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---
📘
Morning came late to Hallowmere.
Gray light seeped through the warped glass of the loft, finding every flaw in the cracked plaster and the warped floorboards. I hadn't slept. Not truly. My body had rested, but my thoughts had been a slow, circling current—returning again and again to the memory of the coins.
How the sigils had sputtered out under my touch.
How the metal had seemed to grow heavier in my palm, as if reluctant to be held.
I tried to tell myself it was nothing. A trick of fatigue, or the poor quality of underworld currency. But the truth wouldn't be soothed by excuses.
Whatever curse clung to me, it wasn't new. It had always been there, waiting. The tribunal had seen only an impudent trader, but perhaps they'd sensed something deeper—some fracture in the order they served.
I rose at last and dressed in silence. The small mirror near the door showed a face I barely recognized: unshaven, hollow-eyed, the gaze too steady for comfort.
I took my ledger from the table, weighing its familiar heft in my hand. It was the only piece of my life that still felt honest. Every entry, every crude calculation, was a testament to the simple truth that I had made something. Even if the world despised how I'd done it.
I slipped the ledger into my satchel. When my fingers brushed the pouch of coins, I felt a faint tremor in the air—like the moment before a kettle begins to boil.
I snatched my hand away and clenched it into a fist.
Enough.
If the coins were tainted by my touch, so be it. I had survived worse than rumors and suspicion.
---
The alley outside was empty save for a pair of cats prowling the frost-laced gutters. The cold was a relief—something clean that had no opinion of me.
I kept my head down as I wound through the lanes toward the counting house. Twice I passed men in green sashes, their boots crunching over the crusted snow. Neither spared me more than a glance, but I felt the way their gazes skimmed my shoulders, searching for any sign of the branded seal I no longer wore.
When I reached the chipped blue tile that marked the counting house door, I paused to steady my breath. My heartbeat was steady, but the skin along my spine tingled as if expecting the door to swing open on some final judgment.
I knocked once.
The latch lifted a moment later. A tall man with a braided beard and a nose bent slightly to the left studied me from the threshold. His expression was neither welcoming nor hostile—merely the careful neutrality of a man accustomed to weighing risks in every stranger.
"Arcanon," he said.
"Yes."
"You're early."
"I couldn't sleep."
He stepped aside without comment, and I crossed into the narrow hall.
The warmth struck me like a sudden embrace, almost shocking after the cold. A brazier burned low beside the desk, filling the air with the scent of scorched resin and old parchment.
I waited while he closed the door behind me.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to a three-legged stool opposite the ledger.
I set my satchel on my knees and lowered myself carefully onto the uneven seat.
"You completed the delivery?"
"Yes."
"Payment?"
I hesitated only a heartbeat. Then I drew the pouch from the satchel and laid it on the desk.
He didn't reach for it immediately. Instead, he studied my face with that same patient scrutiny, as though searching for the precise moment I might break.
"I hear you did not linger," he said at last.
"There was no need."
"No." He reached for the pouch, weighing it in one hand before untying the drawstring. The coins spilled across the ledger, silver glinting under the lamp.
He plucked one between thumb and forefinger, tilting it to catch the light.
"Did you notice anything unusual about these?"
I swallowed. The memory of the failing glyph rose, unwelcome.
"They looked standard."
His mouth curved in the barest echo of amusement.
"Most would not have answered so honestly."
He lifted a small brass rod from the desk—a slender thing tipped with a shard of smoky quartz. I watched as he brushed it along the rim of the coin.
Nothing.
No glow. No pulse of warding sigils.
The faint amusement in his gaze deepened.
"Curious," he murmured. "Newly minted, no less."
He set the coin aside and tried a second. The same emptiness greeted him.
A shiver crawled along my scalp.
"You know what that means?" he asked without looking up.
"That the mint failed," I lied.
He chuckled softly.
"Perhaps."
He swept the coins into a small cloth pouch of his own, tying it shut with precise motions.
"If you wish to remain in our employ," he said, "you'll need to be honest when the time comes."
I didn't answer. There was nothing to say.
---
When he looked up, the humor had gone from his eyes.
"There are those in this city who would pay dearly to understand what you carry."
I forced myself to hold his gaze.
"I don't know what it is."
"No." He folded his hands atop the ledger. "But you will."
He paused, as if weighing something unspoken.
