The alley behind the Ledger Spire was empty when Cael emerged, though he could not shake the sense that he was being observed from every crumbling window. He paused in the brittle dawn, heart hammering as he checked the sky—no sign of watchers, no hidden pursuers.
And yet the weight of the tower clung to him. He felt it in the dull ache behind his eyes, in the hollow where a piece of himself had been quietly stolen.
He did not linger.
Each step away from the Spire brought a measure of relief, like the slackening of a garrote around his mind. He forced himself into motion, down narrow passages he'd learned to navigate in darkness if he had to.
He kept to the back ways until he reached the old canal. Only then did he stop to steady his breath. The water was a sheet of dull lead, scummed with grease and flecks of ice. His reflection stared back—pale, eyes hollow, as if he'd aged ten years in a single night.
He touched the edge of the satchel where the oilskin pouch rested. The vial of grease, the slender pick—tools he would never have used had he not been desperate enough to bargain with Brennor.
And now he carried something far more dangerous than any stolen ledger: knowledge. Proof that debts could pass unchanged through generations, binding the living to the promises of the dead.
He felt no satisfaction. Only a weariness so complete it hollowed him to the marrow.
You are nothing beyond these walls.
The Spire's whisper had been too precise to dismiss as invention. It knew him—perhaps better than he knew himself.
He forced the thought aside.
He still had his name. His memories—most of them. And his craft.
He'd lived through worse.
He turned and followed the canal's curve to a side door in a soot-blackened brick wall. A single tap in a rhythm Brennor had taught him—long, short, short—and the latch clicked from within.
A narrow passage opened, dark as a grave.
Cael stepped inside.
The cellar beneath the old glassworks was warmer than the alleys, though it smelled of oil and charred bone. He shut the door behind him, fastening the crossbar with hands that trembled in the dim.
A single lantern glowed on a crate near the far wall. Beside it sat Brennor Varlo, draped in a voluminous black coat that swallowed the bulk of his body. His face was unreadable in the flickering light, but Cael recognized the shape of his waiting stillness.
Brennor had always resembled a magistrate passing sentence.
"You're late," Brennor said, his voice soft.
Cael ignored the accusation. He crossed to the crate and rested both hands on the wood to steady himself. "I have it."
Brennor studied him for a moment that stretched too long. "What did you see?"
Cael looked past him, to the blank wall. "Enough."
"Describe it."
"It's real," Cael said. "The Ennos Vey contract. Your—" He stopped himself before he named Brennor's ancestor. "The signature matches the stories."
Brennor's gloved hands tightened around each other in his lap. "And you believe the Spire will allow you to carry that knowledge out unaltered?"
Cael met his gaze. "I remember it."
"For now."
The words stung more than he cared to admit.
"You think it'll strip it from me?" Cael asked, forcing his voice steady.
"I think," Brennor said, "that knowledge of debts that old is a contagion. One that cannot spread beyond the walls without cost."
He reached into his coat and withdrew a folded parchment, passing it across the crate. "Your payment."
Cael hesitated. He knew better than to think it was as simple as that. "And if I refuse to take it?"
Brennor's smile was a thin, sharp line. "Then you will find the Spire is not the only thing that remembers your debts."
Silence stretched between them.
At last, Cael took the parchment and tucked it inside his cloak.
"You've bought yourself my discretion," he said, voice low. "For now."
Brennor inclined his head. "That is all I require."
Cael turned to leave, but Brennor spoke again.
"You should consider what else you might retrieve from the Spire. If you survived once, you might again."
Cael did not look back. "Or I might lose the rest of myself."
He climbed the cellar steps and stepped into the dawn.
He did not go home.
Instead, he walked the city until his legs ached and his mind settled. The ledger's words crawled at the edges of his thoughts—proof of debts older than kings—but he refused to let them consume him.
By the time he reached the place he called his own, a rented room above a half-ruined mill, the sun had clawed above the rooftops.
He locked the door behind him and slid the bolt home. Only then did he allow himself to sag against the wall.
A memory flickered, bright and sudden: the look on his mother's face the day he'd stolen his first purse. Not fury, only sorrow.
He did not know what the Spire had taken from him. But he felt certain that someday, he would.
He collapsed onto the narrow cot and closed his eyes.
Sleep took him in ragged fits, dreams thick with the taste of old parchment and the whisper of a voice that was not a voice.
You are nothing beyond these walls.
He woke in darkness, no clearer on what he had lost.
But one truth remained.
He would never set foot in the Spire again.
Unless he had no choice.