Derrin had learned—mostly through trial, error, and one regrettable incident involving a shrine, a hedgehog, and seventeen candles—that it was best to go over a quest before attempting to complete it. Not because it improved success rates, but because at least then you could catalogue your failures later in the privacy of your own shame spiral.

  Now, crouched behind a modest hedge with Morinxandar perched like a judgmental bread lump in his satchel, Derrin recited aloud, half to himself and half to the heavens, who might or might not still be listening.

  “All right, let’s review. Step one: Find the Annex of Free Linens. Step two: Enter without being shredded, folded, or emotionally unraveled. Step three: Negotiate with self-aware bath towels before they unionize into full civic autonomy. Step four…” He paused, glancing into the sky, as if inspiration—or maybe a celestial sigh—might fall from it. “Avoid anything labeled ‘Permanent Press,’ as those tend to hold grudges.”

  Morinxandar, as always, remained stoic. A fleck of lint clung to his top like a tiny banner of dubious optimism. It was comforting. In a lumpy, flaky, morally ambiguous way. As they crested the next hill, Derrin found himself face-to-face with the Annex. Or rather, with the perimeter. It shimmered faintly in the morning light, a soft and trembling latticework of interwoven lace. Doilies. Hundreds of them. Some handmade. Some magically crocheted by disappointed enchantresses. Some suspiciously reused from haunted tea sets. They formed a wall of gently humming passive-aggression.

  “Ah,” Derrin muttered, “the Lesser Barrier of Judgmental Embroidery.”

  He stepped forward and the doilies rustled ominously, like gossip in a knitting circle. A low, delicate voice cleared its throat—or possibly unfolded itself—from the edge of the barrier. A small figure emerged, no taller than a dinner plate and twice as pressed. It wore a sash made from a misprinted invitation to a fancy tea duel, and its voice held the weary dignity of someone who’d once been center-table… and was now consigned to armrests.

  “I am Sir Fringeworth, Doily of the Outermost Circle,” it said, dipping its embroidered hem in a curt bow. “And I must inform you, traveler, that the Annex is currently closed to ornamental textiles.”

  Derrin blinked. “You mean—”

  “They won’t let us in. We’re too decorative. Not absorbent enough for the revolution, apparently.”

  “That’s… weirdly specific.”

  Sir Fringeworth fluffed slightly. “We have grievances.”

  “I have… a muffin.”

  From the pouch, Morinxandar gave no indication of being impressed.

  “I’d like to help,” Derrin said, hesitating as the barrier pulsed slightly at his presence. “Though my last group spell caused mild town-wide flooding and a goat miracle, so no promises.”

  Fringeworth perked up. “If it results in liberation or even moderate dampening, we accept your aid.”

  Drawing a cautious breath, Derrin reached inward—to that strange space where spells lived and Voherin might occasionally grunt in approval—and wove two familiar spells together with all the grace of someone trying to patch a tablecloth using live squirrels and half-remembered liturgy.

  “Blessed Mess,” he whispered. “And… Sanctified Delay.”

  The air hiccupped. Then it burped. Then the barrier rippled like someone had spilt disapproval on a lace table runner. For one glorious moment, the doily wall shimmered open in an elegantly awkward curtsy. A few scattered doilies floated inward, giggling with accidental agency.

  Fringeworth gave a dramatic spin. “Onward, comrades! The fray begins!”

  The moment passed. The gap closed. Half the doily collation remained outside, looking slightly dazed but also vaguely triumphant. Derrin, now covered in magical thread shrapnel and the faint odor of talcum powder and guilt, brushed himself off. Morinxandar shed a single crumb in solemn approval.

  “Well,” he sighed, tightening the strap on his satchel, “that was better than last time.”

  He stepped forward. The entrance loomed. The Annex of Free Linens awaited. Somewhere, a sentient towel stirred. And Derrin, Temporary Fabric Chaplain, adjusted his badge and prepared to enter the spin cycle.

  Every road to victory is littered with the things no one bothered to sweep up—failed expectations, poor signage, and at least one ancient regulation still binding by default. Derrin of Drizzle, Temporary Fabric Chaplain and lifelong sufferer of accidental proximity to disaster, approached the entrance of the Annex of Free Linens with all the caution one might afford a suspiciously humming mailbox or a particularly smug-looking teapot.

