TWENTY-SEVEN
RATHOK
I’m drowning.
Not in water. Not in blood. In contracts.
Thousands of them press against my mind, each one screaming for payment. They crawl through my thoughts, burrowing into memories I didn’t know I had, laying claim to pieces of myself I forgot existed. My childhood in the Shattered Peaks. My first kill as an enforcer. The taste of Ivalys’s mouth in the deep catacombs.
They want all of it. Every moment. Every choice. Every heartbeat.
I can feel my body on the cold bone floor. Can feel the contracts crawling across my skin, hot and wrong, claiming inch after inch. But that body feels distant now—a thing I used to own, a vessel the Ledger Master is stealing piece by piece.
You served me for over two centuries.
The Ledger Master’s voice echoes through my skull. Not from outside—from within. The contract-heart buried in my chest pulses with his fading power, and with each pulse, he speaks.
You collected hundreds of debts. Dragged souls before my throne. Watched them scream as I consumed what they owed.
I try to speak. Try to tell him to shut up, to get out, to die faster. But my mouth won’t obey. The contracts have claimed my throat, my jaw, my lips. Every muscle fights against me.
You think you can escape what you are?
The debts tear at me. I feel myself fragmenting—splitting into versions of who I’ve been. Rathok the enforcer, cold and efficient, breaking down doors to collect what’s owed. Rathok, the weapon, blade-sharp and empty, killing because the Ledger Master commanded it. Rathok the monster, the thing humans feared, the shadow-cursed orc who proved every prejudice true.
Each version screams for dominance. Each one claims to be the real me.
The enforcer version shows me centuries of collections. Doors kicked in. Families torn apart. Souls dragged screaming to the Ledger Hall. He tells me that’s who I am—the instrument of debt, the hand that closes around throats, the shadow in every debtor’s nightmare.
The weapon version shows me kills beyond counting. Blood on my axes. Bodies at my feet. Two hundred years of violence refined to brutal perfection. He tells me that’s all I’ve ever been—a thing that destroys, without conscience or choice.
The monster version shows me what humans see when they look at my kind. Shadow-cursed. Twisted by the Veil-Breaking. The race that betrayed the High Witches and brought darkness down on everyone. He tells me I was born wrong, made wrong, destined for nothing but ruin.
And then there’s another. Smaller. Quieter. A version I’d forgotten existed until a few days ago.
Rathok, who fell in love with a truth-speaker.
This version doesn’t argue with the others. Doesn’t try to prove them wrong. He just holds up a memory—her face when she first looked at me—and asks a single question.
But what did she see?
I hold onto him. Onto the memory of her face when she first looked at me—not afraid, not disgusted, just calculating. The way she argued with me in the safe room, challenging me instead of cowering. The way her body pressed against mine in the catacombs, her nails raking my back, her voice crying my name into the ancient dark.
The scent of her hair fills my fragmenting mind. The warmth of her skin beneath my hands. The sound she made when I first pushed inside her—that gasp of surrender, of acceptance, of something neither of us had words for.
The contracts try to take that too. Try to rewrite those memories, twist them into something they can claim. But they can’t. Because those moments weren’t transactions. They weren’t debts owed or bargains struck. They were something the Ledger Master never understood.
Freely given. No terms. No conditions. Just her hand in mine. Just her lips against my scars. Just her voice saying I wasn’t a monster—and meaning it.
She can’t save you.The Ledger Master’s voice grows weaker. Desperate.No truth-speaker has ever broken this many claims.
Maybe not.
The contracts surge. Fresh agony rips through me as they claim another piece—a memory of my mother before the Veil-Breaking twisted her into something else. Gone now. Consumed. Fed to the dying appetite of the Ledger Master’s final gambit.
I let it go. Let them have the pain. The guilt. The centuries of compromise that made me what I am.
But I don’t let them have her.
I wrap my remaining strength around the memories of Ivalys. Build a wall from the way she kissed me in the contract-pit, fierce and desperate. From the way she spoke my name like it belonged to her. From the way she looked at me—the only person in two centuries who saw something worth saving.
The contracts batter against that wall. Claw at its edges. Try to find a weakness they can exploit.
They don’t find one.
Because loving her isn’t a debt. It’s not something I owe or am owed. It’s just true. The truest thing I’ve ever known.
And the Ledger Master has never understood truth.
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