TWENTY-EIGHT
IVALYS
The doors of the throne room explode inward.
Enforcers pour through the gap—thirty of them, maybe more, their weapons drawn and their contract-marks blazing. Orcs and humans, both stationed outside the room during the confrontation. The contract-heart’s pulse must have reached them too—refreshing bindings the founding contract’s destruction had begun to fray.
They’re not here for the Ledger Master. They’re here for me.
“Ivalys!” Gror’s hand closes around my arm, yanking me behind a pillar as the first axe sings past my head. “Move!”
I move. Not away from Rathok—toward a better position. The pillar gives me cover. Gives me a moment to think.
Rathok lies on the bone floor twenty feet away. Contracts crawl across his skin, claiming more of him with every breath. His eyes are closed. His chest barely rises.
But he’s still breathing. Still fighting. I can feel it through the sigil on my palm—a faint pulse of resistance, stubborn and fierce.
Hold on.I push the thought toward him, not sure if it reaches.I’m coming.
The enforcers spread through the room. They move with military precision—flanking, covering each other’s advances, cutting off escape routes. Decades of training under the Ledger Master’s command.
Rathok would know how to fight them. He trained half of them himself.
The thought twists in my chest. He trained them to collect debts. To drag souls before the Ledger Master’s throne. To do exactly what they’re doing now.
And they’re doing it because they have no choice. Just like he had no choice, once.
“We need to get to him.” Gror’s voice is strained. His hands shake—aftereffects of his own transformation, his body still recovering from the contracts I burned away. But he’s standing. Fighting. “Tell me how.”
I scan the room. The enforcers have formed a loose perimeter, closing in from multiple angles. The direct path to Rathok is blocked by at least six of them—armed, armored, watching for any movement.
But they’re not watching the Ledger Master.
Kelvor Thaum slumps against the floor, ink pooling beneath him, his form continuing to unravel. He’s focused on me—on his final triumph, on watching me fail. He’s forgotten his own enforcers exist.
Which means they’re operating on their last orders. Kill the truth-speaker. Protect the Ledger Master.
Orders that don’t account for a freed debtor with nothing left to lose.
“Gror.” I grip my brother’s arm. Meet his eyes. “I need you to create a distraction.”
“Done.” No hesitation. No argument. He reaches down and picks up a blade from a dead enforcer’s hand—one who fell inthe earlier chaos, before the main force arrived. The steel looks wrong in his grip. My brother has never been a fighter.
But he’s not fighting to win. He’s fighting to give me time.
“Be careful.” The words feel inadequate. I just saved him from the Ledger Master’s control. I can’t lose him again.
“I will.” He flashes me a grin—too bright, too forced, but recognizably Gror. “Go save your orc, Ivy. I’ll keep them busy.”
He moves before I can respond. Darts from behind the pillar, blade flashing, heading not toward Rathok but toward the Ledger Master himself.
The enforcers react instantly. Half of them break from the perimeter, converging on Gror. Protecting their dying master.
I run.
∗ ∗ ∗
The first enforcer catches me three steps from the pillar.
