No fanfare. No summons, just a damp folder slid across a low table and the smell of rain in old wood.
"Complaints traveled," Yasaka said. "Up two layers. Then sideways."
Alaudi opened the folder. Three photos. Not faces—wrists. The same woven charm on each, dyed to look like tourist trash. A ferrite dot hidden in the knot.
"Couriers," he said.
"Rentals," she said. "They change jackets, not hands."
Ren hovered at the edge of the tatami, trying to be furniture. Hibird pretended to nap; Roll pretended to be a rug.
"Where?" Alaudi asked.
"Between the river stalls and the second Shrine Street," Yasaka said. "They pass 'receipts.' Stamped. Blessed. Harmless until they aren't."
He tapped the ferrite dot with a knuckle. "We don't break the chain. We braid it."
Yasaka's smile had corners. "Politely."
The river wore dusk like a tilted hat. Lantern light. Steam from noodles fogging cheap plastic curtains. Coats on chair backs. The door guy's nod meaning pay first, slurp later.
Ren worked Mist like breath on glass—there, not there—nudging angles until watchers saw crowds where gaps were and gaps where they weren't. Alaudi laid Cloud thin underfoot, a lacquer coat over slippery stone.
The first courier was a guy with a new umbrella and old shoes. He took a receipt stamped with a carp and dropped one stamped with a crane. His wrist charm told the ferrite dot hello in a code that thought it was clever.
Alaudi let Sky overlay the scene—weights, hinges, the tug on each line. He didn't touch the man. He touched the pattern he moved in.
"Count to seven," he told Ren.
Ren mouthed numbers, then tipped a grain of Mist into the current. The carp stamp bled one thread brighter; the crane dulled to match the pavement.
The courier smiled at nothing and left. His charm whispered the wrong altitude to the wrong ear.
"Okay," Ren breathed, a little too proud.
"Again," Alaudi said.
They watched two more pass. Night put its hand on the river. The fourth courier came in with a posture that said "I have a boss who writes emails at midnight" and the kind of wrist charm that hums when you pretend it doesn't.
He traded stamps. Turned. Froze.
Not because he'd seen them. Because he'd felt something look back.
Alaudi didn't move. Cloud shifted in a circle as small as a coin.
The courier's eyes slid off the truth like rain off oilcloth. He stumbled, caught himself, nodded to the noodle lady like that had been the plan, and vanished into steam.
"Bigger fish behind him," Alaudi said.
"How big?" Ren asked.
"Office chair," Alaudi said. "Ergonomic. Expensed."
Ren snorted, then tried to pretend he hadn't.
They followed the receipts, not the legs. Paper stores better memories. The carp/crane routine veered into a side street that always split one more time than you remember. The last receipt didn't land in a person's hand. It landed in a box altar that had seen better gods.
Close up, the "altar" was a shikigami hub—a paper cabinet pretending to be pious. Each drawer held an order. Each order had a stamp. Each stamp had a bite.
Ren reached. Alaudi pinched his wrist. "Look first."
Sky Crown pulsed, a faint crown line aligning drawers into a simple sentence: borrowed power, laundered blessings, credit extended on someone else's name.
"Can I—?" Ren asked.
"You can fix one thing," Alaudi said. "Pick the thing."
Ren looked at the drawers like they might bite. He chose the hinge—always the hinge—and breathed Mist into the seam where the cabinet decided the paper was itself. The box shivered, forgot which drawer was "outbox," and re-labeled everything in review.
Alaudi slid a slip into the top slot, same purple hand as before. New word: SILT.
The hub accepted the paperwork. Of course it did. Even counterfeit gods hate backlog.
Boot scuff behind them.
"Hands visible," said someone who'd practiced the line in a mirror.
Two men. Not clergy. Not true hunters. Consultants with charms.
"Shut it down," the taller one said, eyeing the cabinet. "Or the ward team gets unhappy."
"Already shut," Alaudi said. "You'll enjoy the forms."
The shorter one squinted at Ren. "Kid, you know what you're doing?"
"No," Ren said. "That's why it worked."
The taller one tried the hard stare. Their charms hummed like appliances. Alaudi let Cloud push pressure around the bones of the room—gentle nudge on elbow angles, a reminder to the floor that it loved ankles.
"Talk," Alaudi said. "You won't get a second time before this thing starts asking for receipts you can't forge."
Silence practiced being brave. Failed.
"We sell audits," the short one said. "People pay to know where their blessings leak. Some… tack on extras."
"Names," Alaudi said.
Cards hit the table. They weren't names, not real ones, but they were better: project codes, invoice trails, a stamped crest from a front with aspirations. The kind of paper you can follow without drawing swords.
"Take your hub," Alaudi said. "It's contaminated. Burn it somewhere dumb. Don't use shrines like filing cabinets in this city again."
"We have clients," the tall one said, weak and honest.
"You'll have fewer," Alaudi said. "Or better."
They left carrying their dead paper god like movers who'd overpromised.
Ren exhaled the way rookies do when the room gives back their lungs.
"Why not smash it?" he asked.
"Because they'd build two dumber," Alaudi said. "Now they have to explain a delay."
"And the purple slip?"
"Silt clogs everything," Alaudi said. "Even lies."
Yasaka read the cards under warm light. No smile this time; something better—attention like a blade being cleaned.
"This," she said, tapping a crest, "is a respectable face that hides many sloppy hands."
"Pull the nice face," Alaudi said. "The sloppy ones get scared. Scared hands make loud mistakes."
Kunou popped up from behind a cushion. "Did you fight?"
"We argued with furniture," Ren said.
Kunou looked impressed anyway. Hibird accepted a seed as compensation for the lack of explosions. Roll dreamed, feet twitching; somewhere in that dog brain, all drawers opened at once and rained snacks.
Yasaka set the cards aside. "You marked the river?"
"A line only the ward-web sees," Alaudi said. "Temporary."
"Good," she said. "Permanent things invite editors."
He grunted agreement.
"Eat," she added, because leadership is also remembering dinner exists.
They did. Ren got sauce on his sleeve again. He didn't try to Mist it this time. He sat with it. Learned the other way—care first, fix later.
Night deepened. Alaudi took the broom to the shrine stones because sweeping is the easiest way to measure if a place will keep you.
Sky Crown traced faint connections as he moved—torii to step, step to rail, rail to offering box, offering box to boy dozing upright against a pillar like a guard who'd tried very hard not to blink.
Cloud settled around the boundary, not claiming, just standing.
The wards brushed back, curt and fond.
No trumpets. No sigils. A ledger opened, a drawer locked, a river that now miscounted on purpose where it needed to.
"Tomorrow?" Ren mumbled without opening his eyes.
"Same drill," Alaudi said. "New angle."
Ren nodded in his sleep.
Hibird tucked into Alaudi's collar like a smug coin. Roll snored at the threshold, the kind of snore that scares mice into repentance.
Kyoto breathed.
The receipts would still move. Fine. Let them. Now they knew who balanced the book.