grave Circuits will be observed more closely. Your response decisions reviewed.”
Auditor One finally looked up. “Purely procedural.”
“Of course,” Halvek said. “We trust you, Ledgerkeeper. That’s precisely why we’re interested.”
Eiran felt the weight of the words settle.
Tool.
Variable.
Subject.
“I assume this is not a reprimand,” Eiran said.
“No,” Halvek replied smoothly. “Quite the opposite. Consider this… attention.”
He stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “Continue your exemplary work, Vale. Keep the ledger balanced. If you do, Oversight will have no reason to involve itself further.”
The implication was clear.
If you don’t, we will.
Eiran rose as well, spine straight, expression carefully neutral.
“May I review the Glassfall file in full?” he asked.
Halvek’s smile sharpened. “Already forwarded to your archive terminal. For pattern analysis.”
“Thank you,” Eiran said.
As he turned to leave, Halvek added, almost casually, “Oh—and Ledgerkeeper?”
Eiran paused.
“Should you encounter another… curiosity,” Halvek said, “do remember. Some anomalies are best observed before they are resolved.”
Eiran met his eyes.
“I account for what I’m assigned,” he said. “Nothing more.”
Halvek inclined his head. “Of course.”
The door sealed behind Eiran with a soft, final click.
He walked back into the Underwake’s cool corridors, the hum of wards settling around him, the Glassfall file burning like a phantom weight in his awareness.
Oversight was watching more closely now.
And for the first time since Hearthfall Row entered his ledger, Eiran Vale had the distinct impression that he was no longer the only one connecting dots that had once been allowed to blur.
Eiran didn’t open the Glassfall file immediately.
He told himself it was because the walk back to the Ledger House from Oversight wasn’t long enough to process what Halvek had just implied. That he preferred to read in familiar walls, with the House’s hum under his feet and its wards wrapped around him.
The truth was simpler.
He didn’t like the idea of seeing his instincts confirmed in a room where Halvek could still feel the echo of his reactions.
The corridor sloped gently downward toward the Ledger House proper, stone underfoot shifting from rough-cut to smoother, more deliberate lines. Here the Underwake felt almost like a second skin for the city—a support structure of old arches and newer reinforcement, Veins sealed and redirected with careful care.
The Ledger House sat in the middle of it all, a squat, solid structure built directly onto the spine of the foundation. Its facade was plain—no ornament beyond the understated sigil above the door: a closed book, a single line bisecting it.
He touched the side panel.
The House recognized him, wards relaxing with a low, familiar thrum. The door unlatched.
Inside, the air smelled like ink, bone dust, and faintly of tea from somewhere down the hall. The quiet here was different from Oversight’s institutional hush. This was working silence—pages turning, pens scratching, the soft clack of bone against stone from the assistant in the next room.
He set his coat on the hook by the entry and crossed to the main console alcove—the carved niche in the wall where Underwake feeds and internal alerts filtered in.
The Glassfall file icon pulsed in the corner of the display, waiting.
He keyed past it for the moment, eyes scanning the more immediate entries: Veins fluctuations, routine burial confirmations, minor ward recalibrations. Background noise. The city breathing.
A fresh line blinked into existence as he watched.
UNDERWAKE ENTRY LOG — GATE 3
Unregistered civilian access.
Classification: VISITOR.
Flag: MINOR ANOMALOUS SIGNATURE (LOW).
The name populated a half-second later, pulled from the city’s civic records.
MORROW, ASTERIA.
For a moment, he thought he’d misread it.
Then the Ledger Sense shifted, just barely—like feeling a draft change direction in a sealed room. The House’s own wards registered a presence moving through the Underwake’s outer corridor, not hostile, not heavy. Just… off by a fraction.
Of course she didn’t stay on the Row, he thought.
Of course she came here.
He pulled up the gate feed.
The image was grainy, the colors washed out by the ward lamps’ harsh spectrum, but it was enough. Asteria Morrow stepped through the checkpoint arch with her shoulders squared and her hands clenched in the pockets of her coat as if she could keep them from shaking by trapping them there.
Blonde hair pulled back in a loose knot.
Blue eyes with that impossible gold ring, even the wardlight couldn’t quite flatten.
She glanced up at the glyphs humming above the gate as she passed under them, like she could feel the measuring.
