"My choice is this!" My voice cracked as I thrust the Ledger upward, its pages exploding with light. The entire Playhouse shook, chandeliers shattering and raining glass across the seats. The audience recoiled, shielding themselves from the falling shards, yet their eyes never left me. They were bound, waiting for the verdict.
The Ledger answered. Ink surged across the parchment in violent strokes:
Choice Confirmed: Ledger Balance.
Action: Absorb debt.
Cost: Lifespan diminished. Ledger-bearer integrity compromised.
The words seared into me. My ribs convulsed, marrow grinding like cogs stripped of oil. Heat burned through my chest until it felt as though molten iron had replaced my lungs. I screamed, though the sound was swallowed by the book's thunderous hum.
Rook froze mid-lunge. His claws halted, quills trembling. Threads of ink and light tore from him, stripping away scraps of his body. The tally marks carved into his skin unraveled like stitches pulled loose. His ruined grin cracked wider in horror.
"No!" he shrieked. "You can't! That debt is mine! Mine to wield, mine to spend!"
But the Ledger had already written him down. His pleas were not testimony—they were footnotes. And footnotes are never read.
The audience watched as streams of black and blue light poured from Rook's chest, sucked into the Ledger's pages. Each pulse that left him drained his flesh further, leaving him gaunter, hollower, until he resembled a parchment puppet too long left in rain. His cloak of confessions dissolved into ash. His mask shards melted to powder on the stage.
With every thread that entered me, my chest burned hotter. My heartbeat stuttered, skipping as though notes had been erased from a score. I felt years slide from me—childhood days unwritten, futures scrawled out before I could reach them. Each pulse of debt was a toll taken from my span.
Seraphine's voice cut through the roar. "Varrow! Stop! It's killing you!"
"I can't!" I gasped. "It won't stop until the balance is—"
The Ledger thundered:
Balance Achieved.
The pull ceased. I collapsed to my knees, clutching the book. Smoke curled from my mouth, black and bitter. My skin felt thinner, my bones weaker, as if time itself had been shaved away. Yet the stage was quiet. The backdrop sea had stilled, its eyes closing. The orchestra pit lay silent. And Rook—
Rook was nothing but a husk. He staggered, skeletal, flesh paper-thin. His grin split into tatters as his teeth clinked to the boards like fallen coins. He collapsed with a whisper, lighter than a sigh, scattering into a heap of parchment and dust.
The audience erupted—not in applause, but in sobs, in shouts, in gasps of relief. Freed masks lay broken, their fragments kicked beneath the seats. Breath filled the Playhouse again, ragged but their own.
Seraphine knelt beside me, her human hand gripping my shoulder, her iron arm shielding me from falling dust. "Varrow," she said, voice hard but edged with something almost tender. "You lived."
I coughed blood-black smoke. "For now."
The Ledger hummed faintly, satisfied. New words etched themselves across its last page:
Debtor Casimir Rook—Balance closed.
Witnesses recorded: 143.
Effect: Ledger-bearer lifespan reduced. Exact sum withheld.
I shut the book, my hands trembling. "It didn't tell me how much it took."
Seraphine's jaw tightened. "It never does."
We both looked to the audience. They stared back at me—not with worship, not with fear, but with the wide-eyed awe of survivors who had seen something they could not name. I realized then that stories would bloom from this night. The Ledger's pages would not be the only record. In taverns, in markets, in whispered prayers, I would be remembered as the man who held the Ledger, who burned his life to snuff out a false saint's actor.
Casimir Rook was gone. But the cost was carved into me deeper than marrow.
Seraphine helped me to my feet. "Come," she said. "The curtain has fallen. But the city won't rest. Another debtor waits, and your Ledger will never let you stop."
I staggered, my spine creaking, candle mark guttering faintly. "Then I suppose we follow the script."
Her grip tightened on my arm. "No, Varrow. This time, we write it ourselves."
The Playhouse groaned, beams snapping, dust falling. We stumbled into the fog as the dome caved behind us, burying the stage in rubble. The city's bells tolled faintly in the distance, and with every peal, I felt the Ledger's pulse echo in my chest.
Not my heart. Not anymore. A borrowed one. A stolen rhythm. A debt waiting to be collected.
—End of Chapter 17—