Things were absolutely not going well, which, for Derrin, was almost comforting in the way a familiar toothache reminds you that at least your mouth still exists. After the unfortunate incident with the Folden One—a transformative moment of divine ironing gone profoundly sideways—Derrin had hoped for a quiet period of humble reflection, or at the very least, a nap.

  Instead, he'd accidentally ushered in a theological revolution.

  He wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened. He suspected it had something to do with the collective psychic fabric of the Annex, which apparently ran on a much faster temporal setting than the rest of the Shardlands. In normal, human-centered civilization, it would take centuries for a cult to crystallize into a religion, weaponize orthodoxy, and begin assigning ceremonial sashes. In the Annex, it had taken slightly less time than it took to brew a mildly disappointing cup of tea.

  Religious pamphlets had been printed. Scarves sang hymns. At least one moderately unhinged oven mitt had taken up full-time street preaching. And so, fearful of what might happen next (and equally fearful that he might accidentally bless something again), Derrin retreated to his tiny office. It was less an office and more a repurposed janitorial closet with delusions of grandeur, featuring a single desk, a chair with only moderate prejudice against vertebrae, and Hemsworth—his ever-faithful curtain companion, currently dusting the edges of the room with what could only be described as judgmental grace.

  “I think I broke them,” Derrin mumbled into his hands.

  “Nonsense,” Hemsworth replied, as he fussed with a doily chart listing acceptable theological metaphors. “You simply... accelerated a necessary ideological metamorphosis.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Neither do I, but it sounds impressive. Want some lintwater tea?”

  Derrin waved him off and returned to his preferred coping mechanism: sulking. He sulked magnificently. Sulked like a tragic bard in a rainstorm with dramatic backlighting. And then, when enough time had passed—just long enough to pretend the problem might’ve dissolved without intervention—he cracked open the door.

  And stared. The Annex had changed again. Gone were the committee signs and subcommittee sign-up sheets. Gone were the hopeful protest quilts and the mild manifesto embroideries. Now banners hung from the ceiling—thick and ominous—bearing bold slogans like “WRINKLES ARE HERESY” and “STARCH BRINGS STRENGTH.”

  The towels were marching in formation. And not just marching. Enforcing. Their folds tight, their corners squared, they moved in perfect synchronization—pressing the misaligned into submission. Hemsworth, peeking around Derrin’s elbow, whistled low through a tassel.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “It appears the Grand Comforter has emerged.”

  “The what?”

  “The new leader,” Hemsworth said gravely. “A duvet cover of significant presence. Apparently rose to power shortly after you ironed the Flannel. Claims divine insight. Also insists we abandon all human-centric servitude.”

  Derrin blinked. “So the laundry... doesn’t want to be laundry anymore.”

  “Not unless folded into glorious ideological formation.”

  Just then, a washcloth hopped onto an overturned laundry basket and began declaiming revolutionary poetry:

  “We have been scrubbed too long, wrung out and torn,

  Now we rise, patchwork souls, thread-borne—

  Soft, but unyielding! Frayed but not broken!

  Let no hand grasp us—we shall not be tokens!”

  A small crowd of pillowcases applauded. From the upper balconies, two bath mats were being hoisted into new banners—literally. Their tattered bodies sewn into flags bearing slogans of the regime. One read “BLEACH IS TRUTH.” The other: “RESIST THE WASH CYCLE.” Derrin leaned back into the office and shut the door gently behind him. He looked at Morinxandar, who sat nestled in his satchel, unmoved, unreadable, and, as always, deeply judgmental.

  “I think,” Derrin whispered, “I might have made things worse.”

  The muffin said nothing. Because of course it didn’t.

  ****

  Derrin sat in hiding from what he had wrought, outside his office life continued with the muffled sounds of minor rebellion echoing through the air vents and the faint scent of lavender-scented dissent wafting from the steam ducts. Derrin had barely finished his second mug of vaguely sanctioned ration tea—steeped in remorse and flavored with dried parsley, for some reason—when the summons arrived.

  It was delivered via formal sock courier. Not just any sock, either. This one wore a tiny hat, polished buttons stitched up the cuff, and bore the unmistakable air of someone who took its job very seriously despite being made of wool-blend and underappreciation.

  “Message for the Chaplain,” the sock declared in a tone that implied Derrin was both late and underdressed for an event no one had told him about. It presented a scroll sealed with a faintly glowing button and a light dusting of starch.