The attendant at the desk barely looked up. The anomaly flag on his screen flashed once, quietly downgraded itself—from UNKNOWN to INTERFERENCE—then cleared.
Equipment noise.
Eiran watched the little icon representing her move along the Underwake’s simple schematic toward his coordinate. Someone had given her directions, then. Or she’d asked. Either way, she wasn’t wandering.
She was coming to him on purpose.
He felt something loosening and tightening at the same time in his chest.
The Underwake was not Hearthfall Row. Up there, the city’s chaos provided cover—markets and neighbors and a dozen distractions to hide behind. Down here, every presence was noticed, logged, categorized.
If Halvek had chosen today to stroll unannounced through the Ledger House—
He exhaled slowly, pushing the thought aside.
The House’s interior wards buzzed softly at the edge of his senses, a polite warning: someone had reached the outer doors.
“Sir?”
He didn’t need to look to know the skeletal assistant had appeared in the alcove doorway, bone fingers folded neatly at its front. Its voice, when he’d engraved it, he’d kept neutral—neither warm nor cold.
“Yes,” Eiran said.
“Visitor,” the assistant said. “From Hearthfall Row.”
He let the unnecessary formality ground him.
“Escort her to the north reading room,” he said. “I’ll be there shortly.”
The assistant inclined its skull in a passable imitation of a nod, then turned and glided away, footsteps whisper-soft against the stone.
Eiran closed the Underwake console, the Glassfall file’s icon still pulsing quietly in the corner of his vision.
He didn’t open it.
Not yet.
Instead, he straightened his cuffs, smoothed his expression into something neutral, and followed the fading echo of the assistant’s steps deeper into the Ledger House, toward the person who had left the one place he’d tried to make safe in order to walk willingly into the heart of the system that scared her.
Whatever this was, he thought, it was no longer something he could pretend was just numbers on a page.
It was walking his halls.
And it had come looking for him.
The north reading room was smaller than most people expected.
No grand shelves. No towering stacks. Just a low table, two chairs, and walls lined with shallow niches holding reference volumes that never left the House. The light here was gentler too, filtered through bone-lattice sconces that hummed instead of flickered.
Aster was standing when Eiran entered.
She looked… out of place. Not badly—just noticeably human against all the careful order. Her coat was still on, hands clasped in front of her like she didn’t quite trust herself to relax them. When she turned, the gold ring in her blue eyes caught the light, bright and unmistakable.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“You came all the way down here,” Eiran said finally.
“I didn’t want to wait,” Aster replied. Honest. Direct. “And I didn’t want to say this somewhere you couldn’t answer freely.”
He nodded once. That was fair.
The door sealed behind him with a soft click, privacy wards sliding into place. Not interrogation wards. Not Oversight-grade. Just enough to keep conversations from wandering.
Aster noticed anyway.
“You don’t trap people in here, do you?” she asked, half-joking.
“No,” Eiran said immediately. “I wouldn’t.”
She searched his face for a second—then seemed satisfied.
“Okay,” she said, and exhaled like she’d been holding that breath since she stepped off the Row. “Good.”
She stepped closer—just enough that he could feel the subtle shift in the air around her, that faint wrong-right sensation that always followed her movements. Not dangerous. Just… significant.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “And I need you to hear it as me, not as a case.”
“I am listening,” Eiran said.
She hesitated, then nodded to the table. “Can I…?”
He understood before she finished the sentence and pulled out a chair for her. She sat. After a beat, he sat too—close, but not crowding. The table between them felt symbolic, thin as it was.
“There’s a place called Glassfall Court,” Aster said quietly. “North of Ravel Street. Near the Outer Loom. Years ago.”
Eiran didn’t react. Not outwardly. But something in him went very still.
She watched his face carefully as she spoke—hands folded now, voice steady in a way that felt practiced.
“Something happened there. I didn’t understand what I was back then. I still don’t, entirely. But I know what it felt like. The world stopped behaving. Not randomly. Around me.”
He held her gaze. Didn’t interrupt.
“They hurt Esmerée,” she continued. “And I almost… fixed it in a way that wouldn’t have stopped. I didn’t break the city. But I came close.”
Her fingers tightened together.
“I stopped because she called my name,” Aster said. “Not because I knew how. Just because I heard her.”
Silence settled between them, thick but not uncomfortable.
When Eiran spoke, his voice was quiet. “You weren’t registered.”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t even know there was registration.”
