The carriage wood smelled of old varnish and dust. It rocked as the city pulled itself back into motion, and Kaito found that the market noise had become a thin, faraway thing — like a song someone hummed in another room. He kept his hands folded in his lap because Haru's grip on his shoulder had been a promise and a leash both, and because hands that fidgeted in front of clerks tended to be seen as guilty.
Mira sat opposite him, knees together, the threadblade's pommel tapping once against her boot in a soft, patient rhythm. She was the sort of person who made quiet look like intent; even when she was still, the air around her seemed to listen. Rein had fallen back into the carriage's shadow, half-watchful and half-removed, as if proximity to the Spirit Courts made his neatness twitchy.
Kaito kept his grin in reserve. Grins, he had learned, were a public currency — useful, exchangeable, and sometimes returned in coins that clinked with suspicion.
The Spirit Court carriage was clumsy but official: a box of oak and stamped metal that smelled faintly of incense someone had once burned to cover other smells. The clerk who had come to the market with the formal decree sat with a thin bundle of parchment on his knees. He had eyes like blown glass: hollowed not by cruelty but by too much record-keeping. When he looked up at Kaito, his gaze was not cruel at all; it was efficient, the way a hawk's eye was efficient: scanning, noting, taking measure.
"We will record the Veilmark," the clerk said, and his voice folded the phrase into something like a business transaction. "Name, birthplace, known handlers, known incidents. The Court keeps records for the safety of the public."
Kaito said his name like someone reading off a price. "Kaito Ashen. Born at the river, found by Old Nere in the eastern alley. No parents I know of." He glanced at Haru, who did not look surprised. Haru's face was a map of things that had been decided long ago.
"Occupation?" the clerk asked.
"Professional troublemaker," Kaito offered. The clerk did not smile. He made a note.
"Known incidents?" the clerk continued.
Kaito said what he'd done — brief and loud and a little proud — and left out the lullaby, because stories that moved a cage tended to cause people to open other cages in turn.
Haru answered the rest before Kaito could stumble: "Student, former trainee. Known to Master Haru of the Ashen Dojo." Haru's pen moved like a small machine. Everything Haru touched became more official and therefore more dangerous.
Rein's fingers hovered over his hand where a neat, four-glyph sigil was tattooed and faintly visible along his palm. He hadn't been asked to register — not today — but his face was the color of paper. Rein had always been practiced at playing the careful part of a destiny someone else handed him. Today the careful part felt like a cloak that chafed.
The clerk's quill scratched. The carriage swayed, then stopped, and the clerk bent to affix a small, official stamp to the top of the ledger: a seal that smelled a little of damp paper and old glue. Kaito watched the stamp like a man watches a match flame. It was small, ornate, and when the clerk lifted it, Kaito noticed a tiny chip in the stamp's edge — as if it had been pressed into wood so often it had forgotten its original shape.
"You will be called in for a full Veilscan at the Court," the clerk said. "There will be an assessment by the Lifewarders and the Registry. For safety, the Court requests that all Veilbound remain in town until the assessment is complete."
Someone in the carriage coughed. Haru's jaw moved. The phrase "for safety" sounded as friendly as a blade.
Kaito managed a shrug that was more posture than meaning. "Sounds like a party."
Mira's eyes were on him, and there was a curious little smile there — not pity, not exactly, but the kind of smile that means you see someone more clearly than they see themselves. "You should not joke," she said softly. "Not with the Court. They do not understand jokes."
The clerk's pen scratched again. He folded the ledger shut and slid it back into its leather cover with a care that looked almost like reverence. "We will take your sample for the registry," he said. "A small thread-read. This is standard procedure."
The words made the carriage feel suddenly colder. Kaito tried to picture what a thread-read looked like: like Mira's Threadblade slicing a loose seam and reading the stitch? Like a farmer checking the soil? He had seen Lifewarders once in a harvest ceremony, and they had seemed like people who could read sadness in the way smoke curled from a chimney.
"You expect that to hurt?" he asked.
