The approach to the Ledger Spire was not marked on any official city plan. No cartographer dared commit its precise paths to parchment. Still, everyone in Carov's Folly knew the ways by rumor: narrow alleys that led nowhere, cul-de-sacs that unspooled themselves into hidden stairways, courtyards that tilted into darkness if you stepped too near their center.
Cael followed the most reliable path he knew—through a gap between two collapsed warehouses where the ground sloped just enough to drain the tannery runoff into the old canal. Even in winter, the stink was sour enough to make his eyes water.
He kept his hand inside his cloak, fingers brushing the purse Brennor had given him. The weight was both reassurance and accusation. Every coin it contained was minted from someone else's misery, and everyone had a claim on his future.
By the time he reached the final street before the Spire's wall, the dawn had clawed its way fully over the horizon. Pale light caught the tower's flanks and turned them to bleached ivory. From a distance, it almost looked clean. He knew better.
He stopped behind the wreck of a market stall. The roof had caved in long ago, burying its wares beneath splintered beams. A man sat cross-legged in the shadows behind the counter. His eyes were cloudy, pupils swallowed by milky cataracts. But his hands moved with calm precision over a small brass scale, weighing something Cael could not see.
When Cael stepped into view, the man did not look up.
"Supply?" the blind man asked in a voice as thin as old parchment.
"Supply," Cael confirmed.
The man's left hand tapped the scale. "Coin."
Cael counted out four bits, placing them carefully on the counter. He didn't trust the man's blindness to be genuine. Few in the Spire's shadow were precisely what they seemed.
The hand swept the coins away, then returned with a small oilskin pouch and a corked vial of something the color of candle grease.
"For the walls," the man said. "If they start to move."
Cael accepted them without asking further. He had learned in his first year on the streets that some questions only invited lies.
He turned to go, but the blind man spoke again, voice soft as settling dust.
"Remember your name."
Cael paused. The advice was so close to Brennor's warning it sent a chill along his spine.
"I know it," he said.
The man's cracked lips pulled back, showing teeth the color of old ivory. "You think you do."
Cael left without replying.
He passed two more stalls, both unoccupied. At the corner where the street kinked toward the Spire's base, he stopped to take stock. The tower loomed overhead, impossibly tall, its windows narrow as arrow slits. Some were blocked by iron grilles. Others gaped open, dark as old wounds.
He pulled the parchment Brennor had given him from his satchel and unfolded it. The scriptorium window was marked in a precise hand, halfway up the eastern face. A ladder, collapsed. A stack of masonry, half stable.
Cael studied the drawing until he could close his eyes and see every detail. When he opened them, he forced himself to take the first step into the courtyard.
It felt like crossing a boundary more profound than any wall.
Up close, the Spire's surface was not smooth. The pale stone looked almost translucent, striated with darker veins like some buried fossil. As he neared, he saw shallow indentations chiseled in spiraling patterns—sigils he could not read but recognized all the same. Contract runes. Pledges made permanent.
He touched one with his gloved hand. It felt cold, almost wet. He pulled back quickly.
The last time he'd believed a place couldn't harm him, he'd ended up with a broken leg and no memory of the days between. He wouldn't make that mistake again.
He circled to the east side, where the masonry pile waited. Someone else had tried this climb before—he saw the scuff marks on the stone, the faint stains that might have been blood or something older.
Cael adjusted the satchel, testing the weight, and began to climb. Each handhold was slick with frost. Twice he nearly lost his grip. When he reached the collapsed sill, he paused, chest heaving.
The scriptorium window was a narrow arch, only wide enough to squeeze through sideways. He hooked a knee over the sill and worked himself inside.
The moment he passed the threshold, the air changed.
It was colder, but not the honest cold of winter. This was something deeper—a chill that bit into the mind more than the flesh. He caught the faintest whiff of old parchment and something sweeter, almost floral.
Memory stirred.
He closed his eyes and whispered his name.
"Cael."
The word trembled in the silence.
Inside, the scriptorium was drowned in shadows. Rows of desks stood in neat lines, each piled with drifts of paper. Some had rotted to lace. Others were perfectly intact, their ink dark and crisp as though set down moments ago.
He took a cautious step forward, testing the boards. The floor held.
He moved slowly among the desks, studying the nearest page without touching. The script was dense, cramped, a ledger's record of something he could not decipher. No language he recognized.
When he looked too long at the sigils, his vision blurred. He turned away quickly.
He forced his mind back to the task.
One job. One chance to clear the ledger that had chained him to Varlo's whims.
He began to mark his path. A line of chalk on the edge of each desk—one he could follow back if the Spire tried to unmake his memory.
As he worked, he felt the oppressive sense of presence grow. The walls seemed to thrum, a vibration just at the edge of hearing.
He pressed on.
At the far end of the scriptorium, an archway yawned open, draped in a curtain of rotting cloth. Beyond lay a corridor Brennor's map called the Outer Archive.
He stepped through the arch.
The corridor was lined with niches; each filled with scrolls bound in leather straps. The air smelled stronger here - rich with the sweetness he could not place. He touched one of the straps and felt the faintest tremor, as if something within stirred at his approach.
He withdrew his hand.
This was no ordinary library.
The Spire, he thought, was not merely a building. It was a reliquary of debt—an archive so vast it had become aware. Every oath ever sworn within these walls had left an echo, layered upon the last until the whole edifice became a mind of its own.
A mind that hungered.
And a mind that would not easily let him leave.