“There is a file,” he said gently. “It’s thin. Incomplete. But it exists.”
Aster’s shoulders tensed.
“I thought there might be,” she said. “That’s why I came. I didn’t want you to find it without knowing it was me.”
He looked down at his hands for a moment—ink-stained, steady. Then back up at her.
“Thank you,” he said. “For trusting me with that.”
Her eyes flickered. “You don’t look scared.”
“I am,” he said simply. “Just not of you.”
That landed harder than either of them expected.
Aster let out a shaky laugh. “That’s… not what people usually say.”
“I don’t usually say things that aren’t true,” Eiran replied.
Another pause. The quiet in the room deepened, but it wasn’t empty. It felt… charged. Like standing near a fault line that hadn’t decided whether it wanted to shift.
“I don’t want to be a problem you solve,” Aster said. “Or a variable you compensate for.”
He leaned forward slightly—not crossing the table, but closing the distance in a way that felt intentional.
“Then don’t be,” he said. “Be a person who needs structure. Everyone does. Some of us just… need more visible guardrails.”
She studied him, searching for the angle, the caveat.
“And if I lose control?” she asked quietly.
“Then we plan for that,” he said. “Together. Not after.”
Her breath caught.
“That’s not very Ministry of you,” she murmured.
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
The corner of her mouth lifted, just a little.
For a moment, neither of them moved. The table felt unnecessary now—an obstacle rather than a boundary—but neither crossed it.
Instead, Eiran reached out—not for her hand, not quite—but rested his fingers on the edge of the table, close enough that if she shifted, she’d feel the warmth.
“I won’t write you into a ledger as a threat,” he said. “And I won’t pretend you’re harmless either. If Oversight ever comes asking… I need you to know that I will protect you as a person first.”
Aster swallowed.
“And if protecting me costs you?” she asked.
He didn’t hesitate.
“Then that cost is mine to choose.”
The intimacy of that statement wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.
Aster leaned back slightly, breathing out slow, like she was letting herself rest in the space he’d just made.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Then I’ll do the same. No secrets that matter. No pretending I’m smaller than I am.”
Their eyes held.
Something settled between them—not love yet, not fully—but a mutual recognition. Two dangerous people choosing not to look away from each other.
“Good,” Eiran said. “Then we start properly.”
She smiled. Not bright. Not flirtatious.
Real.
The conversation didn’t end with promises.
It never did, not for Eiran. Words without records felt unfinished.
He broke eye contact first, just long enough to reach for the comm tucked beside his chair. With a flick of his fingers, he pulled up the Glassfall file Halvek had forwarded.
The header floated between them, pale letters on a dark field.
GLASSFALL COURT — INCIDENT 7C9
SUMMARY: LOCALIZED STRUCTURAL ANOMALY / NON-FATAL INJURIES
Aster’s jaw tightened.
“So it’s real,” she murmured. “Not just in my head.”
“Very real,” Eiran said. “Very badly understood.”
He scrolled. The report was shorter than it should’ve been.
Three injured men, all with fractures that didn’t match recorded impact.
Minor Veins flicker under the district.
Witness accounts flagged as “inconsistent, likely hysterical.”
One short note from the original investigator:
Possible unregistered attuned present. No further data.
No names. No ages. No mention of a blonde girl and her black-haired friend leaving the alley with the wrongness still clinging to their clothes.
“They didn’t even try,” Aster said quietly. “To understand it.”
Eiran shook his head once. “They tried just enough to decide it was inconvenient.”
She huffed a humorless sound. “Sounds right.”
He dismissed the projection and set the slate down, deliberately angling it away from her.
“Director Halvek referenced this file before I came here,” he said. “He’s revisiting ‘curiosities’—his word—not just in Wardline 7, but across the Reach. Glassfall is one of them.”
“Do they know it was me?” she asked.
“No,” Eiran said. “If they did, you wouldn’t have walked down here without an escort.”
That landed.
Aster’s fingers drummed lightly against the table, a restless, contained rhythm. “So I am a curiosity now. Congratulations to me.”
“You were a curiosity years ago,” Eiran corrected. “Now you’re… a variable.”
“That’s worse,” she muttered.
“Yes,” he agreed.
She looked up at him again. “What happens if they connect the dots?”
Honesty, he reminded himself. Or what passed for it, down here.
