Scene One: The Teacup and the Duplicate

Registry House, Sublevel 1. Sealing Division. 07:46.
No one breathes before 08:00—not properly. The lights still flicker with last night’s fatigue, and the tea dispensary hasn’t stopped whimpering since the janitor overfed it steam.

Caldra Myre stood at her preferred sorting table, half-lit by a desk lamp someone else had forgotten to unplug.

Her hair was still damp from the kettle steam.
Her spectacles were already fogged.
And the file in front of her—neatly folded, bound in blue thread, stamped by a man buried nine years ago—was currently offending all five of her senses.

She sipped her Gyokuro. Tilted her head. Blinked slowly.

“So that’s how we’re starting.”

Across the room, Cassel Thorn emerged from a filing corridor, arms full of restricted indexes and the haunted look of someone who had seen a paperclip fall out of a “Finalized” folder.

“Morning,” he offered, gently panicked. “You’re here early.”

“You’re late,” Caldra replied without looking up.

“I’m fifteen minutes early—”

“—which means you weren’t here when this insult arrived.” She tapped the blue-threaded folder with the edge of her teacup. “Signet stamp is polished. Registrar’s loop is from Pre-Amendment style. And the filing ID includes a date that doesn't exist.”

Cassel blinked.

“But… it says ‘Validated.’”

Caldra raised her gaze just enough to see the faint gold flecks in the ink.

“It also says ‘Sealed with Honor.’ That phrase was retired after the Crimson Revisions. It’s like watching someone try to forge a bloodline using a thesaurus and two glasses of regret.”

She set her teacup down gently—precisely. The steam curved over the folder like it was ready to erase it from existence.

“Cassel. Fetch the Cold Room access key.”

“The Cold Rooms? At this hour?”

“Before this one warms up and tries to rewrite itself again.”
She pushed the folder forward.
“We’re looking for a match that shouldn’t exist.”

Cut To: Cold Room Access Shaft. Sublevel 2. 08:01.
Cassel fumbles with his coat collar as he shivers.
Caldra steps in like the chill owes her rent.

Scene Two: The Cold Room Confession

Sublevel 2 – Cold Room C-9
08:06.

Cassel’s breath fogged in the dim hallway as he fumbled the locking lever on the Cold Room. The file key—an oddly shaped brass token Caldra had handed him without ceremony—bit into his palm.

“Why is the furnace level warmer than this?” he muttered.

“Because warmth implies guilt,” Caldra said, stepping past him as the door creaked open. “This floor believes in absolutes.”

The light buzzed overhead, a long fluorescent bulb trembling like it owed a secret. Rows of sealed drawers stretched into the frostbitten dark, each one marked with a century, a jurisdiction, and a whisper no one wanted reopened.

Cassel hugged the coat tighter around his shoulders.

“Which cabinet?”

“Seventh on the left. Registry Block: House Ambrin. Filed under ‘Disavowal.’”

He paused.

“…So this is real?”

Caldra didn’t answer. She walked.

Her boots made no sound.
Her breath didn’t fog.
Cassel wondered—not for the first time—if she’d ever been born with a body temperature or just emerged from a stack of unsorted fraud.

She reached the drawer.
Pulled it open.
And froze.

Inside: a single folder.

Blank.

No thread. No stamp.
No metadata strip.

“That’s not right,” Cassel said quietly.

Caldra’s silence deepened.

She reached in. Tilted the folder open.
Inside: nothing—except a note, handwritten in charcoal ink.

“Don’t try to out-file the Master Binder.”

Caldra’s fingers curled around the folder’s edge.

“It’s a forgery of a forgery. They didn’t just file a duplicate. They swapped the original… and left me a calling card.”

Cassel leaned closer.

“That phrase—Master Binder. Isn’t that a legacy title?”

“Obsolete since the Archive Unification Act.”
She closed the drawer slowly, her voice flat.

“So either someone’s using a dead role to mock me… or someone who used to hold it wants me to know they’re still breathing.”

Cassel’s eyes widened.

“But the last Master Binder—he died in a records collapse. Ten years ago. He was buried—”

“Buried under a wall of sealed contracts,” Caldra said.
“How poetic. And conveniently flammable.”

She turned sharply.

“We’re not chasing a falsified record anymore. We’re chasing a ghost with editing privileges.”

Cassel swallowed.

“Should I log that as an official anomaly?”

Caldra adjusted her spectacles, pulled her coat tighter, and picked up the blank folder.

“No. Log it under ‘Pending Revisions.’”

[TO BE CONTINUED...]

            Author’s Note

Hello, reader. You made it to the bottom of the file. Most people don’t.

This is Registry House—a slow-burn mystery where bureaucracy is dangerous, pens go missing for a reason, and one woman quietly runs the building without ever being listed on staff.

You’ll find no glowing swords here. Just sealed names, forged signatures, and a lot of problems someone tried to staple shut.

New episodes will file weekly. Caldra rarely rushes—but she always delivers.

Tea is brewing. Chalk is nearby. Something in the archive just moved.

See you in File 002.

— Shiro Kuma (and Caldra, silently judging)