He finished the first stroke and felt the city react.
Not the men in masks. The space itself.
Ink was not just ink here. It was a rule made visible. The moment the quill moved, the Nightmare Spell leaned in, eager to lock a definition around him.
Li Xiao Bai did not fight that pressure.
He guided it.
He wrote slowly, not because he hesitated, but because he was listening to the mechanism that listened to him.
GRAY.
The letters formed cleanly. The quill scratched once more and stopped on its own, as if the ledger had accepted the entry and was waiting for the seal.
At the edge of his sight, the pale pane refreshed. Its archaic characters arranged themselves in severe, chiseled strokes.
[ SIGNATURE: ACCEPTED ]
[ REGISTRY: OPENED ]
The masked figure lowered the ledger a fraction, satisfied.
The second figure turned slightly toward the chamber of beds, already moving to the next step as if this was routine.
Li Xiao Bai did not let them.
He kept the quill in his hand.
The first masked figure's head tilted.
"That is enough," it said.
Li Xiao Bai lifted the quill again and wrote beneath his name.
Not on the signature line.
Under it.
Where a clerk would not care, but a system would.
A short phrase.
IN TRANSIT.
The quill paused. The ink spread a little wider than it should have.
The corridor tightened, as if the city disliked the addition.
The masked figure stepped forward.
"You will not add," it said.
Li Xiao Bai did not stop writing.
He added a second phrase, smaller.
TEMPORARY.
The torch flames flickered. The air gained a cold edge.
The pane glitched. The characters misaligned, then stamped themselves harshly.
[ FAULT ] [ FAULT ]
Then the pane corrected, colder and more exact.
[ CLAUSE: DETECTED ]
[ STATUS: CONDITIONAL ]
[ DURATION: UNDEFINED ]
The masked figure's hand snapped out, fast and practiced, to seize the ledger.
Li Xiao Bai moved first.
Not with speed.
With timing.
He twisted the ledger toward the torchlight, forcing the ink to glint on the page, forcing the system to confirm what had been written.
Names were handles.
Clauses were hinges.
The city did not like hinges, but it still had to respect its own writing.
The masked figure froze.
The second figure's quill hovered above its own ledger, uncertain for the first time.
Li Xiao Bai kept his voice flat.
"A courier does not belong. A courier passes through."
The first figure's posture tightened.
"That is not allowed."
Li Xiao Bai did not argue about what was allowed. He argued about what had been recorded.
"It is written."
The corridor held its breath.
The pane refreshed again.
[ REGISTRY INTERPRETATION: IN PROGRESS ]
The ledger in the masked figure's hands grew heavier, as if the city itself pressed down on it, trying to flatten the clause into compliance.
Li Xiao Bai felt Gray's fingers tremble from fatigue.
He steadied them.
He did not look at the sleeping beds again. He did not let himself be dragged by fear and misery. Misery was everywhere. Misery was not a variable.
The variable was the pillar.
The black threads.
He had seen them, and the system had seen that he had seen them.
A new verdict assembled on the pane, severe and temporary.
[ REMOVAL: PAUSED ]
[ REASON: ACTIVE REGISTRATION ]
Paused, not canceled.
The city was still deciding what he was.
And while it decided, he was still alive.
The first masked figure's voice turned sharper.
"Come. Processing."
It gestured down the corridor toward the chamber of beds.
Li Xiao Bai followed.
Not because he obeyed, but because he needed proximity to the mechanism.
They entered the wide chamber.
Rows of stone beds. People bound or watched or already asleep. Healers moved between them, faces dulled by repetition. The air smelled of herbs and sweat and panic held in the throat.
At the far end rose the pillar, a monolith of dark stone carved with shallow grooves. Thousands of black threads fed into it, disappearing into the carved channels like hair into a drain.
Li Xiao Bai felt the mark on Gray's arm warm again.
The Spell was hungry.
The masked figures brought him to an empty bed near the edge of the chamber, away from the worst of the noise.
"Lie down," one ordered.
Li Xiao Bai lay down.
The stone was cold.
The ceiling was carved with more script. The letters were not meant to be read as language. They were meant to be read as ownership.
A healer approached, holding a small cup of bitter liquid.
"Drink," the healer said, voice exhausted.
Li Xiao Bai smelled it.
Stimulant. Pain herb. Something that would keep Gray awake longer.
A cheap way to postpone the inevitable, and here postponement always had a price.
He did not drink.
He sat up instead.
The healer flinched. The masked figures turned.
Li Xiao Bai lifted Gray's forearm into view.
"This registry," he said. "What does it record."
The masked figure answered without emotion.
"It records what you are, so you can be kept."
"And if what I am cannot be kept."
"Then you are removed."
Simple.
Clean.
The kind of truth a system loved.
Li Xiao Bai nodded once, as if accepting procedure.
Then he asked the question that mattered more.
"Where does the record live."
The masked figures paused.
A pause was an answer.
Li Xiao Bai's gaze moved to the pillar.
The threads did not move like rope.
They pulsed.
Not with blood. With attention.
He felt it then, the same certainty he had felt on the Moon.
Here, awareness had weight.
There was no hiding from a record you were tied to.
Unless you could alter the tie.
The first masked figure stepped closer.
"Enough," it said. "Lie down. Sleep will come. The Spell will judge you."
Li Xiao Bai lowered his arm and spoke with Gray's mouth in a tone so calm it sounded obedient.
"I will sleep," he said. "But I will sleep as Gray."
The masked figure's head tilted.
"As opposed to what."
Li Xiao Bai let Gray's fatigue make his eyelids droop, not in surrender, but as camouflage. He let his breathing slow.
Then he spoke softly.
"As opposed to an irregularity."
The air tightened.
The pane refreshed, characters cutting themselves into order.
[ IRREGULARITY FLAG: ACTIVE ]
[ CONDITION: SOUL SIGNATURE INCONSISTENT ]
Li Xiao Bai felt the scrutiny turn inward, pressing at the seam between soul and vessel, searching for the pattern that did not match Gray's body.
He did not resist with force.
He did not flare essence.
He offered the system nothing extra. No sudden reach, no hidden motion it could interpret as a confession.
Instead, he offered it a simpler truth.
Gray was the vessel.
Gray was recorded.
Gray would enter the next phase.
And if the system wanted to remove something, it would have to define what it was removing.
Definitions were doors.
Doors could be blocked.
Or rerouted.
Li Xiao Bai lay back down.
The masked figures relaxed by a fraction, thinking the problem had solved itself.
They did not understand that the real problem had only begun.
The mark on Gray's arm warmed into heat.
The chamber dimmed slightly, as if the city lowered a curtain.
The voices of bound sleepers faded.
The pillar's threads pulsed once, twice, in a rhythm that did not belong to blood or breath.
Then the pane updated again, no sound, only verdict.
[ TRIAL: COMMENCING ]
[ FIRST NIGHTMARE ]
[ SCENARIO: THE UNREGISTERED ]
[ PHASE: PART TWO ]
[ ROLE ASSIGNMENT: PENDING ]
[ HISTORY SELECTION: IN PROGRESS ]
Li Xiao Bai let his eyes close.
Not because he trusted the darkness.
Because he intended to open it from inside.
And as sleep finally took Gray's body, Li Xiao Bai formed one last thought, clean and merciless.
If the Spell was a registry, then it could be stolen from.
If it was a judge, then it could be trapped in its own wording.
And if it was a god, then it would learn the difference between worship and calculation.
The world dropped away.
Stone, torchlight, breath, all of it dissolved.
A new air replaced it, cold and ancient.
The First Nightmare began.