“They will want to measure you,” he said. “Push until you break or prove you won’t. They will call it research. Containment. A necessary risk.”
“And you?” she asked. “What will you call it?”
“Unacceptable,” he said.
The word came out sharper than he’d intended. It hung between them, edged and uncompromising.
Her eyes widened slightly. Then softened.
“Okay,” she said. “Then we make it harder for them.”
He nodded once. “We do.”
He leaned back, giving her space that didn’t feel like distance.
“I need you to understand something,” he added. “I can’t promise to keep you invisible forever. The city notices what it notices. But I can choose what I put on the page. And I am choosing not to write you as a phenomenon.”
Aster’s throat worked. “Then what am I?”
He allowed himself the smallest of smiles.
“Someone whose file,” he said, “goes under ‘personal,’ not ‘professional.’”
It was a terrible joke, and not a joke at all. She snorted anyway, tension easing from her shoulders.
“You’re very bad at flirting,” she said.
“I’m not flirting,” he replied automatically.
“Exactly,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, decided some battles could wait.
Outside the room, the House’s wards hummed softly, a reminder that time was passing, and the Underwake did not sleep.
“You should go soon,” he said reluctantly. “The longer you’re down here, the more likely someone will notice and wonder why.”
Aster’s expression shifted—something like disappointment, smoothed quickly into practicality.
“Right,” she said. “Can’t ruin your respectable reputation.”
“You’re doing an excellent job of testing it,” he said dryly.
She stood. He did too.
For a heartbeat, they were closer than the table allowed. She smelled like city air and chalk dust and some faint, cheap soap he knew most people bought in bulk. He wondered, briefly and unhelpfully, if the Ledger House would start to smell like that too if she kept coming back.
She hesitated, then held out her hand.
Not in a formal, stiff way.
Just… offering it.
He took it.
Her fingers were cooler than his, but steady. The contact was brief, no pulse of power, no dramatic rush of shared sensation—just skin against skin, two people acknowledging that whatever they’d agreed on here was real enough to be felt.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For listening,” he said, “or for choosing to tell me?”
“Both,” she answered.
He released her hand slowly.
“I’ll walk you to the gate,” he said.
“You’ll walk me to the stairs,” she countered. “If you come all the way up, someone’s going to assume something official happened, and I do not want to fill out forms explaining my feelings.”
He almost smiled. “Fair point.”
They left the reading room together, the privacy wards dimming behind them.
Halfway to the outer corridor, she spoke again, voice low.
“If I feel… Glassfall again,” she said, not looking at him, “I’ll tell you. Early. Even if it’s nothing.”
He dipped his head. “And if I see your name on any file it shouldn’t be on,” he replied, “you’ll know about it before Oversight finishes sending the notice.”
It wasn’t a perfect shield.
But it was a start.
At the base of the stairwell that led back toward the upper levels, she stopped and turned.
“See you on the Row, Ledgerkeeper,” she said.
“Soon, I hope,” he replied.
She gave him a look that suggested she’d noticed the ‘hope’ and chose not to comment on it—for now. Then she turned and climbed, steps light but purposeful, vanishing into the brighter, harsher light above.
The Underwake felt a little emptier without her in it.
Eiran waited at the base of the stairwell until the wards confirmed she’d cleared the House and the first layer of the Underwake. Only then did he turn back toward his office, the echo of her hand in his still lingering like a phantom warmth. Already composing a new entry—not in the official system, but in the notebook he kept locked in the bottom drawer of his desk.
Some truths didn’t belong in the ledger.
They belonged in the margins.
The change in air hit her halfway up.
Underwake chill gave way to the warmer, grittier breath of the mid-level streets—stone dust, tram grease, too many people in not quite enough space. It should have felt normal.
Instead, everything felt half a degree off-center.
That always happened after she sat still too long, talking about things she tried not to name. The world’s edges felt too sharp. Outcomes stuck to her skin. Every footstep felt like a decision she was personally responsible for.
She passed through the last checkpoint arch without thinking about it, ducking under the glow of the ward glyphs. They hummed over her, gauging, measuring, filing. A flicker of that now-familiar sensation brushed the back of her neck—the system noticing something it didn’t have words for, then downgrading itself before anyone had to care.
CIVILIAN — MORROW, ASTERIA — CLEARED.
ANOMALY: INTERFERENCE (DISMISSED).
