Chapter 28 Ivalys
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 in the 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.
A human—older, scarred, his contract-marks faded to near-invisibility. He moves fast despite his age, decades of training evident in every motion. His hand closes around my arm like a shackle.
“Hold still, truth-speaker.” His voice is flat. Empty. “This doesn’t have to hurt.”
I don’t struggle against his grip. Instead, I press my marked palm against his chest.
The sigil blazes.
“You didn’t choose this.”
The words carry power I’m only beginning to understand. Truth-speaking—not breaking contracts, but revealing what lies beneath them. The enforcer gasps. The contracts on his skin flare bright, then dim, then smoke.
He didn’t choose this. None of them did. They were desperate, or hungry, or running from something worse. They signed contracts they didn’t understand because the Ledger Master made sure they didn’t understand. And now they serve because the alternative is worse than death.
The enforcer releases me. Steps back. His eyes—human eyes, finally human—fill with something I recognize.
Horror. At what he’s done. At what he’s been.
I don’t stop to comfort him. Can’t stop. Rathok is ten feet away, covered in contracts, dying.
The second enforcer is an orc. Younger than Rathok by at least a century, his skin a lighter green, his tusks shorter. He swings a mace at my head.
I duck. Barely. The weapon whistles past my ear, close enough to stir my hair. He recovers fast, reversing the swing, bringing the mace around for a second strike.
I don’t have time for truth-speaking. Don’t have time for anything but survival.
Something massive slams into the orc enforcer from the side.
Rathok.
He’s on his feet somehow—on his knees, at least, contracts still crawling across his body, his movements jerky and wrong. But he’s fighting. One arm hangs useless, claimed by the debts trying to consume him. The other holds his axe.
The younger orc goes down hard. Rathok follows him, axe rising and falling, the blade finding the gap between helmet and gorget. Blood sprays. The enforcer twitches. Goes still.
“Rathok—” I reach for him. My hand finds his shoulder. The contracts writhe beneath my palm, hot and wrong and hungry.
His head turns. His eyes meet mine.
They’re still ember-dark. Still him. But the light is fading. The contracts are winning.
“Run.” The word is a growl forced through clenched teeth. “Can’t... hold them... much longer.”
“I’m not running.” I grab his face. Cup his jaw in both hands, the sigil on my palm burning against the contracts covering his skin. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Ivalys.” My name is a rasp. A prayer. “Please.”
Another enforcer closes in. Rathok surges upward, intercepting the attack meant for me. His axe catches the blade. Deflects it. His return strike opens the enforcer from hip to shoulder.
He falls to one knee. The contracts surge across his face, covering his eyes, trying to seal them shut.
Two more enforcers. Three. They circle us, weapons raised, waiting for an opening.
Rathok rises again. Fighting. Refusing to stop. His axe finds another throat, another belly. Blood sprays—his enemies’, his own. The contracts drag him down after each kill. He drags himself back up.
Four enforcers dead. Five. The contracts claim more of him with every strike.