The Last Ticket

Zib is a junior demon on the underworld's processing desk — the vast machine that files every soul that dies. One shift he pulls a ticket that shouldn't exist: a living woman, Mara, filed into the dead queue with no death record, and she can see him. She hasn't died. Someone filed her early. Hiding her ticket instead of processing it is the first selfish thing Zib has ever done — and the first time anyone has treated him like he matters. But every hour he keeps her un-filed, he falls harder, the system hunts for her handler, and the truth unspools: souls are being filed before their time, records erased, the living world quietly thinned. A demon who never mattered and a woman who was erased, stealing time the universe says they don't get. A slow-burn romance wrapped in a conspiracy, where loving her is the crime.