The voices did not leave us when the Echo Broker fell. They swirled in the fog, clinging like ash after fire, fragments of words brushing against my ears. A child's laugh. A widow's sob. A priest's prayer cut mid-syllable. They pressed against my chest, heavy and endless, demanding to be carried. My marrow throbbed where the candle had burned it away, every beat a reminder of what I had paid to free them.
We staggered back into the crooked alleys of Mirewalk. The quarter was eerily quiet—no whispers, no sighs—only the shallow gasps of citizens whose voices had been returned. They stumbled from doorways, clutching their throats as though checking their breath was real. Some wept aloud, marveling at the sound. Others screamed, high-pitched, animalistic, as if terrified of their own noise after so long muted.
Seraphine moved among them, her iron arm clicking, her human hand steadying those who nearly collapsed. She had no softness in her face, but her movements betrayed a kind of discipline—care offered without tenderness. She guided them, not comforted them. Survival, not solace. That was her way.
I leaned against a warped post, the Ledger pressed to my ribs. My throat scraped raw as I tried to speak. "They… they're free."
The words came out jagged, each syllable splintered. Seraphine glanced at me sharply. "Not all of them. Some voices don't come back. Some debts are too deep."
She was right. I could feel it in the air, the absence where certain voices should have been. The Broker had devoured them fully, leaving nothing to return. The Ledger opened of its own will, ink burning across the page:
Voices Reclaimed: 64.
Voices Lost: 19.
Ledger Note: Balance partial. Echoes will linger.
I shut the book quickly, though the words stayed etched in my mind. Nineteen names, nineteen breaths never again to be heard. Their silence was now mine to carry. The candle-mark burned faintly on my palm, a reminder of what I had sacrificed for the partial reprieve.
We followed the canal deeper into Mirewalk. The citizens we left behind trailed us with their eyes, whispers of gratitude mingling with fear. They did not thank me aloud. Perhaps they sensed the cost. Perhaps they feared what the Ledger demanded. In their silence, I heard a truth: to them, I was not savior but omen.
Seraphine must have felt it too. Her iron arm hissed softly, a mechanical sigh. "They'll tell stories about you," she muttered. "Not of Varrow, but of the Ledger. Of the clerk who spends himself like coin to buy silence. Stories like that breed faster than mold."
I rasped, my voice catching. "Better stories than debtors."
She gave me a sidelong glance. "You think so? Debt has a way of wearing new masks. And stories are the easiest masks of all."
We turned a bend where the canal narrowed, the water black and sluggish. A bell tolled again, faint but clear, echoing through the fog. It sounded not like metal, but bone striking bone. My marrow ached in response. The Ledger pulsed once, words ghosting across its closed cover:
Another debtor rises. Threads pulling tight.
By nightfall, we reached a sagging inn built half on stilts, its sign a cracked wooden mask swaying in the damp wind. The keeper stared as we entered, eyes lingering too long on the Ledger at my side. He asked no questions, offered no words, only led us to a room with walls that wept moisture.
Inside, Seraphine stripped the armor from her iron arm, pistons hissing as she set them aside. Steam rose from her scarred flesh where metal fused to bone. She caught me watching and raised an eyebrow. "Don't waste pity. I chose this. You didn't choose the Ledger."
I tried to answer, but my voice cracked into silence. I coughed blood-tinged spittle into my hand. Seraphine's gaze softened for just a moment, then hardened again. "You won't last if you keep paying every time the Ledger asks. You'll burn yourself hollow."
The Ledger trembled faintly, as if hearing her. I touched its cover, and ink bled through the cracks of its spine. A single phrase etched into the air between us:
Bearer must pay. Balance demands cost.
Seraphine's jaw clenched. She turned away, staring out the warped window into the fog. "Then one day I'll break that book, even if it kills me."
The Ledger quivered at her words, humming low, offended. My candle-mark pulsed, faint and fearful. I swallowed, forcing my ragged voice into a whisper. "Don't. If it breaks… everything breaks."
Outside, the bell tolled once more, louder this time, closer. The city exhaled a sigh that carried through every street, every canal, every stilt of rotting wood. I felt it vibrate in my bones, a reminder that the debt was unending, the Ledger never empty, the city never still.
And as I closed my eyes that night, the voices returned—not the Broker's, not Aurelius', not my father's. New voices. Hungry voices. Waiting for me to open the Ledger again.
—End of Chapter 25—