"Apprentice," the Inspector said again. "Stand up. Show your hands."
Leo felt as if all the air in the Chart Hall had rushed into his throat and lodged there. He wanted to stand—because not standing would itself feel like a crime—but at that very moment his knees grew heavy, as if someone had stitched them to the legs of the table.
From inside Vault C, the knocking rhythm continued. Tap… tap-tap… tap…
As if someone were knocking patiently not on the door, but inside him—within him.
Leo raised his palms. He hoped that if he moved slowly enough, the world might fail to notice him.
"Palms up," the Inspector said, her voice carrying that clear, absolute severity that places rules above people.
Leo turned his palms upward. The film of ink on his fingers, dark stains along the cuticles, the faint callus formed by gripping a pen—everything that every copyist's hands carried. There was nothing special about these hands.
What was special was his wrist.
That mark—the circle with a short line branching from it—was still there. Like an old bruise beneath the skin, blue and faded, yet alive. As if the mark remembered itself.
Instinctively, Leo rotated his wrist slightly, trying to hide it. He immediately realized that such hiding motions were exactly how people were caught. He froze.
Across from him, Kerin Vel's face had lost some of its color. He wasn't staring at Leo—but he couldn't look away either. As though his eyes had seen something his mind refused to accept.
Master Anselm's face was paper-white. He stood before the vault, yet his gaze was locked on Leo. For the first time, Leo saw that Anselm's eyes held not only fear—there was anger too. Like a man thinking: How did you bring this into my hall?
The Inspector stepped forward slowly. Her footsteps made almost no sound, yet Leo felt each step in his chest—between heartbeats, a hard, cold pressure.
"Name," she said.
Leo's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. This was not a question. It was an order.
"Leo," he said. The sound barely escaped him. "Leo… Ravel."
The knocking inside Vault C stopped for a moment.
As if it had heard.
Then the rhythm began again—not faster, but firmer, as though a new "line" had begun after confirmation.
The Inspector lifted her staff—the thin rod of bone or ivory, etched with grooves. The tip hovered before Leo's wrist. It didn't touch him, yet he felt as if a cold needle were circling his skin.
"Show your wrist," she said.
Leo inhaled—and with that breath, a burning sensation flared in his wrist. He wanted to protest, to say he had done nothing, that he was only copying maps. But in the Chart Hall, protest had no place. Here, protest was another kind of confession.
He pushed his sleeve up slightly.
The mark stood revealed.
A faint gleam ran through the grooves of the staff, like a silver needle catching an invisible thread. The pressure returned behind Leo's eyes—thin pincers squeezing. He felt as if extra "lines" were appearing in his vision: not in the air, but between things.
Between the table and its edge.
Between paper and ink.
Between people's words and their meanings.
As if the world were fabric, and he was seeing its stitching for the first time.
The Inspector didn't blink. "Where did you get this?"
"I don't know," Leo said. And he was telling the truth—at least as far as he knew.
The Inspector rotated the staff slightly. "You don't know… or you can't say?"
Leo cleared his throat. "I truly don't know."
His words fell strangely in the hall. As if someone had caught the sound halfway. Leo saw—or felt—that there was a fine "thread" stretched between his speech and people's ability to hear it. And that thread was being pulled taut.
Behind the Inspector, the second Inspector—holding a wooden case—stepped forward slowly. From the case, he removed a small metal strip etched with a pattern like tiny needle marks. He didn't place it on the table. He simply held it in the air, as though the air itself could be read like a document.
The third Inspector—the one with empty hands—stood a step apart. He did nothing.
That was what made him the most dangerous.
Master Anselm gathered the courage to speak. "Inspector, in the Chart Hall, apprentices—"
"Silence," the Inspector said.
One word. Just one.
But it fell like a blade and cut Anselm's voice clean off. His lips moved, yet no sound came. A new shade of fear crossed his face—beyond panic, into the realization that this was not merely administration. This was oath-binding. A spoken stitch.
Cold crept down Leo's spine. She can stitch someone's voice shut. Here. In front of everyone.
The Inspector looked at Leo again. "Did you touch something?"
Instantly, Vault C's sigh came to his mind, and the breath-like warmth of that hot paper. Even before answering, he knew that choosing words was itself a risk. The wrong word—the wrong oath—the wrong thread.
"I… I was only copying," he said. "Then—"
"Then?" the Inspector cut in.
Leo swallowed. "Then the paper… became warm."
Several apprentices drew in their breath. It wasn't breathing—it was reaction. And reaction spreads like a disease. They stopped themselves at once, but it was too late. Fear had already begun its work.
The Inspector tilted her head slightly, as though measuring a fine thread. "Which paper?"
Leo glanced toward his desk—and in that instant, he felt the rough paper beneath his unfinished map shift slightly. As if something alive were breathing under cloth.
A sharp cramp twisted his stomach.
Don't look. Don't show.
But if he lied, he would be caught. And if he told the truth—
"My… rough paper," he said softly.
The Inspector extended her hand. "Take it out."
Leo's hands began to tremble. He lifted his unfinished map slightly—and the rough paper peeked out beneath it.