"You'll take no commission today," he said. "We prefer our associates to understand their own risks before taking more."
I inclined my head. My throat felt tight.
"You'll return in two days," he continued. "And you will tell me if anything else…fails."
"I understand."
"Good."
He looked past me, toward the door.
"You may go."
---
Outside, the sky was beginning to clear. Sunlight caught the frost on the eaves, turning each droplet into a needle of glass.
I started down the alley, each step measured, deliberate.
I didn't look back.
By the time I reached the main thoroughfare, the frost had begun to thaw. Water dripped from the eaves in uneven rivulets, pattering onto the packed snow. Every gutter ran gray with melt.
I paused at the mouth of an alley, drawing my coat tighter around my ribs. A cold wind pushed between the buildings, carrying the smell of tallow smoke and wet stone.
The counting house clerk's words lingered in my mind.
There are those who would pay dearly to understand what you carry.
It should have frightened me. Perhaps in another life, it would have. But all I felt was a kind of hollow clarity, as though I were watching someone else make my choices.
The coins had betrayed nothing visible. But the clerk had known all the same. If he chose to speak of it, rumors would move faster than any guild decree.
I knew better than to think I could hide forever.
---
The market was less crowded than usual. Snowmelt pooled in the ruts between the carts, turning each footstep into a slow negotiation with the mud. I moved from stall to stall without lingering, buying only what I needed: a bundle of candles, a half-loaf of coarse rye, a twist of cured meat wrapped in waxed cloth.
At each purchase, I watched the merchants' eyes flick to my face, then away. No one challenged me outright, but a few hesitated before taking my coin—testing the weight, turning the silver between their fingers as if it might burn them.
I did not protest.
When a vendor handed back my change, I noticed the slight tremor in his hand.
"New mint," I offered, voice calm.
His mouth tightened.
"So they say."
---
The last stall I visited was a narrow shop tucked under the slope of an old granary. Inside, shelves sagged under the weight of parchment and ink jars. The air smelled of old glue and damp straw.
A woman sat behind the counter, spectacles perched low on her nose. She looked up as I entered, her gaze sharpening when she saw the ledger under my arm.
"Need it rebound?" she asked.
"Not yet."
Her eyes lingered on the worn corners, then drifted to my face.
"You're not from here."
"No."
She inclined her head, as if that explained everything.
I chose a sheaf of parchment from the lowest shelf—a stack of rough, uneven cuts that would serve well enough. When I laid a silver drake on the counter, she didn't touch it at first.
"Strange," she murmured.
"What is?"
"The way it feels. Like it's gone cold."
I swallowed.
"It's been a cold morning," I said evenly.
Her gaze lifted to mine, and for a moment I thought she might press the point. But she only nodded, brisk and unsmiling.
"Suit yourself."
She pushed the change across the counter without another word.
---
Outside, the wind had picked up. I tucked the parchment into my satchel and turned toward the east lanes.
With each step, I felt the weight of the day pressing deeper into my bones. Not just the strain of constant caution, but the awareness that every hand I touched, every coin I spent, left a mark behind.
Not all of it could be blamed on the guild's persecution.
Some of it was me.
---
By the time I reached the loft, dusk was beginning to gather. The rooftops were edged in dull gold where the last of the light slipped between the chimneys.
I closed the door and set my satchel on the table. For a long moment, I stood there in the half-dark, listening to the slow drip of meltwater outside the window.
If you are marked, I thought, then let them see it.
The decision felt larger than the room, larger than the failing daylight.
I lit a candle and unwrapped the new parchment. The sheets were rough under my fingers, but they smelled clean. Honest.
I set the ledger beside them and opened it to a blank page.
One by one, I began to write.
Every delivery. Every purchase. Every moment when the air itself seemed to recoil from me.
I wrote the truth, because there was nothing else left that I trusted.
---
Somewhere in the street below, a bell rang—a clear, measured toll that marked the closing of the city gates. I paused, quill poised above the page, and felt the hush that followed.
For the first time since the tribunal, I felt no fear.
Whatever I had become, whatever hunger nested inside my skin, it was mine alone.
And when the day came that the guild sent their enforcers to finish what the hearing had begun, I would meet them with open eyes.
---
When the candle guttered low, I did not light another.
The dark felt honest, too.
I closed the ledger, set my hand flat against its battered cover, and whispered the only promise I could keep.
"I will not vanish."