Marked

Darkness covered the hallway for several seconds before the lamps flickered back to life. Elias stood frozen in his doorway while Kellon scanned the hall as if expecting something to move.

The scrap of ledger paper still rested between Elias’s feet. It no longer shifted or vibrated. It looked like an ordinary scrap, harmless and silent.

Kellon knelt, but he did not touch it. “Did it move by itself before this moment?”

Elias swallowed. “Yes.”

“Show me what you did.”

Elias reached down, hesitated, then picked up the scrap as lightly as if it were hot. The ink did not move this time. The sigil sat on the page like any normal mark, cold and still.

Kellon watched every motion of Elias’s hand. “Good,” he finally said. “At least it is calm for now. Keep it with you. Do not throw it away.” He stood straight again and added, “We need to leave.”

Elias glanced back inside his small room. “Leave? To where?”

“Somewhere safer than here.”

Before Elias could answer, something slid along the hallway floor behind Kellon.

It was a soft dragging sound. Not footsteps. Not cloth. More like sheets of paper being slowly pulled across wood.

Kellon stiffened. His hand went to a small baton at his belt. “Get behind me.”

Elias did. The hallway felt longer than usual, stretching into shadow at the far end where the stairwell waited.

Another sound followed. A faint flutter, as if a stack of loose pages had been disturbed by a breeze that did not exist.

Kellon lowered his voice. “Do not speak. Do not breathe loudly.”

From the far end of the hall, the air seemed to fold in on itself. Elias could not describe it any better. The space looked normal, yet wrong in a way that made the skin on his arms rise.

The hallway lamps dimmed again, only slightly this time, as if something tall had passed under them without touching the fixtures.

Kellon stepped back until his shoulder nearly touched Elias’s. “It followed you from the Bureau.”

“What is it?” Elias whispered.

Kellon did not answer. His eyes were locked on the shadow at the end of the hall.

A faint shape formed there for a moment. Not a figure. Not anything with limbs. It looked like several pages drifting in the air, overlapping so quickly they blurred into something larger. Then the shape vanished again, as if folding inward.

Elias felt a pressure in his chest. The same feeling he sensed when the ink had moved under his fingertip earlier that day.

The dragging sound returned, closer this time. Kellon moved in front of Elias, one hand raised.

The shape appeared again. A ripple in the air. A faint shimmer, like ink suspended in water. It leaned toward them, but there was no face, no arms, just the sense of something trying hard to push through the world itself.

Then the door to Elias’s room creaked.

Not loudly. Not violently. The wood curved inward, bending the way paper bends when pressed by something broad and flat. The surface wrinkled in a slow, unnatural motion.

Elias finally understood. Something without hands was pressing against it. Something wide and weightless, like a sheet of paper sliding under a door and trying to become solid.

Kellon stepped forward. “Back away from his room,” he said, voice steady but strained. “You cannot anchor here.”

The air tightened. Elias felt a pressure behind his eyes and a stinging heat along his wrist where the sigil lay hidden under his sleeve.

The Paper Wraith reacted.

It pulled itself upward from the bent wood, not as a creature but as a suggestion of shape. Strips of darkened air drifted like torn edges of a page. They slid over one another, searching, shifting, forming a loose outline that moved without making footsteps.

Kellon held his baton out, and for the first time Elias saw faint symbols etched into the metal. They glowed in sharp lines when Kellon tightened his grip.

The shifting shape froze. The air around it trembled.

“Kellon,” Elias whispered, “what does it want?”

“It wants to finish anchoring,” Kellon said quietly. “And you are the closest thing it recognizes.”

Elias stepped back without thinking.

The Wraith tilted. It made the sound of paper brushing against itself. The lamps flickered in rhythm with its movements.

Kellon took one more step forward. “Go back,” he said, his voice low and firm. “You do not have permission.”

A soft tearing sound filled the hall. The Wraith’s form stretched thin, then folded sharply inward, like a page caught in a sudden gust. For a second it looked ready to lunge toward Elias.

Kellon slammed his baton against the floor.

The symbols on it flashed bright white.

The Wraith shrank back. The lights steadied. The bent wood of Elias’s door eased slowly into its normal shape, though faint lines remained, like wrinkles left behind on a pressed page.

The Wraith retreated down the hall, unravelling as it moved. It dissolved into shimmering fragments that drifted apart like dust in a slanted beam of light.

Then it was gone.

Elias pressed a hand to his chest, trying to breathe normally. His knees felt weak.

Kellon kept his eyes fixed on the end of the hall for several more seconds. Only when the lamps stayed steady did he lower the baton.

He turned toward Elias. “Pack a few things. Nothing heavy. We are leaving now.”

Elias almost laughed from nerves. “Are you serious?”

“You saw what tried to enter your room. It will return, and next time it will bring more strength. The Ledger sigil on your wrist is not stable yet. You are a beacon until you learn to control it.”

“Control it?” Elias repeated.

“Yes,” Kellon said. “I will explain on the way. But if that thing anchors fully, it will not need a door next time.”

Elias hesitated, staring at his small apartment. His cot. His books. His kettle. All the ordinary pieces of a life that had changed in a single day.

He nodded. “I will get my coat.”

Kellon stepped aside, watching both Elias and the hallway with equal caution.

The rain outside had not stopped. It tapped against the windows as if repeating the same quiet message:

Nothing in Ravendon would ever be normal again.