The air in the hall tightened, as if someone had pulled an invisible thread taut.
The lines on the rough paper were now clearer: the true edge of the South Ward docks—and the wrong, straight line cutting through everything toward Vault C. A directional line. A mark. An indictment.
Kerin's eyes widened. A soundless word escaped his lips. Leo couldn't tell what he said—but his face made it clear that he knew this was not "normal."
The Inspector didn't touch the paper. She merely passed the staff above it. The grooves flared brightly—then dimmed at once, as though ordered to swallow something.
"This pattern…" the Inspector said slowly, and for the first time her voice carried something human—not fear—just a faint vibration of interest.
The empty-handed Inspector stepped forward. "Seal it immediately."
"No," the lead Inspector said. "Not this."
A cold silence fell between them, as though a higher hierarchy were being decided internally.
The lead Inspector looked again at Leo's wrist. "Do you know what this is?"
Leo shook his head. "No."
"Don't lie," she said.
"I—" Leo's voice broke. He felt a strange panic inside him, as though a thread were gripping his words and pulling. He forced himself to speak only truth. "I've never seen this before. Today—just now—it appeared."
The Inspector stared into the depths of his eyes, as if reading lines written there. "Your age?"
"Nineteen," Leo said.
"Your parents?"
For a moment, Leo felt emptiness—as if smoke had been poured into the space of the question. "I don't know," he said. This too was true. The truth that always pricked somewhere inside him.
Something settled in the Inspector's eyes. She lowered the staff. "You will come."
Leo blurted out, "Where?"
"Where this pattern is going," she said, gesturing toward Vault C without looking at it. "And you will remain silent unless questioned."
Master Anselm managed to find his voice again—it had returned, though he seemed afraid of its return. "Inspector, this—this is impossible. Vault C contains only—"
"Only what?" the Inspector asked.
Anselm swallowed. "Only… registered charts. And—and some old documents. That's all."
The empty-handed Inspector didn't laugh, but his eyes showed a laughter-like cruelty. "Old documents don't knock, Master."
Leo looked tremblingly at Vault C. The iron door was still open—but the darkness inside seemed to swallow light. And within that darkness was something that responded. Knocking, rhythm, and sometimes that sigh-like breath.
"Move," the Inspector said again.
Leo stood. The faint creak of the chair cracked through the hall like a whip. He couldn't feel his feet—as if the floor had broken its contract with his soles.
The empty-handed Inspector moved to his right. The one with the case behind him. The lead Inspector in front—exactly as if she were certain Leo couldn't run.
And perhaps she was right. Because as Leo took a step, he felt thin lines in the air between the tables—invisible threads—stretching with his movement. With every step, he brushed them, tangled them.
He couldn't tell whether it was imagination or… something opening.
As they moved toward the vault, he glanced back once. Kerin hadn't stood up. But his fingers were whitening against the edge of the table. In his eyes burned a mixture of fear and curiosity—and a third thing Leo couldn't name. Perhaps the sense that someone else's story had suddenly reached his desk.
Master Anselm stood rigid near the vault. The chain-groove at his neck looked deeper now, as though the key had cut into his throat.
The lead Inspector stepped onto the vault's threshold. The cold scent of "rain" rolled out again. An unwanted image flashed in Leo's mind—a night sky, a distant wound in the heavens, and fine, glowing fibers falling from it, as if some vast cloth were tearing.
He blinked. It was daytime. There was no sky here—only an iron door and a city of paper.
And yet that scent—that impossible scent—remained.
The Inspector moved the bone staff near the doorframe. This time the grooves didn't glow. They… deepened. As if light were being pulled inward.
"There is sealing here," she said, as though informing herself rather than her companions.
The empty-handed Inspector asked, "Then why is it open?"
Master Anselm said in a trembling voice, "I—I only—opened it for the audit—"
"You opened what should not be opened," said the Inspector with the case, his words carrying not accusation but disgust. As if Anselm had committed a moral crime.
The knocking from inside the vault suddenly changed.
It was no longer a rhythm.
It was… an attempt at words. As if something were trying to remember language—through wood and iron.
Tap… tap… tap-tap…
The sound suddenly felt familiar to Leo. Like an old signal, a game, a childhood knock on a wall—and with that familiarity, something inside him split open.
The mark on his wrist burned.
For a moment, the thin lines—the threads—became clearly visible in the world before him. Between the Inspector and the vault. Between him and the rough paper still lying on his desk. Between his name and that knocking.
And then, without his will, a whisper escaped his mouth—tiny, dangerous:
"Don't—"
The word was never completed.
Because at that very moment, for the first time, a voice came from inside the vault—rasping, as if learning to use air after a long time—and it spoke not Leo's name, but something even closer:
"Needle…"
The lead Inspector froze. The Inspector with the case stepped back, as though the word had touched him. The empty-handed Inspector spread his fingers for the first time—as if about to grasp something.
Leo's heart didn't stop—but its rhythm changed direction, as though it were now running inward.
And in the darkness of the vault, where documents should have been, something breathed again—
And from inside the iron door came one last, slow knock, as if a thread were about to be pulled.