The clerk's mouth twitched, not with humor but with the faintest echo of compassion that didn't belong in his trade. "No. It is a light touch. We will record the Veil signature and file it."
The Court's building was older than the river. It rose from the square like a reef of carved stone, its windows like tired eyes. Banners hung from the eaves, faded with the seasons, and a dozen clerks scurried like small birds of bureaucracy. The square outside held other registrants — an assortment of children with faint marks, broken folk who had come to be catalogued and then left with nothing but a paper slip and a name. The sight made the marrow of Kaito's ribs cold.
Inside, the Hall of Records smelled of ink and lemon oil. Guildmasters leaned on columns and whispered; a Lifewarder in dull blue robes checked an inkpot with a professional frown. Kaito sat on a bench, hands folded, and listened to the vibrato of voices: the measured chatter of officials, the occasional distant sob that always sounds wrong in a room designed for formality.
A young woman with hair like willow leaves — a junior reader, Mira later learned — called his name. "Kaito Ashen," she said. Kaito stood because that is what people do when someone calls their name in a hall that decides futures.
He walked into a small chamber that smelled of citrus and old paper. A chair waited in the center, and across from it sat a man whose robes were embroidered in a pattern Kaito couldn't yet place — spirals that wound into themselves like the smallest storms. The man's face was pleasantly ordinary, which made him more frightening. People with ordinary faces could flatten you with a ledger and you would never know it was an ambush.
"Sit," the man said.
Kaito sat. He had the uncanny ability to be at ease sitting in places where others might argue with the world. Maybe it was stubbornness. Maybe it was practice.
"We will perform a thread-read," the man said. He produced a tool that looked like a hairpin silvered with ink. It caught the light and refracted it into a sliver. "This will only take a moment. Just relax."
Kaito relaxed the way people did before storms: faked calm until the first thunderclap. The man touched the hairpin to the skin at Kaito's wrist where Master Haru had once taught him to hide the mark. The touch was cool and smelled faintly of the Court's incense. A whisper of something passed along Kaito's skin — a tingle like the end of a string being plucked.
The man's expression did not change. He pursed his lips and moved his eyes like a clerk trying to sort two faint inkblots. "Interesting," he said. "Your Mark is not like most."
Kaito kept his grin because it was his shield. "Is that good?"
"Different is not the same as good," the clerk replied. "It is… uncommon."
He shuffled papers. He tapped the hairpin again and a faint light ran along the metal. For a moment the chamber smelled like when he'd been a boy and somehow found the bakery back alley warm and full of steaming loaves. The scent disappeared as if someone had closed a door.
"You say you were bound at birth?" the clerk asked.
"Yes." Kaito's answer sounded small in the big room.
The man nodded, making a notation. He tapped his hairpin against Kaito's wrist a third time, and the light darted like an insect. "You bear an echo," he said. Echo sounded like an understatement for the thing that had roared in the market. "A shadow-echo. It is… linked to an old pattern — a Ninefold sequence."
Something in Kaito's chest did a small, sharp thing. The lullaby curled its thread tighter. He had always known his mark whispered old things, but hearing it framed in paper and expert hands felt like being boxed up and labeled.
"Ninefold?" Kaito echoed. The word tasted like old stories: dangerous, large, hungry. "Like—"
"Like a Shade-Prime," the clerk finished. "Not all Shade-Primes are the same. The Ninefold… is rare. The Registry has a notation for such hosts." He flipped open a ledger and ran a finger down a column crowded with names and blank marks. "We will need to file this under a special entry."
Rein stepped into the doorway then, silent as a thought. His neat hand lay on the carved doorframe like someone checking the balance of a rule. He had been catching glimpses of the Hall from the corridor, able to time his movements with other people's rhythms. He looked at Kaito with a complicated thing in his eyes: not pity, not quite scorn, but the precise weighing of someone who measures value in pages and signatures.
"You should not be here," Rein said quietly, and the sentence landed like a folded paper. "The Registry brings eyes."
"So do you," Kaito muttered. He wanted to be brave in front of Rein — or at least obnoxious enough to make Rein look away.
