No alarms. No text from Yasaka, just wind through bamboo and a tripwire that hummed wrong.
Ren was midway through form eight, heel-to-ball, while Hibird clicked time and Roll hunted a leaf like it owed him rent. Alaudi felt the hum again—thin, metallic, like a ruler bent and held just before it snaps.
"Inside," he said.
Ren froze. "What is it?"
"Geometry lying," Alaudi said. "Move."
They cleared the courtyard in two steps. On the third, the hallway refused to be a hallway. The right-hand turn repeated itself. Paper doors, beam, lantern, shadow—again. And again.
Dimension tricks came in two flavors: brute force and polite lies. This was polite. The kind of fold you could walk forever if you were tired and it was patient.
Ren stared at the copy-paste corridor. "This is—"
"A loop," Alaudi said. "Georg-style, or an admirer."
Ren swallowed. "How do we—"
"Anchor first," Alaudi said. "Ask later."
He set his palm to the wood post and let Cloud thicken—not to break, just to weigh the world against itself. Sky overlayed faint gold lines: lantern to rail, rail to threshold, threshold to the scuffed place Ren always hit on form eight. The fold hated being measured. It wrinkled.
"Keep your feet where the floor admits it's the floor," he said. "Not where the picture says it is."
"That's not helpful," Ren muttered.
"It is," Alaudi said, and stepped forward into the repeating turn.
The loop tried to be polite about killing him. Things that mimic halls don't throw teeth; they wait for thirst. Alaudi cut it three ways: Cloud spread low, a pressure map; Sky traced true edges; Mist flirted at the seam, a decoy path daring the fold to snap shut on the wrong shape.
It snapped, clean, on the decoy.
"Rude," Hibird said, or close enough.
Ren exhaled. "So do we slash it?"
"No. We name it," Alaudi said. "Slash after."
He pressed two knuckles to the paper door and spoke like a clerk who had found the wrong form stapled to the right packet. "Pending."
The seam shivered. The loop's neat little repeating corner lagged a half-second behind reality. That was enough. He slid Cloud into the lag and pinned it the way you pin a joint before it dislocates.
"Through," he said. "Single file."
They stepped into the room that wasn't supposed to be reachable: a tatami square, low altar, rain-sound on the eaves. And a man in a tan coat with a face built to be overlooked.
He smiled like a customer service survey. "We were told you'd notice."
"Then you were told wrong," Alaudi said. "I'm tired."
The man's hands stayed visible. Polite. "Exploratory contact. We admire the efficiency. The foundation, the emails—very civil."
"Tell your admirer to stop folding public shrines," Alaudi said. "Or I fold fingers."
A pause, the kind where pros decide how honest to be.
"The Hero Community enjoys… demonstrations," tan-coat said. "Tonight is a demonstration. We'd hate to escalate to spectacle."
Ren edged a fraction closer to Alaudi's left, exactly where he was supposed to be if trouble tried to circle.
"Demonstrate somewhere with worse taste," Alaudi said.
"We have investors," tan-coat said, like it explained crimes.
Alaudi looked at the altar. No incense. Fresh water. A single folded paper crane that wasn't a paper crane—inkwork crest tucked in the wing.
He touched it with two fingers. Cloud weighed the ink. Cheap. Trial-run brand again. He flicked the crane to Roll. Roll sniffed it, sneezed, and sat on it with the dignity of a small god.
"Leaving now," Alaudi said.
Tan-coat's smile thinned. "We have one more request."
"No," Alaudi said.
"A photograph," the man said. "For verification. Guardian with his… squire."
Ren bristled. Alaudi didn't move.
"Here's your photo," he said, and let Sky Crown flare just enough to draw the room's true skeleton—gold lines snapping into a quiet lattice, altar to beam, beam to ground, ground to Kyoto's patient spine.
The man flinched like someone had turned on a light in his skull.
"Verification complete," Alaudi said. "Out."
Tan-coat decided to be sensible. He bowed a fraction too deep to be sincere and stepped backward into a hinge that shouldn't have been a door and vanished in the fold.
The room sighed. The loop let go of its polite lie. The hallway went back to being a hallway.
Ren stood very still, then laughed once, shaky. "He wanted a photo?"
"Everybody's performance now," Alaudi said. "Even the zealots."
They swept the shrine like you sweep after guests who say they didn't eat but somehow used three plates—corners, lintels, under the offertory lid. Ren found two more cranes, both ink-light, both smug. Roll handled them with extreme sitting. Hibird pecked the last one until it gave up pretending.
By sunset, Kyoto's sky went copper. The rain that had been thinking about it decided to happen—soft, steady, good for the wards, hard on paper tricks.
Yasaka met them under the eaves, hair damp, tails calm.
"Folds?" she asked.
"Minor," Alaudi said. "Message with a smile."
Her gaze shifted, fox-sharp. "A trial? By whom?"
"Their adjacent," Alaudi said. "Fans with stationery."
"Cao Cao's orbit," she said, and made it sound like an unpleasant astronomy fact.
"Georg's geometry," Alaudi added. "But second-hand."
"We will harden the sacred geometry around civic shrines," Yasaka said. "Quietly."
Ren glanced between them. "Should we tell the director?"
"He already knows he's afraid," Alaudi said. "Let him practice being useful first."
Kunou zipped around the corner, slippers wet, eyes bright. "Roll was sitting on birds in the hall!"
"Hero birds," Ren said solemnly.
"Hmph," Kunou said, equally solemn, and handed Roll a rice cracker like a medal. Roll accepted with generational pride.
Yasaka's eyes softened. "Thank you," she said. "Again."
"No trumpets," Alaudi said. "No glowing sigils. Just wet steps and brooms."
Her mouth curved. "Kyoto's favorite kind of miracle."
—
They returned to the courtyard. Rain polished the stones. Ren set his feet for form nine and didn't argue when Alaudi nudged his stance half a toe inward.
"Why didn't you hit him?" Ren asked, not looking up.
"Because he was the wrong shape," Alaudi said. "You don't swing at leaf shadows."
Ren nodded, filed it. "What do we do if they make it spectacle?"
"End it fast," Alaudi said. "Or make the spectacle paperwork. People fear forms more than blood."
"That's dark," Ren said.
"It's efficient." He tapped Ren's shoulder. "Reset."
Ren reset.
The city breathed with the rain. Sky Crown's lines tugged at Alaudi's ribs—lantern to beam, beam to rail, rail to the kid who was trying very hard to be a blade without cutting his own hands.
He let Cloud spill, a shallow tide that stopped exactly at the shrine threshold. Here. Not yours. Not mine. Ours if you behave.
The wards hummed yes.
For three breaths, he let the bond sit heavy in his chest. Guardian wasn't a collar. It was a set of lines he chose to draw, over and over, until they meant something.
He pulled it back before it ossified. Flexibility over pride. Always.
Hibird tucked in. Roll snored like distant thunder. Ren, soaked and stubborn, finished form nine without clipping the step he always clipped.
"Again," Alaudi said.
Ren groaned. "It's still raining."
"Then don't slip."
"Worst boss," Ren muttered, and reset, and grinned despite himself.
No alarms. No fanfare. Just edges that admitted they were edges, folds that backed down when named, and a city that kept deciding to let a lone Cloud draw lines without calling them borders.
Work tomorrow. Fights later.
Forms forever.