Ty skipped the steps because the stair had already proved it charged honest feet.
His toes hit the railing, the wall, one cracked corner, and once Heissman’s shoulder. Heissman made a sound that would have counted as treason in a nicer room.
"My spine holds rank, and you just committed treason against it."
"Then duck faster before the next wall has opinions."
"That advice arrived after you used me as architecture."
JJ came down behind them with one hand on the wall and her wrist panel throwing pink sparks. Step twenty-seven waited ahead, the Name Office door closing inch by inch. Behind them, Yun-Jin’s childhood memory burned around Omina.
That image stayed in Ty’s skull while the Name Office door kept closing.
Omina had stepped into false smoke and chain-shaped memory. Her green-gold aura held the younger Yun-Jin behind her while the royal silhouettes outside the childhood room lifted swords. The real Yun-Jin fought like an injured animal to reach her.
"Let me go before the memory turns the blades on her."
JJ caught Yun-Jin around the waist and nearly lost teeth for it.
"I am keeping you alive, so hate me after."
"She will die in a room that belonged to me."
"She ordered us through the door because she knows math."
"No one asked me to approve the math."
"No one asked me either, and I still have arms."
Yun-Jin’s elbow drove back. JJ took it in the ribs and held on anyway.
Ty hit step twenty-six hard enough for the number to bite his heel.
The Name Office door had a brass handle shaped like a tongue. He hated it before his fingers reached it. He swung a sickle, and the blade stopped one finger from the wood.
The door wrote its demand in burned lettering. Entry required a bill.
"Fine. Put the bill on me before the door closes."
The brass clicked once and refused him. The bill belonged elsewhere.
The stair behind him flashed green. Omina’s voice came through the childhood smoke with the patience of a woman finding the ugly line in a contract.
"Of course the office wants the part I can least spare."
Ty turned because Omina’s voice had named the price before the door did.
Omina stood with one hand pressed against the doorframe of the memory room and the other wrapped around a royal blade that had gone through her palm. The blade belonged to the memory. The blood was hers.
Yun-Jin stopped fighting so fast JJ almost fell with her.
"Do not turn my life into your receipt."
Omina looked at her. The general’s face had lost some of its sharp control, enough to show the cost without wasting time on display.
"You were a child when this room found you."
"I told you not to make me watch this."
"The stair is using your shame because it can buy cheaply."
Omina pulled the blade out of her hand. Green light dripped from the wound.
"I have better currency, and I am tired of cheap buyers."
The stair walls brightened until the carved numbers threw green across every face.
The stone named what Omina could spend. Rank strip burned first, then field command privilege, then public trust reserve. Each phrase sank into the wall with enough weight to make Heissman go still.
JJ stared at the offers like they were weapons on a table.
"Those sound like things a sane person keeps."
Heissman looked sick because he knew what the words cost.
"They are, which is why the stair wants them."
Omina lifted her injured hand before Yun-Jin could reach her.
"Take field command privilege and leave the rest where it stands."
Yun-Jin went white under the smoke and old royal light.
"You cannot spend command privilege on my old fear."
"I can, and you are done funding it."
"The King will gut you when he learns what you traded."
"The King has been meaning to find a cleaner excuse."
The stair accepted before anyone could turn protest into action.
Green-gold light tore from Omina’s shoulders in two long strips. They looked like rank cords, old medals, and every order she had ever given that people obeyed because the kingdom stood behind her voice.
The strips wrapped around the memory door and burned.
The young Yun-Jin vanished. The smoke vanished. Omina dropped to one knee on step eighteen. For the first time since Ty had met her, the air around the general stopped making room.
Rank had hidden that exposure before, and its absence looked cold.
Yun-Jin reached her and caught her by the front of the coat.
"You idiot, you just made yourself smaller for me."
Omina breathed through her nose until the pain obeyed enough.
"That is still poor address for a former field commander."
Yun-Jin froze with both hands still fisted in Omina’s coat.
"Former is a word I hate in this sentence."