“Yeah,” she muttered under her breath. “Let’s keep it that way.”
She stepped out into a narrower side street, one of the arteries that would eventually feed back toward Hearthfall Row if she took the right turns. The noise of Ardent’s Reach rolled over her—tram bells, market calls, a distant argument about prices.
Underneath it all, something tugged.
Not a disaster. Not the yawning, teeth-bared drag of an Unfiled. Just a small, curious pull, like static on the cuff of a sleeve.
She stopped.
A faint sound echoed from behind her—claws on stone, light and precise.
Aster turned.
A black cat sat just beyond the shadow of the Underwake arch.
He must have slipped through the checkpoint right after her, or from some side access she couldn’t see. Short fur, glossy enough to catch what little light trickled down here. Lean, narrow shoulders. Tail curled neatly around his paws.
He watched her with calm, unblinking interest.
His eyes were wrong.
Not in a bad way. Just… wrong for the rest of him. A deep maroon, rich and dark as dried wine, catching hints of red when the light hit just right.
“Hey,” Aster said softly. “You don’t look like you belong down there.”
The cat tilted his head, as if considering this.
He smelled faintly of dust and cold stone, that particular Underwake tang she’d just walked out of. For a heartbeat, the air around him felt a little lighter, like a pressure she hadn’t realized was pressing down on her eased by a fraction.
Weird.
She took a cautious step toward him.
He didn’t bolt. He didn’t bristle. He just blinked slowly, tail-tip flicking once.
“You’re very composed for a stray,” she murmured. “You lost, or just judgmental?”
The cat did not answer, obviously.
But when she turned and started walking again, he flowed to his feet and padded after her, quiet as falling ash.
Aster pretended not to notice for half a block.
It was easier to test things when you pretended you weren’t.
She ducked into a busier lane, letting the crowd close around her. The city pressed in—voices, footsteps, the ambient buzz of a hundred small stresses and irritations. Usually that kind of mess made her skin itch.
Today, it didn’t.
Something behind her soaked the edges off.
At the next corner, she paused to let a tram screech past. A flash of movement brushed the edge of her vision. She glanced down.
The black cat had stopped just behind her heel, neatly out of the way of rushing boots, tail wrapped tight, maroon eyes on her face like she was the only thing worth tracking.
“You know you’re not supposed to imprint on random necromancer-adjacent girls who make bad choices, right?” she told him.
A nearby woman glanced over, saw the cat, and relaxed. “Oh, he’s handsome,” she said. “Where’d you pick up that one?”
Aster opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“Found him on the way up,” she said instead. Not untrue. “He’s not mine.”
The cat flicked an ear.
The woman sniffed. “Looks like he disagrees.”
She moved on. Aster blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“Okay,” she told the cat once they were alone again. “Ground rules. You can walk with me. You can’t judge my life choices. And if you belong to some Underwake gremlin, I am not paying your retrieval fee.”
He bumped lightly against her ankle in passing—just enough contact to be deliberate. The little knot of anxiety in her chest, the one that always tightened when she left the Row, loosened another notch.
She frowned down at him.
“You’re… weird,” she decided.
He blinked, unoffended.
By the time the crooked arch of Hearthfall Row came into view, she’d stopped pretending he wasn’t there. The rhythm of his claws on stone had synced up with her footsteps, a soft, steady counterpoint.
At the threshold, he paused.
The Row’s old wards clung to the stone here, layered and reworked over generations. They hummed as she stepped through—recognizing the circuit Eiran had built, the bones under the street, the fact that she’d walked this path often enough now to count.
The cat sat just outside the invisible line, maroon eyes narrowed, whiskers twitching as he tasted the air.
“Yeah,” Aster said quietly. “It’s different in there.”
For a moment, she wondered if he’d turn back. Return to whatever under-stair shadow he’d crawled out of. Follow some other drifting leak of bad energy.
Instead, he lifted one paw, then another, and crossed into Hearthfall Row like he was stepping over a puddle. The wards shivered, not in protest, but in faint, puzzled acknowledgement.
Nothing flared. No alarms sang.
He was just… another presence in the street.
Aster huffed out a small, surprised laugh.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You’re hired. Unpaid emotional support cat.”
He gazed up at her, blinked once, and then, with the air of someone making a perfectly reasonable choice, fell into step beside her as she headed toward Skylight House