By the time the next night took the sky, Finn had already crossed four districts and half a dozen fences. The scroll hadn't spoken again, but he felt it burning just behind his ribs, waiting. It no longer needed to say much. He understood it now. It would give him pieces. Just enough to act. Not enough to undo.
Low Marrow faded behind him, swallowed by lantern smoke and memory. He moved through the gutters of Blackrise, where merchant guards didn't ask names and rooftops groaned with weight. From there he passed into Lantern Quarter, where red-glass windows whispered secrets and house gods glared from incense-choked shrines. He climbed walls. He walked sewer grates. He passed through locked doors that had no locks until after he left.
By the time he reached the steps of the Debtkeeper's sanctum, he was already bleeding.
Not his blood. But blood all the same.
A knife fight in the Crescent. Quick. Stupid. The man hadn't even seen Finn's blade. But the scroll had.
He stared at the steps. Black marble, wet with drizzle. A symbol carved in the center—an open eye, split by a coin.
The Debtkeeper lived inside.
No one knew her name. No one asked. If you owed, she found you. If you paid, she left you alone. If you walked in without a reason, you rarely walked out at all.
Finn knocked three times, sharp and even. Then once more, softer.
The door opened.
A man stood behind it. Pale eyes, no eyebrows, tattoos covering his throat. He looked at Finn and said nothing.
Finn showed the scroll. Not the whole thing. Just the edge. The thread.
The man stepped aside.
Inside, the sanctum was too warm. Too dry. The air smelled like velvet and bone.
Candles flickered along the walls, each one tucked into the mouth of a different statue. Gods Finn didn't recognize. Some of them had too many fingers. Some had none at all.
He followed the tattooed man down a corridor lined with broken ledgers. Pages torn out. Pages nailed back in. Some of them bled ink as they passed.
At the end of the hall was a room shaped like a cage, though the bars only reached the floor.
She sat in the center.
The Debtkeeper.
She wore a veil made of old tally strips, thin paper scrawled with debts and names and slashes. Her hands were bare. Her nails were black.
She did not look up.
Finn stepped forward.
"I need a name," he said.
Her head tilted. The paper rustled.
"Do you have payment?"
He held up the scroll.
The air changed.
One of the candles went out.
"That is not a coin," she said.
"It's worth more than one."
She reached out one hand. Her fingers didn't touch him, but the air between them thinned.
"I will ask it. Once."
He nodded.
Her fingers twitched. A breeze rolled through the room. The scroll in his coat shifted without being touched.
She whispered in a tongue older than letters.
The scroll pulsed.
Then it unrolled on its own.
The words wrote themselves.
You may ask, but it will cost.
Finn swallowed.
"I want to know who wrote this."
The scroll bled.
It did not drip. It leaked. Letters blurred and reformed. Names twisted. Lines crawled like worms.
Then it stopped.
A single line remained.
Not who. What.
Finn stared.
The Debtkeeper sat back.
"Your question is flawed," she said. "But the answer still holds."
"What wrote it, then?"
The scroll answered.
A future that wasn't allowed.
The room went quiet.
Not just still. Silent. Sound itself bent away.
Finn reached for the scroll, but it rolled shut before he touched it.
The Debtkeeper's voice returned, colder now.
"You should burn it."
"I'm not done with it."
"Then it is not done with you."
He left the sanctum through a different door than he entered. The tattooed man did not follow. No one did.
Outside, the city felt different again. As if it had changed while he was gone. The stars looked older. The sky closer. The ground too far beneath his boots.
Finn walked without thinking.
The scroll whispered again.
It said: She lied.
And Finn, for the first time, whispered back.
"So do I."
He turned toward the Temple of Names. Toward the place where fates were still read aloud.
If the scroll was a lie, then he wanted to know who believed it.
He spent the rest of the night circling the outer wards of the Temple District, never entering but memorizing every route, every guard change, every servant gate. He watched scribes carry rolls of prophecy into the side vaults and counted the number of bells it took before a reader appeared on the parapet to speak fate aloud for the crowd.
Morning came and still he watched. A beggar handed him bread without asking. A child offered to shine boots he didn't wear. He stayed silent, calculating. The scroll whispered occasionally. Just fragments now.
Do not speak her name. The mirror sees you. There is a hand in your pocket that is not yours.
He checked. Empty. Still, he moved to a new perch. Shadows lengthened. Lanterns were relit. A storm threatened, then passed.
At dusk, he made a decision.
He returned to the alley where he had first seen the masked figure.
And this time, he spoke aloud.
"You know I have questions."
Silence.
He waited.
The scroll burned.
Then a shape stepped forward. Not from shadow. From stillness.
"You were never supposed to ask," said the voice, soft as breath.
Finn didn't flinch. "Then why give me the scroll?"
"We didn't."
"Then who did?"
The mirror-mask flickered.
"You did. You will. You always did."
Finn exhaled slowly. "And if I stop reading?"
"Then it stops becoming you."
"And what am I without it?"
The figure tilted its head.
"You already know."
The scroll pulsed, and Finn felt the next word form before it appeared.
Run.
He did.