Scorpio Pluto's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The sigil had been up for three days when the knock came. Not at the front entrance where people usually approached, but at the loading dock where the stone angel stood. Scorpio walked through the empty hall, boots echoing off bare walls. Through the frosted glass, they could see a figure standing beside the statue. The woman outside wore a fox mask that gleamed silver-blue in the morning light, her coat cut sharp enough to draw blood. Behind her, workers were bolting something to the plaza stones — a massive sculpture of a winged figure cast in translucent material that caught the sun and scattered it in cyan fragments. "The angel was a test," the woman said without introduction. "You hung your sigil anyway. That means we can talk." She held out a leather-bound book, its cover worked with symbols that pulsed faint gold. "Full funding. Build your sanctuary exactly as you envision it. But everyone who enters signs this first. Their transformation becomes part of the record. Their story, their breaking point, their reconstruction — all documented. We preserve what you teach." Scorpio took the book, felt its weight. The pages inside were blank but ready, waiting to be filled with names and confessions. Documentation meant exposure. It meant the people who came here bottomed-out and raw would have their worst moments recorded, kept, studied. "They come here to shed their stories," Scorpio said. "Not to have them locked in a book forever." The woman tilted her masked face. "Then you'll do this work in a building with cracked foundations and no heat come winter. Your choice. Save them in secret, or save twice as many with our support. The flaws in this building weren't accidents. We needed to know if you'd proceed anyway. You did. Now we need to know if you'll proceed with witnesses." Scorpio opened the book to the first page. A contract was already written there in ink that seemed to move. They thought of the person they'd lost, the one who went somewhere they couldn't follow. No record existed of that breaking. No documentation of what went wrong or what Scorpio had missed. Maybe if there had been, they would have seen it coming. They set the book on the loading dock railing, then pulled out a pen. "The people who come here sign only if they choose it. Not as a condition of entry. And I write the first entry." They turned to a blank page and began writing their own worst thing, the failure they'd carried in silence. When they finished, they signed their name and held the book out. "Now you have your witness. Send your contract. We open in two weeks."