The clerk looked up as if two people speaking below the breath were a small nuisance only slightly less important than an earthquake. "If the registrants have no further business, we will proceed to the sealing of the ledger."
"Sealing?" Haru asked. His voice had the edges of winter.
"Yes," the clerk said. "A record with this signature is flagged. The Court will notify allied wards and Guilds. For a host with a Ninefold echo, additional oversight is required. Files will be shared with the Lifewardery, the Glyphkeepers, and — in certain cases — external parties whom the Court trusts."
Kaito felt the word external like a hand across the hollow of his ribs. He remembered the hooded watcher on the rooftop, the shard in the hand. He had not been naïve enough to think the world stopped at the market's edge. He had not been naive enough, either, to realize how quickly being seen could turn a life into a ledger.
"External parties?" Haru repeated. His jaw showed a new seriousness. "Like who?"
The clerk's face was bland as paper. "The Court's list is long and pragmatic. The Wardenate is not the only body that keeps records. Some collectors keep private inventories of Veilbound. The Registry cannot prevent interest."
Mira's hand found Kaito's beneath the table where he sat, a small contact that felt like a stitch in a torn shirt. Her fingers were cool and sure. "We will not let them take you," she said under her breath.
The clerk's hairpin flicked again, and for a second the silver bent the light into something that looked like a map. "There is a note," he said, and Kaito saw him blink as if opening a window in his mind. "A notation attached to a prior file. A shard — a dark fragment — was associated with a registered name some years past."
Kaito's mouth grew dry. The lullaby inside his chest hummed, brightening into the note that had followed him since the market. He had seen the shard in the watcher's palm. He had felt it like a pressure where his skin would later itch.
"Do you know this shard?" the clerk asked. The question was casual, but the ink on his ledger seemed to gather like stormclouds.
Kaito didn't answer with words. He did something he had practiced since before Master Haru's dojo: he pulled the thought of the shard like a string and showed it only briefly, a flicker across the inside of his eyes. It was nothing more than an image — a small black sliver with edges that fit the hollow of his palm — but the man's eyes tightened when he saw it.
"You should not show registrars things like that," Rein said, sharp. There was a sound in his voice that had nothing to do with the registry and everything to do with his fear of seeing books unsettled.
The clerk closed his ledger and reached into a drawer. He produced a small, flat tin the size of a playing card. Inside lay a strip of thread so fine it might have been smoke if smoke could be woven. He lifted it with tweezers and brushed it along the hairpin until it took the faintest sheen.
"For hosts with rare echoes, the Registry seeds a watch-thread," he said as if announcing a convenience. "It is a tiny, insubstantial thing: a marker. It allows the Court to locate you if necessary. It is standard — harmless. We bind it at the wrist."
Kaito's fingers flexed. He did not like the sound of seed and watch attached to his skin. There was a swindle's charm to the words: harmless things that let other people find you when they wished.
Haru's hand tightened on Kaito's shoulder. "We will not," he said. "Not without reason."
The clerk's mouth thinned. "The Registry has discretion. The Lifewarders request it for the safety of Veilbound and public alike. In the event of resonance or Hollowing, the watch-thread helps Lifewarders respond quickly."
Mira's thumb brushed Kaito's wrist where the hairpin had touched. "If you place it," she said softly, "bind it to us. Bind it to the Ashen Dojo's sigil. So it will call those we trust first."
The clerk hesitated. He was a man trained in the weights of protocol. Then, with a small professional sigh, he agreed. "We will note primary guardians."
They bound the thread like a ribbon: a single, exact knot that tugged at the skin like a small promise. Kaito felt it; it was the faintest tickle, a hair's breadth of silk. The chamber breathed in. The clerk stamped the ledger. Ink kissed paper.
Kaito wanted to think the watch-thread harmless. He wanted to believe that the Registry's stitch would only be what it claimed: protection. But as the clerk's stamp left a wet black seal on the ledger — a mark like a small sun with nine thin rays — Kaito saw the pattern and did not like the way his blood pushed warm and quick under his skin.
