"How much of what you just showed me was actually true?"

The heavy oak door had clicked shut, sealing the two of us inside. Outside, Niku had led a wide-eyed and slack-jawed Mooney on "a quick tour of the amenities". I feared that could mean anything from digging his own shallow grave to being introduced to a joint of exceptional quality.

The Lugat turned away, his back to me as he poured two glasses of something amber from a crystal decanter. The clink of glass against glass was the only sound.

"True?" he said, offering me a glass. "An interesting question. First, you must tell me what you mean by 'true,' Warden."

"Well, how about we start with 'did my Aunt really bitch-slap a Nazi Shadow monster back to the netherworld in front of you during World War Two and ask you to pass along a psychic message to me,' and work up from there? You know, run with one of the classics."

The Lugat nodded, took a sip of his drink, then a smile stretched his lips.

"You are very like her, you know?"

"I am?"

"She was…" He took a second sip of the amber liquid in his glass, his eyes distant. "Well. She was the Guardian of the Threshold. What more is there to say than that? That is exactly what she was. Zonja Margaret," he continued, a note of reverence in his voice, "could destroy an army with a sneeze or heal a plague with a wave. And you have the same look about you, Warden."

I pushed the flattery, or whatever it was, aside. "You make it sound like you knew her."

"In a way, I suppose I did. We of the shadows are not exactly built for the emotion of fondness. We are intended to take and to burn and to destroy. So I hated her, for sure. At least initially. But after time, I began to feel a sneaking respect for her."

"Why?"

"Well, she was never cruel in her dealings with us. Thorough, oh my word, yes. And implacable. But never cruel."

His wording snagged on a memory from my youth, pulling me back to childhood with a startling force. The smell of the expensive whisky in the glass in my hand was suddenly replaced by that of lemon polish. I was eight years old again, standing on the runner in Halfway Hold, staring at the glittering shards of my aunt's favourite porcelain vase. My hands were shaking, but she wasn't shouting at me. And her face wasn't contorted with rage, just set in a way that looked immovable.

Implacable. Yes, that was the perfect word for Aunt M.

On that particular occasion, she had informed me that my Saturdays were no longer my own. I would be weeding her entire, sprawling garden until I had worked off the cost of the vase. I remember bracing myself for the tirade – my dad's favourite disciplinary approach – for the hot shame of being yelled at, but it never came. Instead, after passing a dismal sentence, she'd simply gone to the hall closet and returned with a pair of her own thick gardening gloves. "So you don't tear up your hands," was all she'd said.

"I remember she offered me a biscuit once," the Lugat continued, "right before banishing me from the realm."

A laugh escaped me. The parallel was so Aunt M. The all-powerful Guardian of the Threshold and my dotty old Aunt, operating from the same bizarre playbook of merciless justice tempered by small, practical kindnesses.

"And I remind you of her, do I?" I said.

"Indeed. I sense you have a similar capacity to make room for frailty while still demanding adherence to your standards." He paused and then untucked a short, red thread from his lapel and held it out for me. "Despite all of your," he indicated my armour, "martial power, I believe the core of your power is actually, as with Margaret, domestic."

"I don't understand."

"Your role in keeping the Veil whole may feel inconsequential compared to acts of warfare or great battles, but it is not small, Warden." The Lugat's voice dropped, becoming hushed and intimate. He pulled a single crimson thread from his jacket and held it up to me.

"Nyje," he said softly, his fingers beginning to work. "A knot. Your aunt actually taught this to me. These knots are not merely symbols, Warden. They are one of the many tools the Guardian may use to enforce the laws of the Threshold. As she taught me, I share it now with you."

He tied the first slowly so I could see: a simple twist, loop, pull. But as he drew the thread taut, I felt a shift in the room, a sudden pressure against my eardrums as if the air itself had solidified. The knot pulsed with a soft, internal light before settling. "For entry," he said. "This knot binds a crossing to a consequence. Nothing can pass its threshold unseen or unrecorded. Casting such as these ensured she knew when a particular Shadow began testing the door."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I thought back to the kitchen of Halfway Hold. Knots like this were everywhere. And not just in the little poppets she'd always seemed to have on a go, but woven into the very fabric of the place. A twist of rope dangling from a rafter, a scrap of coloured thread tucked into the stone of the mantelpiece, a braid of twine nailed to a doorframe.

I remembered dismissing them as rustic charms. More kooky examples of Aunt M being Aunt M. But this demon was suggesting they weren't just quirky decorations. They were, what, wards? If so, there'd been hundreds of them. Was the Lugat suggesting each one was a lock? A rule? A carefully placed metaphysical shield?

Then the demon's fingers moved again, creating a second square knot. As he tightened it, the feeling this time was entirely different. Not pressure, but a deep stillness coming from the thread.