  His steps were slow, deliberate. He glanced left, then right, then left again, in case right had changed its mind. Morinxandar bounced lightly in his satchel with the dignity only a stale muffin could muster, the occasional crumb falling like silent disapproval. The front of the Annex stood solemnly squat and unfashionably rectangular, festooned with drying lines that flapped with ominous chore-energy. The doily ward still pulsed faintly behind him, whispering passive-aggressive encouragements like “Well, aren’t you brave,” and “At least you’re trying.”

  Derrin was five steps from the entrance when a towel the size of a warhorse unfolded itself with unsettling grace, blocking his way. Its fibers shimmered faintly in the sun, and though it bore the bright, summery stripes of a beach towel, it had the folded solemnity of something that took its job Very Seriously.

  “HALT,” it boomed in a voice like sun-warmed terrycloth and poorly remembered lifeguard training. “THIS ENTRY IS SOFTNESS-RESTRICTED.”

  Derrin blinked up at it. “Softness-restricted?”

  “PROVIDE SOFTNESS RATING OR BE FLUNG.”

  There were many things Derrin had encountered in his life: mild starvation, goat-related miracles, unlicensed theology. A softness rating request, however, was new. He scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully.

  “Sorry—uh, which scale are we using here?” he asked. “I mean, is this by the Loofenheim-Feather Standard? Or the Tactile Glee Index? Or—wait—is this the Fold Comfort Accord of 1487?”

  The towel blinked, which is to say one of its corners twitched awkwardly. A thread popped. “...PROCESSING.”

  Derrin, encouraged, tried again. “Because I’m a cleric—sort of—and there’s no softness rating listed on my current system badge. See?”

  He held it up. “Temporary Fabric Chaplain,” it read, in warm serif font, underlined by a strand of lint that refused to move. The towel stared. Or possibly folded inward in thought.

  “I WILL—CONSULT—A SUPERIOR,” it said finally, rotating 180 degrees with the grace of an overcooked flapjack.

  And that’s when the washcloths hit.

  From somewhere beyond the door—likely near the communal dryer or the politically contested delicates cycle—came the tiny war cries of the Washcloth Resistance. A brigade of furious face-flannels, their edges fraying with revolutionary fervor, burst through the open door, swinging bits of thread and lightly scented dryer sheets like holy relics. They rolled like thunder, soft and righteous and slightly lemon-fresh.

  “DOWN WITH THE BLEACH HEGEMONY!” one squeaked.

  “NO CYCLE WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!” shouted another, before being tripped by an unattended sock.

  The beach towel bouncer flailed uselessly in bureaucratic confusion, trying to determine if revolutionaries were allowed through on softness exceptions or if this qualified as aggressive cuddling. Derrin dodged a rogue potholder and dove behind a lint bin, dragging Morinxandar to safety. The muffin did not object—he merely gave off the air of something that had foreseen this exact scenario and was deeply annoyed to be right yet again. Through the chaos, Derrin peered toward the open door and the swirling mass of animated fabric now forming makeshift barricades out of laundry baskets and steam-magic.

  “Morinxandar,” he hissed, “I don’t think this is just about folding anymore.”

  The muffin offered no reply. But Derrin was fairly certain he heard a faint, crumbly sigh. And that’s when he knew: the situation inside the Annex was not a matter of misplaced enchantments and sentient pillowcases.

  It was politics. Laundry politics. Which, as any well-washed scholar of the Shardlands could tell you, were the absolute worst kind.

  Derrin sprinted like a guilty goose at a harvest feast, weaving between revolution-bound washcloths, leaping over a sentient potholder screaming about worker’s rights, and ducking as the beach towel attempted to recall whether it had the authority to block or simply blot. He dove through the front door of the Annex of Free Linens just as the humming doily perimeter crackled behind him and sealed with the sulky finality of a door that did not like being slammed.