Outside, in the square, someone had folded a page and hidden it in a bootlace. The hooded watcher stepped over a shadow and pressed a thumb to his own wrist where a glass shard rested, newly warmed by his touch. A tiny pulse ran through his sleeve-thread. The shard glowed like a distant lighthouse.
Back in the chamber, the clerk closed the ledger and offered a courteous bow. "That will be all for now. The Court thanks you for your cooperation. We will contact you should more information be required."
"Thanks," Kaito said. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone who hoped the sound would act like a lock.
They left the Hall of Records into a late sun that looked, for a moment, ordinary. The market had already put itself back together with the practical efficiency of people who survive on counting coins and smells. Haru guided them away with the slow patience of someone who had long since accepted that the world would always demand pieces of its children.
Rein walked beside Kaito without speaking for a long time. When he finally did, his voice was careful. "You must learn to hide better," he said. "Or grow stronger faster. Choice two is easier."
Kaito snorted. "You sound like our guildmasters."
Rein's mouth twitched. "Better to be measured by guildmasters than skinned by collectors."
They passed a boy hawking charred bread and Kaito bought one and bit through it with exaggerated appreciation. He liked the taste of simple things: scorched crusts, cheap tea, the burn of effort in his muscles. It anchored him to the ordinary. "I will be the strongest," he said between chews. The words sounded ridiculous and true all at once.
Rein's glance held a complexity Kaito had never fully pried apart. "You say that now," he said. "But strength is not one thing. It is a ledger of small, careful entries."
Kaito looked at him, and for a sudden small instant the market noises fell away and he could see Rein as he once had been: a thin child sharing crusts in a doorway, fingers sticky with jam, eyes bright with a belief in lists that could be rewritten. He'd never fully shared Rein's faith in papers and measures, but he liked Rein enough to want him on his side.
"Then write me into your ledger," Kaito said, with as much earnestness as he could pack into a sentence that tried to be a joke.
Rein's mouth quirked. "I will make a note," he said, and it had the faint promise of a pact.
Mira fell into step with them, the threadblade's pommel ticking in a steady rhythm. "We should prepare," she said. "The Court will call for formal assessment. We train. We gather what allies we can."
Kaito's laugh was quick and bright. "So, more training. Less sleep. Sounds like an ideal holiday."
Haru's sternness softened for a moment into something like pride. "You will do more than train," he said. "You will learn control. You will learn restraint. And you will learn how to be the kind of man the town can trust."
Kaito's mind flashed, instant and small, to the idea of being trusted. It felt like a new kind of hunger. He had wanted recognition once because it made the stones in his pockets feel worth more. Now the thought of trust made the lullaby hum differently: deeper, tighter, like a cord that could snap into a bow.
They walked into the dusk like a modest army: a teacher with his apprentice, a careful rival, and a girl with a threadblade who moved as if she were sewing the evening together. Above the roofs the watcher paused and watched them go. His shard glowed with faint approval, then dimmed — for now.
Kaito felt the watch-thread at his wrist like a pulse. He did not know whether it was a comfort or a leash. He only knew the lullaby hummed, that the market's cries were folding into the night, and that somewhere in the city someone had added his name to a ledger stamped with nine thin rays.
Being noticed was the first step to being powerful. Being catalogued was the first step to being hunted.
He swallowed the last bite of burnt bread and grinned, teeth blackened with soot and determination. "Then let them look," he said. "Let them try."
Mira's eyes met his. For the first time since the market, there was no faint smile or rehearsal of kindness. There was only the steady look of someone who believed he could be more than his echoes. "Then be careful," she said.
Kaito nodded. He did not yet understand everything being done to him, but he had never wanted ease. He wanted to be stronger. He wanted the lullaby to be a victory song, not a cage. He would learn. He would grow. He would answer every ledger with a roar.
And somewhere, not far away, the hooded watcher pasted a thin, folded slip into his sleeve and began to walk toward the place where people kept lists. The city's ledgers would fill with names tonight, but one name would glow a little more than the rest: Kaito Ashen — Veilbound, Ninefold Echo.
The lullaby hummed, and Kaito walked into the night.