Veron entered without knocking.
Doors were courtesies for people who still believed privacy existed.
He paused for a moment, eyes on Ruth. "Do you know his name?" he asked softly.
Ruth's gaze flickered nervously. "Halmer… Halmer, sir."
A thin, precise smile. "Halmer," he repeated, letting the name linger in the air. It was not a greeting. It was a scalpel. "Now I know whom I am addressing."
Halmer's eyes widened. Only now did he realize—the man in the room was the new lord. His stomach tightened. He shifted backward, then froze, half-expecting the floor to swallow him.
Veron did not sit at once. He circled the desk slowly, trailing one gloved finger along the edge of the wood as though testing whether it would bleed.
Halmer's eyes followed the finger the way a condemned man watches the blade being sharpened. His hands twitched, lifted, then dropped. He tried to speak—"I… I—"—but the sound caught in his throat. His lips moved, useless.
"Halmer…"
The name came out soft, almost affectionate—like a lover murmuring something obscene into an ear.
Halmer swallowed. A dry rasp. He lifted a trembling hand, then let it fall. His knees weakened; he staggered slightly, catching himself on the desk.
"You have spent your entire life in this room, haven't you?" Veron continued, voice barely above a whisper yet filling every corner like smoke. "Curled over these pages like a maggot in parchment. Convincing yourself that every lie you inked, every zero you quietly shifted one column to the left, was an act of quiet heroism. That you were the invisible thread holding this miserable place together."
He leaned in—just enough.
Halmer's chest heaved. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then tried once more—a pitiful, soundless gasp. His fingers twitched over the desk, then clenched as though he could squeeze the words out physically.
"But you have always known the truth."
Halmer's breath hitched. He shifted backward a fraction, shoulders curling inward. One hand lifted toward the ledger, hesitated, and dropped.
"You were never the thread. You were the rot."
A tremor ran through Halmer's shoulders. He gasped, a sound strangled by fear. His tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, forming shapes that could not become words.
"Every night you crawled home—to whatever damp burrow you pretend is a home—you told yourself the same bedtime story: tomorrow you would stop. Tomorrow you would be brave. Tomorrow you would finally matter." Veron's voice softened further, the gentleness of frost settling on dying lips. "And every morning you woke smaller. More hunched. More practiced at looking away."
He gestured—not dramatically, just a slight tilt of the head toward Halmer's hands.
"Look at them, Halmer. Really look."
Those trembling, ink-stained fingers lifted once, twice, trying to make some motion of defense or protest, only to fall back helplessly. Halmer's lips parted, closed, parted again. Nothing.
"How many times have they dipped into widows' grain allotments? How many times have they erased a child's name from the relief rolls so you could buy one more bolt of marginally better cloth? How many times have you signed documents you knew were poison—simply because the poison tasted safer than refusal?"
Halmer flexed his fingers, tried to rise, to lift his chin, to beg, to argue, to deny—all gestures faltering midair. His mouth opened and closed; a croak rasped, swallowed instantly.
"You are not a steward," Veron said. "You are a scavenger who learned to wear a steward's robe."
He stepped closer. Halmer jerked backward, nearly toppling over. One hand shot out, as if to shield himself, but he froze halfway. His eyes darted to the ledger, then to Veron, then back again—paralyzed by recognition and fear.
"And the worst part—the part that gnaws at you when sleep refuses to come—is that you enjoyed it."
Halmer's eyes flicked up, then down again, fast. A shallow, strangled sound escaped, barely human. He tried to speak again, attempted a feeble protest, and swallowed it raw. His fingers raked at the desk's edge.
"Not the money. The money was trivial."
A faint, cold smile.
"You enjoyed the power. The exquisite, secret thrill of knowing entire families went to bed hungry because of a single stroke of your quill. You savored the way people bowed their heads when you passed, never suspecting that the man they feared was only a fat little thief terrified of his own shadow."
Veron's voice dropped to something almost intimate.
"You didn't masturbate to wealth, Halmer. You masturbated to cowardice. To every moment you chose safety over decency and survived."
He let the silence stretch—just long enough for the words to sink teeth.
"And now here I am."
Halmer flinched as though struck. He tried to lift his hands, to push away the inevitability—but they trembled uselessly, curling toward the desk then recoiling. His throat worked; no sound came.
"I am the consequence you always knew was coming. The mirror you spent a lifetime turning away from."
He raised two fingers.
"You have two futures left. And both belong to me."
"The first." Administrative calm. "You refuse me. You scrape together whatever withered scrap of pride you still pretend to possess and say no."
A small shrug.