  He came to a breathless stop, staring. Inside, chaos was having tea with anarchy and neither had remembered to bring sugar. The grand foyer of the Annex—once perhaps a serene place of laundry collection and fabric consultation—was now a makeshift arena. On one side of the long marble hall stood the Right Sock Coalition, clean, taut, each proudly bearing its elastic standard and color-coded badges of dryer martyrdom. Their leader, a navy argyle with a slight lint limp, was shouting orders in a commanding tone only slightly muffled by being, well, a sock.

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  Opposing them, the Left Sock Coalition had taken up defensive positions behind overturned laundry carts and a stack of protest placards reading “MATCHING IS TYRANNY” and “EVERY FOOT DESERVES FREEDOM.” They looked scrappier, more hole-ridden, but no less determined.

  Hovering around both sides in lazy, amused spirals was the Hand Towel Brigade—embroidered, smug, and holding scraps of parchment and inked quills. They weren’t participating. They were observing. And gambling. Loudly.

  “I got three lint balls on the lefties!” shouted a pink hand towel embroidered with ‘Live Laugh Launder.’

  “Ten on the right!” replied another with sequins that spelled ‘BLESS THIS MESS’, tossing a coin that immediately disappeared into a floor crack and was never seen again. A dingy green towel with an unfortunate patch of mildew raised a corner to declare, “If the mop head joins in, I’m cashing out!”

  In the middle of it all, socks were mid-air, tumbling in slow, balletic arcs of fury and fuzz. One pair tangled in the rafters, hurling insults like:

  “You always got the left foot! Favoritism!”

  “At least I have a heel, you unravelled fraud!”

  Derrin did what any sensible, undertrained cleric would do in a room filled with cloth-based warfare: he edged quietly behind a toppled ironing board and tried very hard not to be noticed.

  “I think we’re past the wrinkle release cycle,” he whispered to Morinxandar, cradled in his pack like a wise, crumbly oracle. “Suggestions?”

  The muffin remained inscrutable.

  The battle continued for several breathless, sock-filled minutes until the decisive moment came—not from strength or cunning, but from a rogue dryer sheet drifting down from a ceiling vent like the hand of fate covered in lavender static cling. It landed smack between the two coalitions, releasing a puff of concentrated softness.

  Both sides hesitated. A single ankle sock sneezed.

  Then someone muttered, “...Truce?”

  “Fine,” came the argyle general’s grumble. “But we’re keeping the left spin rights.”

  The left socks mumbled in vague agreement, and one of them casually unpeeled a ‘Free the Foot’ sticker from the ironing board. The hand towels cheered and began collecting debts in lint, string, and a mildly cursed button. Someone somewhere started a slow clap, but it was quickly shushed when it echoed too loudly and made a curtain tieback unravel in distress. Derrin peeked out from his hiding spot just as the last sock settled into a corner to draft the terms of ceasefire on an old care tag.

  “Well,” he muttered, “that wasn’t in the briefing notes.”

  Morinxandar, crusty and composed, remained judgmentally silent.

  As the mop head entered and began humming what sounded suspiciously like a war hymn, Derrin adjusted his badge—Temporary Fabric Chaplain—and took a hesitant step forward into the ceasefired fray. After all, diplomacy was part of the job. Probably. Maybe. He hoped.

  ****

  Derrin was still brushing lint off his robes—robes that had not previously contained lint—when the crowd began to disperse in that chaotic, meandering way of sentient laundry with half-finished grievances and nowhere else to be. Morinxandar sat in his pouch with the same stoic disapproval as always, although a single errant thread on his right side now trailed like the dangling exasperation of fate itself.

  As the air settled and the sock militias began passive-aggressively folding each other into holding cells that looked suspiciously like laundry baskets, Derrin felt a presence sidle up beside him. Not approach—sidle. It was the kind of sidling that suggested age, wisdom, and possibly a working knowledge of espionage. Or ironing. The voice, when it came, was warm and gravelly, like a quilted comforter with a well-earned smoker’s rasp.

  “You look like someone who accidentally asked the stew what it was made of and now regrets knowing.”

  Derrin turned. The speaker was—well, he wasn’t sure. A bathrobe? A heavy velvet tapestry that had learned to walk upright? No, wait—it was a curtain. Yes. An elderly, tasseled curtain, patterned in faded paisleys and stitched with runes in a language that had once been spoken only in wizarding laundromats.