"Temporary is the word I prefer, if the stair has manners."
JJ looked at Ty. Ty looked at the Name Office door.
The door changed its demand. The bill was paid. Entry unlocked.
"Move before I decide martyrdom was the cheaper mistake."
Yun-Jin stayed planted for half a breath.
Omina’s eyes sharpened before the stair could enjoy the pause.
"If you waste my payment, I will survive from spite and make that your lifelong problem."
That worked because spite had become the only clean fuel left.
Yun-Jin hauled her up. The group hit the Name Office door together as it opened.
Inside waited a room with no ceiling and too many desks.
Stacks of paper rose into darkness. Brass lamps hung from chains. The floor had been white once, before ink, mud, blood, tea, and black lane water taught it other colors.
Clerks sat at every desk with pens paused above paper.
A few had eyes. Most had smooth sockets. All of them stopped writing when Ty entered.
At the far desk, a woman with silver hair, a broken crown pin, and ink on every finger looked up. Her face was plain in a room that worked hard to be memorable.
That made her worse than the monsters. Monsters warned you. Clerks smiled while deciding which line owned your throat.
"Bone party, late enough to make the schedule personal."
Her voice was the bored voice from the cart, older now, drier, and less willing to be interrupted. The eyeless cart clerk stood behind her holding the same clipboard. He gave Ty a little wave with two fingers.
Ty stepped forward before the room decided stillness meant permission.
"Where is Zunoder, and who let him carry my face?"
"Registered departure through public claim channel, already witnessed."
"Cancel the registration before I make the desks nervous."
"Cancellation requires contest, witness weight, and a tolerable amount of patience."
JJ came up beside him with her cracked panel lifted.
"Then open the contest before patience becomes expensive."
The silver-haired clerk slid a slate across the desk. It landed at the edge with a neat click.
The slate listed the current public name as Ty Hockenson, the active face user as Zunoder, and the unregistered bone party as unknown.
The mark under Ty’s eye socket burned hard enough to sharpen the room.
"I am Ty, and the office already knows that."
"A public name cannot sit in two chairs unless one holder arrives with superior witness weight."
JJ lifted her panel higher, cracked glass and all.
"I am his sponsor, and my money has bruises."
"Damaged witness, useful for pity and weak for title custody."
Yun-Jin stepped forward, still holding Omina up.
"I fought him before any of you could spell him."
"Hostile witness, often valuable elsewhere and inconveniently limited here."
"That should count more when truth is being stolen."
"Often does, though this office takes pride in being disappointing."
Ty put both sickles on the desk and let the metal answer first.
Every clerk leaned away. The silver-haired woman held her ground.
"Violence against staff creates enough paperwork to outlive your anger."
Ty leaned closer until the clerk’s ink smelled fresh.
"Tell me what this office accepts before I choose badly."
The clerk turned the slate with one ink-stained finger.
The slate offered no version of his name. Bone Party sat at the top, followed by Returned Skeleton and Unlicensed Reaper. The final two lines waited lower, patient as teeth: Skeleton King Candidate and Skeleton King.
The room went still in the way offices did before stealing something.
JJ’s voice dropped until even the eyeless clerks seemed to listen.
"Do not sign the last one under any pressure."
Ty looked at the words. They looked back.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the crowd above shouted his stolen face’s name. While the sound shook the paper stacks, the slate added another line beneath the suggestions. Temporary registration was available with bone payment.
The silver-haired clerk held out her hand.
"One tooth buys temporary registration until witness review."
Ty touched his jaw. He had already paid a memory. Now the office wanted proof it could keep.
Omina’s weakened voice came from behind him, low but still trained for command.
"Pay nothing until the Earth witness connects to the room."
The clerk’s smile thinned until it belonged on a knife.
"The Earth witness is unavailable by every route this office recognizes."
The beacon stone on JJ’s panel cracked once.
Jade’s voice came through, raw with pain and bad temper.
"Ty, do not sign the title until I can see the room."
Every clerk in the Name Office stood at once.