The Maskmaker's shelves leaned in, an audience of porcelain faces hungry for payment. My hand trembled toward the Ledger, though Seraphine's glare cut like a blade. "Don't," she warned again, the iron arm flexing as if ready to wrench the book from me. But the Ledger was already awake, its pages stirring like the flanks of a beast smelling blood.
Audit Initiated: Stairwell Without Steps.
Cost: Variable.
Purpose: Measure Stability.
The words scrawled across the page before I could stop them. The floor beneath me buckled. The shelves swayed, masks rattling with hollow laughter. Then the world bent like wet paper, and I was falling.
The stairwell had no beginning and no end. Just a spiral of steps descending into dark, each one fashioned not of stone but parchment. My boots bent the pages as I stepped, and ink bled up through the fibers where my weight pressed. The air was thick with the smell of varnish and wet clay, as if the Maskmaker's shop had drowned.
The Ledger's voice—if voice it was—echoed inside me:
Lie recorded: I wanted Aurelius dead.
Correction: You wanted him to see you.
The words stung. The stair beneath me tore with a sharp rip, and I dropped three steps in a blink, heart hammering. My breath came ragged, too loud in this place. The spiral extended endlessly below, down and down, as if it meant to drag me into the marrow of the earth.
Shadows thickened. Faces leaned from them—Father Aurelius, lips purple, eyes blind from drowning. Casimir Rook, his painted grin twitching wider, voice sliding into mock applause. Seraphine's iron arm, raised not in defense but in accusation.
"You miscounted," they whispered in chorus. "You always miscount."
"No," I gasped. My hands trembled on the rail of parchment. "One hundred and eight. I corrected it."
The stairwell shook as if with laughter. Blue threads burst from the steps, tangling around my arms, wrapping tight. Dockhands, mothers, children, all their faces choked and bulging, clawing toward me. Their threads wrapped around my chest like ropes.
The Ledger's script bloomed across my skin:
Question: Will you pay others' debts, or make them pay?
Choose.
The hands clawed deeper. Their fingers pressed into my ribs, into the candle-mark on my palm, into the marrow of me. I gagged, choking on the weight of their pleas.
"I'll pay!" The words tore from me before I thought them. "I'll pay!"
The blue threads snapped back into my chest. Pain seared like a forge hammer striking bone. My heart faltered—one beat stolen, then another, then another. I staggered on the step, vision blurring red at the edges. My knees buckled, and I fell forward.
When I hit, I was sprawled on the cobblestones outside the Maskmaker's shop. My lungs dragged in air too sharp, and blood flecked my lips. Seraphine's human hand hauled me upright with rough strength. Her iron arm hissed, joints flaring with heat.
"Varrow!" she barked. "What happened? What did you see?"
The world swam. The Maskmaker still sat behind its workbench, porcelain blank, as if none of it had occurred. The shelves of faces stared silently, patient as tombstones. But in my chest, I still felt the bruised weight of three heartbeats missing.
The Ledger slammed shut of its own accord. Ink scrawled across the cover in wet strokes:
Audit Passed. Stain +1.
Seraphine's eyes narrowed, her voice sharp as steel. "You've been audited."
I nodded, trembling. "It took…three of mine. Paid for theirs."
Her jaw tightened. "How many more heartbeats do you think you can spend before you're nothing but debt yourself?"
I had no answer. The candle mark on my palm pulsed faintly, flickering with each weakened beat of my chest.
The Maskmaker tilted its featureless head. "Now you know the stairwell," it whispered. "Every truth demands a step downward. Be careful how far you descend, clerk. Some debts lead only to the Beneath."
Seraphine's grip on my arm tightened, grounding me. "We're leaving. Now."
She half-dragged me back into the fog of the bridge above, her iron arm hissing as though echoing my ragged breaths. The city's noise rushed in—hawkers shouting, coins clinking, gulls shrieking. Ordinary sound. Blessed, ordinary sound.
But I knew the stairwell waited. The next truth would take me further down.
—End of Chapter 5—