The Supernatural Enforcement Division wasn’t built for balance. It was built for control.

  Officially, the SED existed to uphold the Haven Pact—neutral peacekeepers with the authority to detain, question, or detonate anything that disrupted the city's fragile equilibrium. Unofficially? They were the Legal Division’s bluntest tool. Spell-armored, oath-bound, and relentless.

  You didn’t call the SED unless you wanted a problem buried.

  And if they came through your door, it usually meant someone already signed the paperwork to disappear you afterward.

  They weren’t faction-aligned. That was the whole point. No vampire backing. No mage bureaucracy. No Dreamborn subtlety. Just protocol and power and the kind of quiet ruthlessness that passed for law in a city made of secrets.

  Christine had spent most of her career avoiding their notice. Not because she had anything to hide—at least, not on paper—but because she knew exactly what happened to people who thought being “technically innocent” was a shield.

  Now she was crouched barefoot on a rooftop, heart rattling in her chest, staring down the truth:

  They hadn’t come for a warning. They’d come for her.

  And someone had made sure they’d know exactly where to look.

  Christine didn’t stay on the rooftop.

  She moved.

  Hopping rooftops barefoot was a bad idea even on a good day, but she took the risk. Three buildings over, she dropped down onto a maintenance platform, pried open an old vent shaft with a hidden latch, and slipped inside. It spat her out into the boiler access of a closed bathhouse two floors below street level.

  One of her fallback spots.

  She locked the door behind her with a rune chalk X, then finally—finally—let herself breathe.

  A mirror shard on the far wall showed her reflection: flushed, scraped, pupils still too wide. Her fingers shook. Not from adrenaline. From fury.

  Someone had given her up.

  And not just handed over her name. They’d timed it. Positioned it. Lined up the shot like a contractor booking an execution.

  Which meant they knew about the delivery.

  Or worse… they knew what she had delivered.Christine opened the courier bag, half-expecting something awful to happen even though it was empty. Nothing. Just old tea wrappers, a spare bandage, and the faint scent of copper where the container had rested.

  No trace of a tracking spell.

  No residue.

  Too clean.

  She pulled out her phone. Screen cracked. Battery low.

  Rekka wasn’t on the grid. Of course he wasn’t. But they had fallback codes—encrypted ping relays through third-tier courier loops.

  She opened the app, tapped in the glyph-string they’d agreed on for emergencies:

  //0.87.FLARE.EAST

  Meaning: “Burned. Moving. Location compromised. Advise.”

  She hit SEND.

  Nothing.

  Just the buffering spiral, chewing on silence.

  Christine closed her eyes and dropped the phone beside her.

  She needed a safehouse. A real one. Somewhere not tied to her route or Rekka’s networks.

  And she needed to figure out fast who was willing to sell her out to the SED over a sealed, silent job.

  Christine waited for the city to forget her.

  Night Haven never truly slept, but it blinked. Shifted. Let its eyes drift to something louder, shinier, more dangerous.

  That was when she moved.

  The shift came easier this time—muscle memory and instinct, fur and silence. In fox form, she slipped through alleys like smoke, padding along drainpipes, rooftop gutters, and cracked garden walls that hadn't seen care since before the Pact.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  She didn’t use the main roads. Didn’t pass through any warded checkpoints. She stuck to old smuggler paths and familiar fences—the kinds of routes couriers never admitted existed but everyone learned fast if they wanted to live.

  Her destination wasn’t glamorous. A junkyard behind a rune-dead tram depot, stinking of rust and old spells, guarded by a single flickering spiritlight jammed into a cracked mason jar.

  The fox slipped through the fencing, circled once, then emerged from behind a rusted-out vending golem in human form again—naked but not helpless. She pulled a stashed duffel from beneath a pile of copper scrap and dressed fast.

  The trailer door creaked open before she knocked.

  A thin man in a ragged robe squinted out at her, mug in hand.

  “Silvers,” he rasped. “You look like hell.”

  “I’ve had better afternoons,” she said, stepping inside.

  The air inside smelled like burnt coffee and melted candle wax. A scatter of hand-scribed scrolls littered the walls, ink smudged by palm prints and old rain.

  “Tell me why the SED would raid a courier’s place without notice. And tell me fast.”

  The man—Laz—snorted into his mug.

  “You sure you weren’t sitting on something worth breaking protocol?”

  “I never even opened it.”

  Laz set the mug down.

  His fingers drummed against the wood.

  Then, quietly, he said, “Because something just hit the Legal net. Quiet order. No name, no details. Just a trigger phrase.”Christine frowned. “What phrase?”

  Laz looked at her. Really looked.

  “‘Fox in the henhouse.’”

  Christine didn’t blink.

  “Say that again.”

  “That’s what flagged on the net. Three hours ago. Top-level Legal channel. Just the phrase: Fox in the henhouse. No sender, no timestamp metadata. Burn-on-read.”

  “And you’re sure it’s not a faction thing?”

  “If it was faction, I wouldn’t be the one seeing it. This was Legal, Silvers. Division-deep. Not public, not registered. Like someone dropped a hammer through six floors of red tape and didn’t bother explaining why.”

  Christine paced.

  A cold, sharp ache spread behind her eyes. “It’s code. Not coincidence.”

  “Figured that much. They wouldn’t broadcast your actual name unless they wanted a war on privacy law.”

  She stopped moving.

  Rekka’s warning. The watcher. The SED busting in like she’d detonated a leyline.

  All over a delivery she never opened. A package too clean. A client too careful.

  And now Legal was sending out birdshot-coded alerts on her without a warrant?

  Christine exhaled through her teeth. “You got anything else?”

  “Just a whisper,” Laz said, eyes narrowing. “Word is, a Dreamborn contact tried to scrub something from the vault records last night. Something tied to a delivery loop.”

  Her stomach sank.

  The vault. The key. The package.

  Someone was erasing her tracks.

  Christine’s voice came quiet, clipped. “Where?”

  “Sector 9-B,” Laz said. “Old mage territory.”

  She closed her eyes.

  Of course it was.

  She turned to go.

  But Laz wasn’t done.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  Christine paused.

  “Chatter on the deep threads says if this doesn’t resolve quietly—fast—the Black Mantle might take an interest.”

  That stopped her cold.

  Her hand tightened on the doorframe. “They don’t get involved with courier business.”

  “They do,” Laz said, “when it crosses into treaty-bound relic transport and triggers enough automated flags to wake a Council Liaison out of stasis.”

  Christine didn’t speak.

  Because that wasn’t just bad.

  That was endgame bad.

  She stepped out into the night without another word.