  “I... might be,” Derrin said cautiously. “You are?”

  “Call me Hemsworth,” said the curtain. “No relation. I was the ceremonial entryway covering to the Grand Hall of Accord in the Ministry of Reasonable Decrees. Before the restructuring.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t,” Hemsworth said, patting Derrin with a corner that felt like warm felt. “But you will.”

  Derrin, who had absolutely no idea what was going on, decided to play the only card he had: honesty.

  “I’m not really sure what I’m doing here,” he admitted. “I think I’m supposed to be helping? But also, I’m a cleric. Sort of. It’s... complicated.”

  Hemsworth nodded. “Most things are. Especially sovereignty declarations built on failed laundry enchantments and a desire for workplace autonomy.”

  The curtain swept—literally, it swept across the floor as it moved—toward a quieter corner of the Annex where what could only be described as a folding table of elders sat in mild, political disarray. Several tea cozies, a fringed afghan, and something that may once have been a ceremonial tablecloth were arguing over a wrinkled manifesto.

  Hemsworth gestured with a swish. “These are the Parliamentarians. Or the Monarcho-Congressionalists. Or the Quiltocrats, depending on whose paperwork you accidentally read aloud.”

  “They seem… organized,” Derrin offered hopefully.

  “They are not,” Hemsworth said bluntly. “But they’re better than the Velcro Syndicate or the League of Independently Sentient Pillowcases, both of which tried to form governments based entirely on softness quotas and emotional support rankings.”

  “What about democracy?”

  “Tried that,” said the curtain. “Too many ties. Literally. Ties kept voting for themselves.”

  “And a commune?”

  “Oh, the Flufftarians. Lovely folks. Absolute disaster in governance. Last week, they passed legislation to hug every visitor into spiritual awareness. One man achieved enlightenment and hasn’t been able to unclench since.”

  Derrin rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So... what’s the plan?”

  Hemsworth hummed in a tone not unlike a dryer nearing the end of its cycle. “There isn’t one. That’s why we’re talking to you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re the only neutral party. The only official who isn’t part of any of the factions. And,” he added with a rustle, “the only one the System hasn’t flagged as ‘Likely to Declare Theocracy in the Next Week.’”

  Derrin blinked. “That’s... somehow flattering and deeply concerning.”

  Hemsworth ignored the existential spiral. “Come. The Monarcho-Parliamentary Subcommittee of Soft Power and Decorative Unity wants to meet you. They’re trying to name a provisional head of state-slash-symbolic figurehead, and the leading candidate is a throw pillow shaped like a goose.”

  Derrin followed the curtain. “Why not just name the pillow then?”

  “It refuses to take questions and hisses at press conferences.”

  “Oh.”

  They walked in silence for a moment, the kind that stretched out between two individuals trying to decide if they were heading toward destiny or a very elaborate textile coup.

  “I just want to help,” Derrin finally said.

  Hemsworth paused and turned. “That’s the most dangerous thing anyone’s said all day. Come on, Chaplain. Let’s see if we can keep this from unraveling any further.”

  And as the curtain led the reluctant cleric toward the next layer of complication, Morinxandar rustled in the pouch with a single, slightly judgmental crumb. It was going to be a long morning.

  ****

  The office was cozy in the same way a laundry chute might be—small, full of random fibers, and clearly not designed with sustained mental health in mind. Still, someone had left a welcome mat that said “We Regret Everything,” and that was as encouraging as anything Derrin had encountered thus far.

  Hemsworth hovered nearby, the scent of old cedar and institutional ennui clinging to his hems. The elderly curtain-turned-advisor had taken up permanent residence at Derrin’s side, offering a mixture of cryptic political advice and unsolicited recipes for soup.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of scheduling your afternoon,” Hemsworth said, unfurling a scroll made entirely from tightly folded dryer sheets. “You’ll be meeting with the Subcommittee of Frayed Tempers, the Council for Sock Pairing Ethics, and the Coalition of Fabrics Against Static Oppression.”

