That bell should not have sounded.
Elior stood quite still, looking at the brass curve of the Bell of Stillness as it settled back into silence. The sound had been soft—almost polite—but its echo remained inside of him, vibrating somewhere deeper than hearing.
He was alone.
He knew this beyond doubt. The archive floor was deserted at this hour, its clerks reassigned or deliberately absent. Even the lamps seemed dimmer than they should be, their flames steady but drawn back as if the room itself was trying not to bear witness to what had just taken place.
"You have already written to me."
It was a whisper that replayed in his mind, not as sound, but as intention. Not as a threat or command, but as a fact.
Elior had taken one step back from the desk; his heel caught on the edge of the carpet. The Bell did nothing further. No alarm sounded. No seal engaged.
That, more than anything, unsettled him.
The Bureau reacted to violations with mechanical precision. When it failed to respond, it indicated one of two possibilities: either nothing had happened-or what had happened had already been accounted for.
He flexed his hand. The sigil on his palm prickled, faintly, as if responding to his proximity to the artifact.
"I didn't touch you," he said in a low tone, uncertain why he even bothered saying so.
The Bell did not answer, unsurprisingly.
Elior forced himself to breathe and made his way back to the terminal. The file he had pulled up-the one naming him as the resolving archivist-still seared in his mind. Dates did not lie in the Bureau. They might be manipulated, redacted, or overwritten, but outright falsehoods left scars.
Someone had placed his name there on purpose.
Or time had folded in on itself in a way he did not yet understand.
Either explanation was dangerous.
He logged out of the system and stepped away from the restricted section, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder. The feeling of being watched followed him anyway, subtle and persistent, like pressure changes before a storm.
By the time he was back at his desk, the archive had started to repopulate. Clerks filtered in quietly, resuming their routines as if nothing were amiss.
As if reality itself had smoothed over the disturbance.
At precisely 10:00 a.m., a memorandum materialized on his desk. No envelope. No courier. Just one sheet of paper.
NOTICE OF TEMPORARY REASSIGNMENT
SUBJECT: Elior Graves
CLEARANCE: Level 2 (Probationary)
DEPARTMENT: Field Records — Observational Only
Elior read it twice.
Field Records.
He had never left the archive before.
-
Outside of the Bureau, the city smelled different.
Not better, just less controlled.
With his coat collar turned up against the chill, Elior followed the Field Recorder down narrow, morning-rain-slickened streets. The Field Recorder was a man named Harrow, who walked with the kind of ease that came from trusting neither world nor superiors.
"You're quiet," Harrow said without turning her head.
"I'm listening," Elior said.
Harrow snorted. "Good habit. This isn't a retrieval job. No seals. No intervention. You watch. You write. You don't interfere."
"And if something goes wrong?"
"Then it was already wrong," Harrow said. "We just document how badly."
They halted before an abandoned chapel jammed between two tenements. Its windows were boarded, the door warped with age and damp. A symbol, scratched repeatedly into the stone above the entrance, was faded; each iteration slightly different.
Elior's head started to ache.
"That's your warning," Harrow said. "Minor god. Localized influence. Mostly passive."
Mostly.
Inside, the air was heavy with salt and old incense. Candles lined the walls, their small flames guttering though there was no wind. At the centre of the chapel stood a stone basin filled with cloudy water.
Harrow approached it and motioned for Elior to stay back.
"Bell", he said.
Elior stiffened.
He reached into his coat and withdrew a familiar brass object.
The Bell of Stillness.
"You carry it?" Elior asked before he was able to stop himself.
Harrow looked at him, his expression inscrutable. "Of course. Why?"
"No reason," Elior answered quickly.
Harrow rang the Bell.
Once.
The sound rippled through the chapel, subtle but unmistakable. The water in the basin shuddered, then stilled.
"Dormant", Harrow said. "Or pretending".
Elior swallowed.
The Bell did not ring again.
But the pressure in the room shifted, attention focusing inward-toward him.
Elior's vision blurred. For a heartbeat, he saw words overlay the world, faint and incomplete, like annotations written directly onto reality.
He staggered, catching himself upon a pew.
Harrow turned sharply. "You all right?"
"Yes," said Elior, though it did cost him effort. "Just—pressure."
Harrow studied him for a long moment. "You're not built like most clerks."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"You shouldn't," said Harrow.
They left the chapel without incident. No manifestations. No voices. Yet as they stepped back into the street, Elior knew with an icy certainty that something had noticed him—and had chosen not to act. That night, his pen hesitated as he wrote out his report. For the first time, he felt the weight of what he recorded pressing back.