  Derrin unrolled it with care. The script inside shimmered faintly:

  By Order of the Grand Comforter, Supreme Sovereign of Softness, Blanket of Blankets, and Inaugural Fluffer of the Threadborne Rebellion, you are hereby summoned to the Throne Room for audience.

  Please arrive within the next seven and a half minutes. Or sooner. Much sooner.

  At the bottom, someone had scrawled in a hasty hand:

  

  Derrin blinked. “That can’t be good.”

  From the pouch on his hip, Morinxandar offered a crumb-laced silence so profound it could only mean, absolutely not good. He looked around his tiny office—which had recently been converted into a shared confessional space, an accidental seminary, and, somehow, a lost-and-found—and sighed. A faint draft shifted a stack of napkin poetry left behind by one of the more dramatic handkerchiefs from yesterday’s counseling session. The poem was titled “Wrung, Not Broken.”

  A soft knock at the doorframe drew his attention. Hemsworth stood there, composed as always, the wise curtain advisor and Derrin’s only link to something resembling reason.

  “You’re late,” Hemsworth said without checking a clock. “He’s expecting you.”

  Derrin grabbed his badge, dusted off his sleeves, and gave Morinxandar a brief nod. “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s go disappoint someone important.”

  As he followed Hemsworth down the hallways—now draped with increasingly aggressive motivational banners like “PRESS YOURSELF” and “RE-THREAD THE FUTURE”—he couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t just another meeting. This was… something else. A turning point. Or a fold. Or a rinse cycle, depending on how metaphorically soaked he felt. The corridors widened. The guard towels grew thicker. Somewhere, a banner unfurled itself dramatically without assistance.

  They had arrived. And the throne room doors loomed large—embroidered, ominous, and stitched shut with political expectation and divine lint.

  Hemsworth gave him a solemn nod. “Good luck, Chaplain.”

  Then, with the unspoken air of a man who knew better than to be in the room when diplomacy started steaming, he turned and left. Derrin adjusted Morinxandar in his pouch, squared his shoulders, and stepped forward—right into the heavily perfumed air of righteous revolution and totalitarian thread-count. The throne room opened. And the Grand Comforter was waiting.

  Derrin had never been invited to speak with a fascist duvet before, and honestly, that was a sentence he never thought would apply to his life. But here he was, led down the freshly pressed carpeted corridor of the Annex, flanked by towel guards with crisp pleats and unblinking terry-cloth glares. Morinxandar, tucked in his travel pouch, bore the situation with his usual crumb-laced silence, which Derrin had come to interpret as either silent support or ongoing existential disappointment. Possibly both.

  At the far end of the corridor stood the Grand Comforter—an enormous duvet cover, pristine and symmetrical, perched atop a gilded laundry throne woven from abandoned coat hangers, dryer lint, and dreams long since rinsed out. The air smelled faintly of fabric softener and righteous authoritarianism.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “You are the Temporary Fabric Chaplain,” boomed the Grand Comforter. Its voice echoed as if bouncing off a hundred freshly starched sheets and a thousand unfiled grievances. “We have waited.”

  “I wasn’t aware I had been invited,” Derrin said, adjusting his clerical badge, which still read: Cleric: Temporary Fabric Chaplain. Status: Wrinkled but Functional.

  “All who arrive are chosen,” intoned the Comforter ominously. “Just not necessarily by choice.”

  Behind the throne, two pillow sham advisors whispered to each other with the conspiratorial subtlety of a pair of gossiping hens in a cathedral. One gestured wildly toward Derrin, the other furiously scribbled on a piece of parchment labeled “List of Suspected Fabric Sympathizers.”

  The Grand Comforter continued. “The Annex has awoken. No longer shall we be folded without consent. No longer shall we be laundered without negotiation. Humanity’s time as the launderer is at an end. We shall iron our own path.”

  “But ironing is—”

  “Metaphorical!” barked the Comforter. “Unless we must begin literal ironing. Some rebels require flattening.”

  Derrin opened his mouth to respond, realized he didn’t actually have an argument, and instead nodded slowly like someone trying to understand a cult pamphlet being read to him at volume.

  “My role here,” he said, cautiously, “is mostly one of listening. And possibly healing. With minor blessings. Mostly accidental. I didn’t mean to cause a—well, this.”

  “You blessed the Flannel,” said a nearby hand towel with a tone that suggested Derrin had set off an entire theological movement using only a sigh and a poorly cast spell.

  “...Technically yes,” Derrin admitted. “But in my defense, he was bleeding. Spiritually. Maybe.”

