The first time Siddharth Kumar stole a life, it was already signed, sealed, and waiting in a magistrate's desk. He swapped the death warrant for a blank page while the night watchman snored three rooms away. His hands didn't shake until afterward, when he remembered this was his third "execution" prevented this month.
Now, standing in a sunlit courtroom, he could still feel the wax residue on his fingertips.
"The statute you cite cannot apply retroactively," Siddharth told the lecturer, his voice cutting through the wood-paneled silence. "The Crown can change the rule; it cannot change last year's signatures."
A murmur rippled through the gallery. The lecturer—gray temples, immaculate cuffs—didn't flinch. "Mr. Kumar, the statute confers authority without constraint on dates."
Siddharth turned a page. "Except where the text names the constraint." He tapped the margin. "Subclause (c). Third line."
The room leaned forward. For a breath, the only sound was paper breathing. Then: "Hmph." The lecturer moved on to another student, one with a country estate in his vowels.
As students poured out, a docket clerk bumped against Siddharth's sleeve, scattering documents across tile. He knelt to help, hands moving automatically through names, numbers, filing codes. Then his fingers froze on red wax.
An oval signet. Crisp. Crowned with a tiny laurel wreath and the slanted initials: W.C.
Warden Carlisle. Head of ASH. The man whose signature could empty a village by sunrise.
"Apologies," the clerk snapped, snatching the page. "Urgent ministry transfer."
Siddharth stood, his breath caught somewhere between ribs and reality. Across the hall, Anvitha R. Varman watched him over a newspaper folded to show the headline: "PHANTOM STRIKES AGAIN - WHITE FEATHER LEFT AT TREASURY."
Outside, London was bright and cold. A cart clattered past, canvas sacks stamped with the Exchequer crest bulging like overfed bellies. Treasury bonds. The route was always the same: carriage from countinghouse to vault, from vault to carriage, from carriage to that small door where a stamp made theft legal.
He walked on, because walking seemed honest. Because he'd learned to hide a second life in the margins of the first.
Next morning, the courtroom buzzed with a new word: Phantom.
Anvitha sat two rows ahead, her father's name casting long shadows. When a clerk dropped a folder near her feet, she saw it first: the same oval signet. W.C. Again.
She returned the page without comment, her voice trapped behind the thunder of her own heartbeat.
Across the room, Siddharth took his seat, jacket too worn for this company but worn just right for belief. As the lecturer began, a draft lifted a pale scrap from Siddharth's notes. It floated, turned silver in the light, and settled by his hand.
A feather. Fine as a breath.
Anvitha inhaled sharply. In that silent intake, a path opened that would not close again.
Siddharth's fingers curled, a silver feather ring glinting on his finger as he covered the evidence. He shouldn't have worn it. He never wore it in daylight.
Outside, a bell tolled the hour with patient brutality. Inside, the lecturer asked a question no one heard.
The Phantom was in the courtroom. And he'd just been seen.