Somewhere behind me, the Ledger Master laughs. The sound is weak—dying—but still triumphant. Still certain of his victory.
He thinks he’s won. Thinks he’s taken everything from me in one final, spiteful act.
He’s wrong.
∗ ∗ ∗
I stop struggling.
Gror’s grip falters—just for a moment, just a flicker of confusion in the contracts controlling him. He expected me to fight. Expected me to claw and kick and scream.
Instead, I go still. The way I go still when my gift activates. The way my mother must have gone still when she spoke truths that could reshape reality.
I look into my brother’s contract-filled eyes—and I reach for him.
Not with my hands. With my gift. With the power that’s been awakening since I touched his blood contract. The mark glows white, and I feel myself diving past the crawling script, past the binding clauses, past the chains the Ledger Master wrapped around my brother’s soul.
He’s there. Buried deep, suffocating under layers of obligation—but he’s there. I can feel him. The boy who used to have nightmares and crawl into my bed. The young man who made terrible choices because he wanted to take care of me for once. The brother I’ve protected since I was nine years old.
Gror.I push his name toward him, wrapped in truth.I see you. I know you’re in there.
His grip loosens. Just a fraction. Just enough for me to draw a thin breath.
I remember the day our mother died. Gror was four. He didn’t understand why she wasn’t coming back, why I kept crying, why the woman who’d been hiding us with our relatives stopped answering when he called for her. He held my hand through that first terrible night. Didn’t let go for hours. His small fingers wrapped around mine, anchoring me to something real when the grief threatened to pull me under.
I remember the years after. Teaching him to read because our relatives couldn’t be bothered. Making sure he ate before I did. Working at the bookshop from the age of twelve so I could buy him warm clothes for winter. Every sacrifice made willingly, gladly, because he was all I had left of our family.
His whole life, he was protected—and he’d signed away his soul trying to become the protector.
That’s my brother. That’s who he really is. Not this puppet. Not this weapon. Not this thing the Ledger Master made of him.
I press my marked palm against his chest—right over his heart—and I speak.
“You are Gror Vane.”
The words resonate with power I didn’t know I possessed. The contracts on Gror’s skin begin to smoke.
I feel the truth land. Feel it strike the foundations of the Ledger Master’s control and begin to crack them. The contracts scream—actual sound, high-pitched and terrible, the protest of lies being confronted with reality.
“You are my brother.”
His hands fall away from my throat. He staggers back, clutching his chest where my palm burned against the contracts. The script covering his face ripples—words rearranging, terms shifting, the Ledger Master’s control fighting against my truth.
“You made mistakes because you loved me.”
Light blazes from my palm. Not the yellowish glow of contract-magic—this is truth-fire, pure and white, the samepower that destroyed the Ledger Master’s founding contract. It pours into Gror, seeking the chains that bind him, burning away the obligations that aren’t rightfully his.
Gror screams.
