The assignment took place in a room that pretended to be ordinary.
It was narrow and rectangular, with a single window set too high in the wall to look through. The glass let in light but no view, turning time into something abstract. The desk was stone, its edges worn smooth by decades of elbows, palms, and paperwork left resting too long. The walls bore no symbols of devotion—only registration marks cut into the stone, precise and repeatedly amended, shaped by procedure rather than belief.
The handler stood when the door opened.
It was habit more than respect. Protocol lived in the body long after intention faded.
"This is them?" the handler asked.
The escort nodded once. "That's the ward."
The child stood in the corner with their back turned, shoulders drawn inward as though bracing against something unseen. They were small in a way that had nothing to do with age—compact, careful, as if taking up less space reduced the chance of being noticed. Their clothes were clean but ill-fitted, the sleeves too long, the collar sitting awkwardly against their throat.
The air around them felt tight.
Not heavy. Pressurized.
The handler crossed the room slowly, then crouched instead of looming. Their knees protested faintly at the movement, a reminder of long years spent standing in rooms much like this one.
"I'm here to make sure you're safe," they said.
The words came out automatically. Trained. Reliable.
The child flinched.
Not dramatically. Not even visibly, really. Just a minute tightening of posture, a subtle shift of weight from one foot to the other.
Safe was a word that arrived late. It carried too much history to land gently.
The child nodded anyway.
The handler glanced at the file tucked under their arm and felt a small, unwelcome jolt.
It was thin.
Uncomfortably thin.
They opened it, flipping through pages that should have been crowded with detail. Transport notes. A faded identification image. Several lines redacted so thoroughly the paper beneath had worn thin.
Nothing else.
"What should I call you?" the handler asked, keeping their voice light.
The child stared at the floor, eyes tracing a hairline crack in the stone. "You can call me whatever you want."
The handler shook their head. "I don't think that's fair."
They considered for a moment.
Names anchored things. They knew that. Everyone did.
"Aurel," they said at last.
The name felt soft in the mouth. Ordinary. A name that might belong to a life that had gone differently.
The child tested it once, quietly. "Aurel."
Then again, slightly louder.
Nothing in the room reacted.
No pressure shift. No flicker of wards. No change in the air.
That absence sat strangely with the handler, a hollow space where something should have been.
The escort cleared their throat. "Paperwork's been approved."
"Of course it has," the handler replied, closing the file.
The escort lingered a moment, then left without another word.
The door shut.
The room felt smaller.
That night, the glass sang.
It wasn't breaking. Not cracking or shattering.
It vibrated.
A thin, high note hummed through the room, just below the threshold of pain, rattling teeth and bone alike. The containment charm etched into the windowpane blurred, lines smearing as if rubbed by unseen fingers.
The handler woke instantly, heart racing, hand already reaching for the ward-sigil at their throat.
It fizzled.
The magic scattered like a startled animal, useless.
Aurel sat upright on the cot, hands clamped over his ears. His face had gone pale, eyes wide and unfocused.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to dream."
The handler crossed the room without thinking and sat beside him. The glass quieted immediately, the sound thinning until it vanished altogether.
"It's all right," the handler said, though they weren't certain what they meant by it. "You're okay."
Aurel's breathing slowed, but his gaze darted toward the corners of the room, as though expecting something to emerge.
"I heard them," he said.
"Heard who?"
"The others," Aurel replied. "They were sad."
The handler's chest tightened. "What others?"
Aurel hesitated, fingers twisting in the blanket. "I don't know. They didn't talk. They just… stayed."
The handler had no response that wouldn't be a lie.
Later, when the room had settled and Aurel slept again, the handler sat at the desk and filled out the incident report.
Cause: emotional distress.Response: reassurance administered.Recommendation: continued monitoring.
They hesitated at the final line, then wrote:
No further action required.
The report was approved within the hour.
No one corrected it.
Over the next few days, the handler learned Aurel in fragments.
He spoke rarely, but when he did, his words landed with unsettling precision. He watched everything the way light shifted across stone, the handler's hands when they thought they weren't being observed, the way the wards hummed differently depending on who stood near the door.
"Do you remember anything?" the handler asked one evening.
Aurel considered the question carefully. "Sometimes," he said. "Colors. Then they fade."
"Do they hurt?"
"No," Aurel replied. After a pause: "They feel like they should."
The handler laughed softly, unsure why their eyes stung.
"You don't have to disappear," they said. "Not here."
Aurel looked at them, really looked, then glanced away.
"It's safer if I do," he said.
The handler felt something settle in their chest at that—an anger with no clear direction.
That night, while filing routine updates, they paused over the designation line.
AUREL - Ward Status: Conditional
The word conditional felt heavier every time they read it.
Somewhere else in the fort, a clerk logged a minor fluctuation in a stabilizing ward and adjusted the numbers until they aligned.
No alert was issued.
The system held.
For now.