Chapter 6 Ivalys
SIX
IVALYS
“My brother is alive,” I say. “You know where the Ledger Master keeps what he claims. You’ve been his enforcer for—how long?”
“Longer than you want to know.”
“Then you can get me to him. To Gror. To wherever the Ledger Master is holding him.”
“It’s not that simple. The Ledger Master’s domain is defended. Warded. The only approach that doesn’t end in immediate capture is through the tunnels beneath the city—the Debt Crypts. And those tunnels are filled with things that hunt the living.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should.”
“I don’t.” I let go of the ring. Let it fall back against my collarbone. “Tell me what we need to do.”
Rathok is quiet for a long moment. The silence has weight—the weight of centuries of service, of loyalty being shed like dead skin, of a decision that can’t be undone.
“The contract on your arm. It gives you seven days. There are rules within the magic. Loopholes. A debtor’s collateral can renegotiate terms during the settlement window. Can form new agreements that modify the original.”
I stare at him. At the massive, scarred face close to mine in the cramped darkness.
“You’re saying I can make a deal.”
“I’m saying we can bind ourselves together.
Your service for my protection. Contract magic understands bargains—it’s the foundation of everything in Gravebind.
” He lifts his hand. Holds it between us, palm up.
“If the city witnesses our agreement, the Ledger Master can’t separate us without breaking terms he wrote himself. ”
“My service.” I taste the word. “What does that mean?”
“It means the magic sees you as my claim for the duration. It means I have a legitimate reason to keep you from the Ledger Master—I’m conducting an assessment, evaluating the collateral, fulfilling the contract’s requirements.
” Something that might be dark humor crosses his expression.
“Bureaucracy. Even monsters have to follow their own rules.”
I look at his hand. At the scars mapping his palm, the calluses from decades—centuries—of gripping axe handles. At the hand of a weapon asking to become a shield.
“Seven days of service. Complete obedience within the contract’s terms.” I keep my voice steady. “In exchange, you help me find my brother. You keep me alive. You tell me everything about what I am and why the Ledger Master wants me.”
“You’re giving me terms.”
“I’m making a bargain.” I lift my marked palm and press it against his.
The contact hits like lightning.
Not pain—something else. Heat and pressure and magic flooding the space between our joined hands, wrapping around our agreement with invisible threads that pull tight and hold.
I gasp. The sigil on my palm blazes, brighter than it’s been since the branding—white-gold light that fills the crawlspace and turns shadows to nothing.
I feel the city notice. Feel the magic that built Gravebind stretch out from beneath us, from the ink and stone and bone foundations, and witness.
The marks on my arm shift. I watch them move beneath my skin, rearranging, adding new terms. When the light fades, new words have appeared below the original:
BARGAIN WITNESSED.
TERMS AMENDED.
COLLATERAL: CONDITIONAL.
Rathok pulls back. The sudden loss of contact leaves me unsteady, breathless, my skin humming where his palm pressed against mine.
“It’s done.” His voice has gone hoarse. Strained. “The city witnessed. The magic accepted. For the next seven days—”
“I’m yours.”
The word hangs between us. Yours. Possession. Ownership. Everything I should resist.
Instead, it settles into my chest with a weight that feels less like chains and more like an anchor.
“We need to move.” Rathok’s mask drops back into place—flat voice, controlled expression, the enforcer reassembling itself over whatever just cracked through. “The bargain bought us protection but not invisibility. The Ledger Master will test the terms. Probe for weaknesses.”
“Where are we going?”
“Below.” He moves toward the drainage pipe.
“There are tunnels under the city—deep ones, older than Gravebind itself. The Debt Crypts. They connect everything—the districts, the Ledger Hall, places that don’t exist on any surface map.
” He pauses at the pipe’s mouth. “Your brother is being held somewhere the Ledger Master controls. To reach that place, we go through the crypts.”
“The tunnels where debtors go to die.”
He looks back at me. Something flickers in his expression—surprise, maybe, that I know.
“Everyone in Gravebind knows.” I push myself to my feet.
Dust off my knees. Square my shoulders the way I’ve been squaring them since I was nine and learned that the world doesn’t stop hitting you just because you’re already down.
“The tunnels, the dead, the wraiths. Campfire stories to keep children from running when their parents can’t pay. ”
“They’re not stories.”
“Didn’t think they were.”
He holds my gaze a moment longer. I don’t know what he’s looking for—fear, hesitation, the good sense to refuse. He doesn’t find it.
“Stay close. Don’t speak unless I tell you it’s safe.” The familiar instructions from the apartment but different now. Weighed down by the bargain between us, by the magic binding my steps to his. “The crypts are dangerous for anyone. For someone carrying a mark the Ledger can track, they’re—”
“Don’t say complicated.”
Something shifts in his face. Not a smile—his features don’t seem built for that—but something adjacent. A crack in the stone.
“Deadly. I was going to say deadly.”
“Deadly, I can work with.”
He turns and leads me through the drainage pipe, through a network of tunnels that descend beneath the Ashmark district in increments.
The air grows colder. The walls change—brick giving way to stone, stone giving way to something darker.
We don’t speak. The bargain pulses between us like a second heartbeat, the sigil on my palm warming whenever he moves too far ahead, cooling when I close the gap.
Mine. His word. His claim. The magic made it real, but the weight of it sits differently than I expected. Something more like a tether between two people falling, each holding the other’s line.
I think about my mother. About the truth-speaker who hid behind fortune-telling and palm-reading, who raised two children in a city built on lies and told them to be ordinary. I think about what Rathok said—she could see the lies woven into contracts. She could unravel what the Ledger Master built.
She must have been terrified. Every day, walking through Gravebind’s streets knowing what she could do, what she’d be killed for if anyone found out. Hiding in plain sight. Protecting us by being small.
I don’t know how to do what she did. Don’t know how to speak truth, how to see lies, how to unravel anything. All I know is that my brother is in the hands of a monster, and the orc ahead of me is the only person in this entire city who’s chosen to help me get him back.
For now, that’s enough.
We emerge from the tunnels onto the edge of a plaza I don’t recognize. The buildings here are older—pre-Ledger, maybe, built from stone that remembers when Gravebind had another name. Across the open space, silhouetted against the perpetual gray sky, a structure rises.
The desecrated temple.
I’ve heard of it. Everyone has. The spires are broken, the windows shattered, the door gaping like a mouth that’s been screaming for centuries and forgotten how to stop.
Religious iconography clings to the facade in patches—saints with chiseled-off faces, symbols I don’t recognize scratched over with graffiti and obscenity.
Whatever faith lived here died a long time ago.
“The entrance to the crypts.” Rathok’s voice is barely a murmur. “Past the altar, there’s a staircase. It goes down a long way.”
I look at the temple. At the darkness beyond its ruined door. At the path my mother must have walked, years ago, when she was the one hunting the Ledger Master’s secrets.
I’m coming, Gror.
I step forward. Rathok falls into step beside me. Not behind. Not ahead. Beside.
The temple waits. The darkness waits. And somewhere far below, in tunnels carved from bone and filled with the dead, my brother waits too.
Seven days.