"I leave this room. I draft one letter to the Crown. One page. Calm. Regretful. It states that upon assuming my duties, I discovered systematic embezzlement at the highest administrative level. That the overseer of records—Halmer, son of whoever the forgettable man was who sired you—had been falsifying accounts for years. That the evidence is irrefutable."
He tilted his head.
"They will not investigate. They will not care about truth. They will send men with rope."
The image bloomed in the silence. Halmer's stomach knotted. He opened his mouth, attempted "I… I…"—choked, and fell silent. His hands flexed, lifted, curled, recoiled. The rhythm of fear became a metronome, marking each beat of Veron's words.
"You will dangle in the square you spent your life stealing from. Kicking. Soiling yourself. While the same people you robbed watch in silence. Your wife—if she has not already left—will be turned out. Your children—if they still claim you—will change their names. Within a year, no one will remember you except as a warning whispered to new clerks: 'Don't end up like Halmer.'"
Veron's voice was almost gentle.
"Clean. Final. Almost merciful."
He paused.
"The second future…"
Now the knife turned slowly.
"You stop pretending. You admit—quietly, honestly, for the first time in your miserable life—that you are exactly what I have described."
He leaned down. Halmer's knees shook. He grabbed the desk's edge. Fingers trembled, flexed, then fell. Lips parted and closed repeatedly, making no sound. Each failed attempt echoed Veron's authority.
"And you give yourself to me."
A breath.
"Not your loyalty. I have no use for that."
A whisper.
"Your fear. Your greed. Your exquisite talent for betrayal."
"You will sit at this desk and turn these ledgers into weapons. You will make the numbers so brutally, beautifully honest that when the Crown reads them, they will feel their own throats tighten."
A thin, precise smile.
"You will become my perfect parasite. Burrowed deep. Invisible. Indispensable."
"And in the quiet moments—when the torches burn low and we are alone with the books—you will look up at me and feel something you have never felt before."
He straightened.
"Gratitude."
"Because I will have given you the one thing you always wanted."
Permission.
"Permission to be what you are without apology."
"You will sleep better than you have in decades. Not because you are good."
A final whisper.
"But because you are finally… mine."
Veron stepped back, resting his gloved hand lightly on the desk's edge.
So. Look at me, Halmer. Choose which version of your ruin you prefer.
"The one where you die screaming innocence…"
A slow breath.
"…or the one where you live whispering my name."
The room was silent except for Halmer's shallow, wet breathing. His hands rose, hesitated, fell. Lips parted and closed. Throat clicked. Shoulders jerked. Knees buckled. All failed attempts forming a rhythm—silent punctuation to Veron's domination.
Halmer's mouth opened. No words came at first. Then his shoulders folded inward, as though an invisible hand had reached inside his chest and begun squeezing the air from his lungs one careful breath at a time.
A sound escaped him. Not a word. Just the wet click of throat against tongue—the involuntary preparation of a creature about to beg.
"I… I will serve."
The confession was barely audible, yet it rang in the room like a bell made of glass dropped on marble.
Veron tilted his head—the barest acknowledgment.
"Of course you will."
He turned away—not in dismissal, but in the lazy confidence of a man who has just acquired a new tool and sees no need to thank the tool for existing.
He walked to the window. Looked out over the dreary courtyard where nothing ever grew except resentment.
Behind him, Halmer's breathing steadied into something rhythmic, obedient. Fingers flexing, twitching, then finally settling on the parchment. The sound of a man learning the tempo of his new master's silence.
Veron spoke without turning.
"Begin with last season's grain disbursements. Make them honest. Make them bleed truth. Then move on to the tax exemptions granted to the temple. List every coin that disappeared into 'salvation tithes' while children starved in the alleys outside their walls. Do it slowly. Do it beautifully. I want the Crown to read your work and feel, for the first time, what it is like to be the one robbed."
He paused.
"And Halmer…"
A softer note—almost affectionate.
"…leave your name on every page. I want them to know exactly whose hand delivered the wound."
Halmer's quill was already moving before Veron finished speaking. His hands shook visibly, trembled, flexed, as if afraid to touch the ink. The scratch of nib on parchment sounded like small bones breaking.
Veron listened to it for a moment. Then he smiled—not the thin, wintry curve he allowed the world, but something smaller, private, almost tender.
The sound of a man hearing the first notes of a song he had waited years to compose.
He left the room without another word. The door closed with the soft finality of a coffin lid.
And in the sudden hush, Halmer—former steward, former thief, former man—bent lower over the ledgers and began, with trembling, meticulous care, to write his own damnation in perfect, irrefutable columns.