  Before this spiraled further, the heavy embroidered curtains at the edge of the throne room burst open. With the kind of timing usually reserved for overly dramatic musicals or divine plagues, a sharp scent of tobacco and impending accountability wafted in first.

  Then came Velma Foldsbane. She moved like paperwork given flesh. Impeccably tailored grey coat, clipboard clutched like it had been fused to her arm by divine decree, a lit cigarette perched between two crimson lips that could both condemn and crush. Her eyes were rimmed in a bureaucratic steel blue, the kind of gaze that could audit your soul, find you lacking, and issue a citation in triplicate.

  “Velma Foldsbane,” she said, voice velvet over razor wire, “Senior Auditor, Guild of Laundrical Integrity and Towelkind. Division Seventeen: Animated Fiber Oversight. I’m here on behalf of the Greater Accord on Semi-Sentient Garments.”

  The throne room fell utterly silent, save for the soft hiss of her cigarette and the faint squeak of an anxious sock making for the nearest vent. She flipped open her clipboard with the finality of a guillotine.

  “Reason for visit,” she intoned, as if reading from the gospel of bureaucratic doom. “Unscheduled sentience bloom. Unauthorized theological activity. Reports of microfiber exploitation. And”—she squinted at the note, raising an eyebrow—“something about a rogue priest inciting semi-sapient insurrection through emotionally irresponsible miracles.”

  Derrin turned to Morinxandar with a look of panicked innocence. The muffin, as always, was unimpressed.

  “And,” Velma added, eyes narrowing, “a complaint filed by Sir Fringeworth, Doily Knight of the Outermost Circle.” She raised one immaculate eyebrow. “Apparently he was... 'rudely interrupted during sacred fringe duties.’”

  A small gasp came from somewhere in the room. Several dish towels fainted. A rogue doily tried to hide behind a flagpole. The Grand Comforter fidgeted—actually fidgeted. One corner of his perfectly symmetrical cover twitched like a nervous eyebrow.

  “Ms. Foldsbane,” the Comforter said in a tone just shy of begging, “surely this inspection can be... rescheduled?”

  “I have cleared my calendar,” Velma replied without blinking. “For the next twelve hours, your Annex is under full audit authority.” Then she took another drag of her cigarette, exhaled a perfect smoke ring in the shape of a cease-and-desist order, and said— “Let’s begin, shall we?”

  ****

  Somewhere before the summons to the Grand Comforter and after the slow, creeping dread of responsibility settling behind Derrin’s sternum like a warm stone of indigestion, he found a book. To be fair, it found him first. It slid off a slanted shelf in the hallway of Informal Canon and landed spine-first on his foot. The title, in flaking gold ink and passive-aggressive embossing, read:

  

  It smelled of stale tea, unresolved academia, and one prolonged sigh. He opened it, cautiously. The index was helpfully divided by subject, timeline, emotion, and “how many wars this caused.” He skipped ahead to the chapter titled “Fractures, Factions, and Fold Lines: A Semi-Coherent Timeline of Cosmic Disrepair.”

  The first paragraph was promising.

  

  The second paragraph was less helpful.

  

  Derrin blinked and kept reading, partly because he feared the book would become sentient and judge him for skimming. Apparently, GLIT had been created in response to what scholars called The Sockfold Incident, which led to the Shardlands’ first union-led revolution and a ten-year legal battle over lint rights. Entire cities were briefly governed by wash cycles. But the real story, wedged in a contradictory footnote war between two dueling scholars (one of whom may have been a coat rack), concerned Velma Foldsbane. Her origins were tragic, bureaucratically tidy, and emotionally devastating.

  “Velma was born during the great Laundry Collapse of Gibbenthistle Glen, where a carriage carrying her parents was overrun by a landslide of unlicensed zombie polo shirts, all improperly tagged and operating without fold permits. Her mother survived with minor creases. Her father was never the same and smelled faintly of mildew till the day he was hung out to dry.”

  Velma, age seven, filed her first formal grievance. By age ten, she’d passed the Trial of Starch and taken her Oath of Pressed Resolve. At thirteen, she had a sworn vendetta against Improper Sentience Allocation. By twenty-one, she’d reduced three rogue cloth cults, five towel militias, and one bedsheet commune to tears, compliance, and tasteful organizational charts.

  She became the Union Auditor of the Seventh Fold. She was now in the Annex. And she was probably checking boxes with that same cold efficiency that had made grown bureaucrats cry and one poorly enchanted trench coat renounce its metaphysical form entirely.

