The new line waited at the bottom of the custody slip.
It asked who had returned the body with a claim already inside it.
Ty disliked the question before anyone answered.
Returned made it sound simple. A package came back. A door opened. A body arrived where the next desk could file it.
That was not what had happened to him.
Erebos had killed him first. The Demon King had offered the vessel path after. Ty had chosen a contract because Jade was still alive somewhere behind everything he had lost. The old body on the table belonged to a later wound, not the beginning of the story.
If the room blurred those together, Zunoder would have room to breathe.
Ty put one knuckle against the custody slip.
"Do not call it returned like that covers everything."
Omina's pen stopped above the paper.
She looked at him once, then scratched a line through the question before the page could punish the correction.
