Chapter 121. Night Docket

The frost under SUNSET: APPEAL had barely stopped shining when the second line bled through the towel like a forged signature learning to be brave: CLAIM: ROSE—PENDING. The letters were small, copy-book neat, the kind of handwriting that expects doors to prefer it.

Seren read it first. She did not shout. She did not sway. She set her palm on the KEEP as if steadying a child who had decided to hold its breath for attention. “Who filed,” she asked the square, which had grown suspicious enough of tidy fonts to treat them like strangers.

Hesta stepped into the hinge’s light as if she had always meant to stand there. “The claim writes itself if certain conditions coincide,” she said, the professional shame of a clerk who knows the rule because she typed the minutes. “Death in a public function, witness recorded, instrument present. The engine carries a template called ‘Quiet Transfer.’ It proposes to move the name from common ledgers to an archive we supervise, so grief won’t