—Anchor XV: Keep a door without giving it away.
—Requirement: Stand a sanctuary for naming without names. Let the city speak ownership in your place.
—Timer: Noon.
By late morning the Guildhall annex had grown a new mouth: SANCTUARY REGISTRY, painted careful, flanked by wardens who looked like apologies. A counter waited with four boxes on a form—Name, Address, Keeper, Sponsor—lined so straight the pen would feel ashamed if it wandered.
White Crown kept a broad aisle clear for optics. Vendors watched from their stalls as if they had set the bread to proof and had time to enjoy a story. Boys compared scabs. The girl with blue string hopped her heel on a step that liked to bang.
Damien arrived with Selene, Mira, and Riven at his shoulder. He did not bring a banner. He brought a door.
Not upright. Lowered. A rectangle of shade drew itself across the cobbles at the edge of the line as if someone had set a threshold down to rest. The Night Door carried Nocturne's hearing into the square; the fig leaf's cool lay along the shadow's long side like a signature.
The clerk behind the counter looked up, surprised into honesty, then remembered salary. "Registration," she said briskly. "State name of house, address, keeper, and sponsor."
Riven stepped to the edge of the shadow and set his palm on nothing the clerk could see. "Threshold law," he said, level. "We answer for harm and oath. We don't answer for banners."
The clerk dipped her pen. "Form requires a name."
"Ask the door," Selene said.
A ripple went through the queue that had nothing to do with patience. The clerk hesitated. The lieutenant with the nice coat stood three paces back, face professional, eyes awake.
The clerk's pen hovered. "Door," she said, halfway to laughter and saved by the habit of obedience, "state ownership."
Nocturne's ring came up through the shadow and put its shoulder under the word.
Tok.Ask first. Answer out loud.
The water clock two streets away caught the line and repeated it, soft as a friend. The canopy beams at the annex door remembered what they had learned last night and carried the knock back.
The clerk blinked, then did the thing good clerks do—she read what the paper would need. "Owner?"
The ring answered, proper as a witness: Kept by Threshold. Witnessed by bell, ledger, and lamp.
Mira laid the folded charter on the counter—fig leaf counterseal plain as a small green oath. The boy from the choir benches lifted his lamp, wick clean. Riven slid the clapper onto the wood, its weight the size of a promise. Three witnesses stood without asking for names.
The registry ledger on the counter tried to write UNKNOWN. Ledger Shame found its spine. The paper knocked, tiny and perfect, like a nail refusing to seat crooked.
"Name your harm," the ledger asked the form.
The clerk stared at her own book as if it had just corrected her grammar. The lieutenant's mouth twitched, then remembered brass.
"No harm named," Damien said quietly. "Shelter under eclipse. Door answers for itself."
Asher Drake arrived without hurry and without ceremony, which was his ceremony. The Bloodreign Spear stood behind him the way a well-trained argument stands behind a patient man. He did not look at the shadow on the cobbles. He looked at the clerk.
"The Act requires liability," he said pleasantly. "If harm occurs, who answers?"
The shadow rang. Ask first. The basin across town obliged: Tok.
Riven didn't raise his voice. "I answer for the door," he said. "Keeper by rule. Harm must be named to bind."
Asher's eyes flicked to the fig seal, to the lamp, to the clapper. "Very municipal," he said. "Then place your name in the proper box, Keeper."
Riven rested his fingers on the pen and did not lift it. "The box can hold a rule," he said. "Not a ransom."
Mira turned the form sideways, set the fig leaf in the Sponsor square, and pressed. Oil printed a small leaf where a crest would have liked to be. The crowd made the sound people make when a neat thing lands true.
The clerk's pen scratched, reluctant and then relieved. House: Nocturne. Keeper: Threshold (Riven, by rule). Sponsor: Fig counterseal under eclipse. She looked up at Asher as if asking whether the world had ended.
Asher smiled the width required for patience. "Next," he said.
Next stepped a woman with bracelets and a voice that had argued rent into mercy. "My wall hears now," she told the clerk. "It will tell you if a mark means harm. I keep it with bread and names of children. Write that." The ledger knocked; the clerk wrote. The lieutenant did not interfere because the water clock had made interference sound ignorant.
Behind her came the watchman from the southern foundry. "Guild oath keeps mine," he said. "Route breath bound at dawn." The clerk wrote that too, and her pen didn't feel cheated.
A man in a clean coat, not Asher's but inspired by him, tried to push a stack of sponsor cards forward. "We can represent—"
The Public Knock traveled the canopy and the counter and the paper and landed on his cards like rain. Tok.Ask first. Answer out loud. He tried clarity and the cards went damp with doubt.
The queue found its rhythm. No names that could be bought. Only thresholds and what kept them: bells, ledgers, lamps, oaths, bread, routes. The registry book gathered phrases that would read like poetry to someone in some other century and law to everyone in this one.
Asher watched it all, then adjusted, as he always did. He gestured to a warden who stepped forward with a secondary form printed on thin paper with legal teeth.
"Addendum," the warden said smoothly. "Optional. If your door is used for crime, consent to entry is presumed."
The basin knocked. The form tried to sit. Wall-Ear under the annex lintel repeated the question to the thin paper itself. The paper, having been printed in a hurry, confessed compulsion by curling at the corner.
"Withdrawn," the lieutenant said before Asher could bother. He sounded almost grateful.
The clerk stamped the last line on Nocturne's entry because someone had to. Ink took the box with a satisfying chunk that meant a room had been allowed to exist.
—Anchor XV accepted.
—City custom seeded: Keeper by Threshold.
—Skill unlocked: Common Roll.
—Effect: Public registries within bell hearing may accept Threshold as keeper; door, bell, ledger, lamp may testify in place of names. Compelled addenda must name harm aloud to bind.
The line dwindled to those who only wanted to watch a thing happen well. The clerk looked at her own book as if it had taught her something about her job she had always hoped was true. The lieutenant signed a receipt that had no one's name on it and folded it neatly anyway.
Asher stepped closer to the shadow and let his gaze rest there for the first time. "Numbers are patient," he said.
"So are doors," Selene answered.
He inclined his head and turned away. The Spear's shadow went with him, neat as always.
A boy on the steps tried the new sentence out loud, because he had heard men be right with it and wanted to practice. "Ask first. Answer out loud."
The step banged, satisfied.
They carried the door's hearing back through the streets. Posters had begun to learn the sentence by heart. At the Crier's Arch the slate wore two lines in chalk that had decided to be permanent: BELL ROUTES: PUBLIC GOOD. ASK FIRST. ANSWER OUT LOUD.
In Nocturne's courtyard the fig leaves were very green. The ring under the lintel met Damien's palm like a second pulse finding a place to rest.
The thin handwriting drew one careful line more:
—Scaffold directive updated.
—Anchor XVI: Take a street that isn't yours.
—Requirement: Walk a hostile procession and leave it kinder than you found it.
—Where: Cathedral parade, tonight.
—Complication: Spear will borrow your word if the choir gets it first.
Selene's eyes were bright the way night hunters get when the path finally shows itself. Mira set the clapper on the shelf and reached for a map with streets that liked to argue. Riven checked the door and found it listening.
"Tonight," Damien said.
The city breathed with him, and the bell under the lintel agreed.