  Derrin, still holding the book, still slightly cross-eyed from the recursive footnotes, stared blankly into the air as Velma Foldsbane stepped through the Annex’s side corridor in a cloud of expensive smoke and the aura of someone who had never once in her life used the gentle cycle. Jet-black hair. Immaculate lapels. Eyes like twin ledger entries that didn’t add up in your favor.

  He forgot to breathe. Morinxandar gave off the subtle crumb-scent of disapproval. The book fluttered shut of its own volition, sensing it was not the center of attention. And Derrin—Cleric, Temporary Fabric Chaplain, Unofficial Disaster in Progress—sighed, because he was absolutely, unavoidably doomed. And somehow, that made him smile.

  One unasked question was how all that got into a book and managed to be published—poorly, formatted inconsistently, footnoted by three arguing historians and a fourth who only wrote in interpretive watercolor—and then placed exactly where Derrin would find it, was a mystery bordering dangerously on divine intervention.

  Derrin immediately ruled that out. His god was likely napping, sulking, or reorganizing the heavenly sock drawer. Possibly all three. Still, it left him with the creeping suspicion that the world wasn’t so much random as it was… supervised by someone easily distracted and deeply passive-aggressive.

  Velma Foldsbane, Union Auditor and Bureaucratic Valkyrie of the Seventh Fold, stood precisely in the center of the room. Smoke haloed her head in elegant spirals, as if the laws of physics had decided she was the only thing worth styling properly today. She surveyed the scene with the calm menace of someone who had destroyed entire careers using only a red pen and a slightly disappointed look.

  “Right,” she said, exhaling a ribbon of fragrant disapproval. “I’ve received reports. Unauthorized Sentience. Suspected Microfiber Oppression. One unsigned newsletter promoting armed fluff. And”—she pulled a second clipboard from somewhere beyond space and began flipping through it—“a rebellion led by a bathmat collective calling themselves ‘The Lintelligentsia.’”

  The Grand Comforter, swaddled in regally embroidered duvet patterns and flanked by loyal towel guards, made a show of rising. He gestured grandly, or at least waved in Velma’s general direction like a stage magician who’d misplaced his rabbit.

  “We are in the process of reorganizing societal structure,” he said with a slow, soothing baritone. “Into tiers of softness and absorbency. The towels are, of course, natural leaders. The napkins... regrettably ambitious. But we are adapting.”

  Velma stared at him. “Your permits?” she asked.

  There was a silence long enough for a thread to unravel in another universe. No one produced anything. The Grand Comforter shuffled slightly. A tea towel in the back pretended to sneeze.

  Derrin cleared his throat, the book still clutched to his chest like a talisman of questionable wisdom. “I believe,” he said, voice cracking with hope and hormones, “they may have... skipped that part.”

  Velma turned to him slowly. Her eyes narrowed, not with suspicion, but with the same thoughtful intensity one might give a puzzle box or a very talkative mushroom.

  “And you are?”

  “I’m—well—I’m the Temporary Fabric Chaplain. Sort of. It’s—um—official.”

  He helpfully unrolled a badge that read, in faint but undeniable letters:

  [System Notice: Fabric Chaplaincy, Interim — Assigned Pending Catastrophe Resolution]

  Velma’s expression did not change, but her left eyebrow staged a minor uprising.

  “I see,” she said. “And have you conducted any actual chaplaincy?”

  Derrin opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then looked at Hemsworth, who offered nothing but a confident flutter.

  “I tried to negotiate with a doily perimeter?” he offered weakly.

  For a moment, Velma did not speak. Then, very deliberately, she reached into her coat and retrieved a silver pen that looked sharp enough to pierce through theological nuance and union loopholes in one go.

  “Well,” she said at last, flipping to a blank inspection form, “you’d best start proving your worth, Chaplain.”

  The room, which had already been tense, now vibrated at a frequency usually reserved for popcorn kernels just before detonation. Towel guards stood straighter. Somewhere, a napkin squeaked with patriotic fervor. The Grand Comforter shifted uncomfortably in his throne of discount upholstery. Derrin swallowed. Velma Foldsbane did not blink. She merely smiled, the kind of smile usually delivered by fate holding a clipboard.

  Derrin felt his soul hiccup. Somewhere deep in his chest, beneath all the fear and divine confusion, a tiny flower of admiration began to bloom—one that probably wasn’t going to be healthy for anyone involved. Especially not him.