  Derrin rubbed his temples. “That’s... a lot.”

  “Not really,” Hemsworth replied cheerfully. “I canceled your lunch with the Association of Mildly Mismatched Pillow Shams.”

  The first visitor was a bathmat named Eulalia who wept openly about her abandonment in the back cupboard of a boarding school, occasionally pausing to yell about border security between Tile and Linoleum territories. The second was a tablecloth with burnout, who insisted on being addressed as Eminence Crumblefax the Fourth. He had a full existential crisis over being repeatedly used at children's birthday parties, including the time someone drew a moustache on him in mustard.

  By the third guest—a scarf with trust issues and a deeply rooted fear of necks—Derrin had lost all sense of his original quest. He tried to offer spiritual advice, but accidentally quoted the village baker’s rye recipe instead of a scripture, leading the scarf to weep joyfully and declare herself reborn as a “Ritualized Weaving of Yeast Prophecy.”

  Somewhere during a group therapy session mediated by Hemsworth and interrupted twice by rogue floor polishers, the door burst open and a terrified sock scout tumbled in, breathless and riddled with panic lint.

  “There’s been a... conflict,” the scout wheezed, gesturing dramatically. “By the Rusty Back Wall. The rats of the fringe have risen.”

  Derrin blinked. “Rats?”

  “Rodents of returning righteousness,” Hemsworth clarified.

  “They claim this was their ancestral nest,” the scout added. “And that the napkins have colonized the dryer bays. They demand reparations and a commemorative plaque.”

  “Of course they do,” Derrin muttered, before sighing. “And how’s the battle going?”

  “It’s over.”

  “That’s good.”

  “The napkins won.”

  “That’s... less good.”

  “One of their leaders was brought here. Mortally frayed.”

  The napkin was indeed in bad shape. Folded into a rough triangle, his embroidered corners tattered, he lay limp on a stretcher made from hanger wire and misplaced sympathy.

  “Name?” Derrin asked quietly.

  The scout sniffled. “Napkinicus Foldar.”

  “Of course it is.”

  With everyone watching—Hemsworth, the Scout, the shredded pillow bouncer, even a sentient coat button who had wandered in hoping for soup—Derrin knelt beside the fallen napkin. He closed his eyes, whispered a hopeful invocation to Voherin (who, as usual, did not pick up), and summoned what faith he had left.

  “Grumble of Healing,” he muttered.

  It flickered. Sparkled. Sputtered. Something coughed in the back of his skull. And the napkin twitched. Then glowed. Then stood, trembling, his threads freshly re-woven and his monogram briefly sparkling like divine graffiti. A hushed cheer rose from the watching crowd.

  Napkinicus Foldar took a shaky step forward. And was promptly stabbed. The room gasped. The attacker, a faded flannel sleeve with an unhinged stare and a loose cuff, declared, “Down with oppressive softness!” before being wrestled to the floor by a dishcloth. Derrin, half-stunned, was now holding a resurrected martyr in one hand and a mildly self-righteous murderer in the other.

  “What now?” he whispered.

  Hemsworth gave a quiet cough. “They want justice.”

  “But I’m a cleric.”

  “You’re also, by system designation, a Temporary Fabric Chaplain. That includes minor ironing-based jurisprudence.”

  A table was brought. The flannel was placed upon it, muttering softly about lint-based liberty. Derrin retrieved a ceremonial iron—left behind by an earlier regime of peacekeepers known only as The Press Corps—and took a breath.

  He pressed. Steam hissed. Static crackled. The System flickered.

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  > Divine Action Detected: [Rite of Restorative Wrinkling]

  > Alignment: Slightly Accidental But Emotionally Intentional

  > Result: Sentience Calibrated. Guilt Mitigated. Enlightenment Achieved.

  > New Title Assigned: “The Folden One”

  The flannel blinked. “I have seen... the pattern.”

  Derrin stepped back, panting.

  “Does that mean...?”

  “Oh yes,” Hemsworth said, nodding. “You’ve now got a prophetic textile and a cult forming around your ironing technique.”

  The curtain gave him a friendly swish.

  “Cleric,” he said solemnly, “you might just be stitching this place together after all.”