"For dwelling," he said. "To say no harm passes while bread is warm and salt is shared. This knot is a ward of sanctuary. It doesn't fight the chaotic things that scrabble at the Veil; instead, it creates a space where their chaos simply cannot exist. This is how your aunt created areas of safety. This knot doesn't banish the darkness, but it reminds the realm of its fundamental nature as a shelter, ensuring that the shadow is squeezed out, unable to remain."

Which is what both Halfway Hold and Anchorfall were, no? Knots in the Veil.

Then the Lugat cinched the last knot, a tiny, clever tuck that, in a blink, folded space and vanished off into itself. As it disappeared, the tension it held was released in a silent, invisible wave that washed over me. "For leaving," he finished, holding up the now knotless thread.

"To say the door remembers you kindly but will not follow. This knot seals the path behind. It severs the connection entirely. It is the final word in any argument. The lock on the Threshold itself."

He set the thread in my palm. It was far, far warmer than it should've been. "She used these when she sent my Elders back to whence they came, the use of this third thread meaning they could never return. However, at the last moment, she gave me a chance. She made me a cup of tea in a chipped mug and told me I could stay, provided I stopped haunting bridges unless I intended to help the people crossing." His mouth twitched. "And that I began… helping her. Quietly.

I looked down at the knots, at my hand, at him. "She let you stay?"

"Yes." He didn't blink. "Which means I now have besa with her bloodline, now she is gone." He gestured at me, almost shy of the sentiment. "You stand like she stood. One shoulder turned, as if you will wedge yourself in the frame of the world if you must. That is how a Warden must be."

We stood in silence for a moment. The fan ticked. Somewhere behind me, very faintly, I thought I heard Mooney laughing. Good for him.

"So, yes. What you saw was broadly true," the Lugat said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rumble. "But you need to understand the nature of that truth. Truth is a knot, Warden. It holds because of many turns, not one."

"I can happily confirm that Guardian Margaret was responsible for exorcising one of the great Shadowkin of the realms. But it was not in a single, glorious shove as that memory may suggest. A creature of such magnitude is a stain on the Veil, not a mere trespasser. It is not possible to simply wipe such a one away in one go. Such a working takes seasons and miles, even for one of her undoubted strength."

As he spoke, the walls of the office fell away, replaced by the images his words conjured in my mind.

"For sure, she brought Him low in that Belgian field. Yes. The first knot, tied in mud and blood under a war-torn sky." His gaze went distant. "And then again in Venezuela, down amongst the flood tunnels. She found Him there, clinging to the echo in the pipes, another knot, and that fragment of him was gone. Then in Sydney, she followed Him into the storm drains and purged him once more. Wherever His darkness tried to hide in this world's folds and creases, Zonja Margaret sought to cut out his thread. She found the seams in His being, unravelled His spirit into meaner, more manageable pieces, and tied each one shut."

"I'm sensing a 'but,'" I said, thinking of Aunt M's final words in the memory.

"He's trying this again, Eli," she'd said. "And he made sure I was out of the way first. You're going to need to get involved, I'm afraid. I believe in you."

"Indeed, yes, Warden. A big 'but'. And that is why you find me as a gold quest giver this day. It would appear that the Shadowkin your Aunt dispelled so many years before has finally managed to facilitate its return."

I thought of what those of the Hunt had said about how things had been going to hell in a handcart on Earth. How had they put it? "We've got Shadow entities using abandoned rail lines like ley-lines. And we've got all sorts of digital dead zones. They're hiding better. Learning."

A cold weight settled in my stomach. I had been operating under the simple assumption that the world of Earth was fraying at the edges because the Guardian of the Threshold was gone. I'd thought things were getting worse simply because the gate was unattended. The Hunt, in all their extensive wisdom, had obviously reached the same conclusion: that the 'Shadow-bleed' they were currently fighting was just the natural consequence of that power vacuum.

But what the Lugat was suggesting was that all of this wasn't a random leaking. That it was the deliberate, patient unravelling of Aunt M's masterwork. A single, colossal knot coming undone, thread by thread.

I thought about the battles against the Shadow I'd had since being back on Earth. The Glitch Widow I'd destroyed in that concrete car park. The Chor in Rugeley. The Midnight Lurker I'd recently stomped with the roots of an ancient oak.

I'd been seeing them as separate events and somewhat isolated incursions. But now, I wondered if there wasn't more to it. A new pattern began to emerge. Were these just random monsters, opportunists crawling through the cracks? Or were they something worse? Were the shorn-off fragments of that one great Shadowkin stirring as the knots my Aunt had so carefully tied began to fray?

And what about the snakeheaded assassin? Someone had taken out a contract on me; was that linked? And how did the quest the System had given me to find Griff link into all this?

"You look troubled," the Lugat said. "And, I'm afraid, well you might."

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