The rebellion in the audience rolled like thunder. Freed faces wept and screamed, while porcelain shards littered the aisles like bones pulled from shallow graves. The applause was dead, replaced by the ragged sound of real lungs, of fragile but honest breath. For the first time, the Playhouse sounded like life rather than performance.
Casimir Rook trembled under his gilded grin. His arms spread wide, as though he still commanded the stage, but the confidence in his movement was fraying at the seams. The gold leaf peeled from his mask, fluttering in flakes, revealing the bare porcelain beneath. A crack split the painted grin down the middle, twitching wider each time he spoke.
"You think you've stolen my audience?" he spat, voice pitched too high. "No, no, no. They are my audience. Their breath is mine. Their gaze is mine. You cannot unwrite what has been staged."
But the Ledger seared against my ribs, its judgment written in ink hotter than iron:
Phenomenon: Mask Integrity Failing.
Debtor destabilized.
Directive: Strike now. Curtain-call approaching.
Seraphine moved, iron arm raised high, runes blazing like molten rivets. "Varrow, this is it. He's cracking. Push!"
I staggered forward, candle mark burning in my palm. The Spine of Iron hummed with marrow-deep strength, though every beat cost me. I raised the Ledger, its pages snapping open like wings.
"Rook!" I shouted. "Your theater is ash. Your masks are dust. And your debt is due."
The audience murmured, voices trembling, but they leaned toward me instead of him. Witnesses. Not puppets. Not clappers. Witnesses of a reckoning.
Rook shrieked, his mask splintering further, shards raining onto the stage. Beneath, I glimpsed flesh—sallow, bruised, marked with inked lines like tally marks etched into skin. His true face was not noble, not divine. It was a debtor's face, worn thin by lies.
"Do not look at me!" he screamed. "Look at him! He is fraud, he is envy, he is marrow hollowed and truth stripped!"
The Ledger hissed, countering his cry:
Counter-script: Revelation.
Cost: One marrow beat, one final truth.
I clenched my teeth. My bones ached like glass about to shatter. But the crowd needed more—they needed to see, to believe, to sever themselves fully from him.
"I am broken!" I cried. "Yes! I am envy, I am lies, I am a candle burning out and a spine not my own. But I admit it. I own it. And that makes me freer than you, Rook. Because you hide behind masks. You choke on your own lies!"
The candle flared blinding white. Heat seared my palm, smoke curling upward like incense. Light lashed across the stage, striking Rook's mask.
The porcelain shattered.
Beneath, Casimir Rook's face was revealed at last—gaunt, ink-stained, his mouth torn wider than natural by scars of constant smiling. His eyes were pits of desperate hunger, veins crawling outward like painted cracks. He staggered, clutching his bleeding face.
The audience gasped. Some screamed. But their fear was not worship—it was revulsion.
Rook howled, voice raw, stripped of velvet. "Do not turn from me! You owe me your gaze!"
Seraphine raised her iron arm, pistons screaming, and slammed her fist into the stage. Boards split like ribs under her blow. "It's over, Rook."
The Ledger inked its verdict:
Debtor Exposed. Judgment Possible.
Curtain-call Approaching.
I staggered forward, candle guttering low, iron spine trembling in my marrow. My chest burned with emptiness, my truths worn thin, my identity frayed like parchment in rain. But I stood, because the play demanded an ending.
Casimir Rook clawed at his ruined mask, shards falling away as his grin stretched too wide to close. His eyes burned with madness, yet I saw the fear beneath. Not of me. Not of Seraphine. Of the Ledger.
He whispered, hoarse, to the book clutched in my hand: "Don't write me out."
But the audience was watching. And the Ledger had already dipped its quill.
—End of Chapter 15—