The Mourning compound occupied three city blocks in Verantum's eastern district, a sprawling complex of black stone buildings that had stood for nearly two centuries. The architecture was designed to intimidate—tall spires, narrow windows, gargoyles perched on every corner with expressions of permanent grief. Most citizens gave the compound a wide berth, crossing to the other side of the street rather than walk beneath its shadow.
After all, everyone who entered House Mourning eventually came out with their secrets exposed.
Kael approached the main gate carrying the child, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep somewhere around the third intersection. She weighed almost nothing—far too light for a girl her age. Whatever life she'd been living before tonight, it hadn't included regular meals.
The gate guards saw him coming and tensed. One of them—a heavyset man named Durren who had been watching the entrance for longer than Kael had been alive—raised a hand.
"Halt. Identify your burden."
"Unknown female child, approximately eight years of age. I found her in the merchant quarter. She's in need of care."
Durren's eyes narrowed. "House Mourning is not an orphanage, Witness Ashford. We don't take in strays."
"She's not a stray. She's..." Kael hesitated. How much should he reveal? The creature in the alley, the impossible contract he'd agreed to, the debt owed to something called "Absent"—none of it would make sense to the guards. None of it made sense to him.
"She's connected to a significant matter," he said finally. "I need to speak with Master Vessen."
The guards exchanged looks. Vessen was the senior Witness of House Mourning, a woman of considerable authority and even more considerable reputation. Disturbing her in the middle of the night for what appeared to be a routine charity case would not be well received.
"The Witness-Master is occupied," Durren said carefully. "Perhaps this matter could wait until—"
"It cannot wait."
The voice came from behind Kael, dry and sharp as old paper. He turned to find Vessen herself standing in the gate's shadow, as though she had materialized from the darkness itself. Her hollow eyes—sockets that had seen too many deaths, that had absorbed too many final regrets—studied him with unsettling intensity.
"Young Ashford," she said. "I felt you approaching. There's something... different about you tonight."
Kael's throat went dry. Of course she could feel it. Vessen's sensitivity to death and its echoes was legendary. If anyone could detect the strange changes that had occurred in him since the alley, it would be her.
"I encountered something unusual, Master. I need guidance."
"I can see that." Vessen glided forward, her black robes rustling softly against the cobblestones. She stopped in front of Kael and peered at the sleeping child in his arms, her expression unreadable. "And what is this?"
"I don't know. She doesn't remember her own name. But there was... there was something hunting her. Something that wasn't human. And I..."
"You intervened." Vessen's tone was neutral. "Against something that clearly outclassed you. Without weapons, without training, without any hope of victory."
"Yes."
"And you survived."
"Yes."
The Witness-Master was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice had changed—no longer sharp and clinical, but heavy with something that might have been concern.
"Bring the child inside. We'll talk in my chambers." She turned to the guards. "No one is to know of this arrival. Am I understood?"
Durren nodded quickly. "Yes, Witness-Master."
Kael followed Vessen through the compound's main courtyard, past the Memorial Garden where the names of every soul House Mourning had witnessed were inscribed on endless rows of black stone tablets, past the Silence Hall where witnesses-in-training learned to still their minds, past the Vault of Final Words where the most significant death-regrets were recorded and preserved.
Vessen's chambers occupied the top floor of the central spire. The room was spartan by noble standards—a bed, a desk, a few chairs, walls lined with books so old their spines had crumbled to illegibility. A single window looked out over the city, offering a view of Verantum's distant lights scattered across the darkness like fallen stars.
"Set the child on the bed," Vessen instructed. "She'll sleep through this. Whatever she's been through has exhausted her completely."
Kael did as he was told, gently laying the girl on the narrow mattress. Her face was peaceful in sleep, showing none of the terror that had twisted it in the alley. For a moment, she looked almost normal—just a tired child who had wandered too far from home.
But she wasn't normal. Neither of them were, anymore.
"Now." Vessen settled into a chair across from him, her hollow eyes never blinking. "Tell me everything. Leave nothing out. I will know if you're lying, and I will know if you're omitting."
So Kael told her.
He started with the merchant's death—the stubborn old man who had taken too long to go, the familiar weight of his final regret settling into Kael's mind. He described the walk home, the strange sensations that had awakened in his chest, the warmth and cold that seemed to guide his actions without words. He recounted the creature in the alley, its faceless void, its clinical explanation of why it had come for the child.
And he told her about the contract.
When he finished, Vessen sat motionless for so long that Kael began to wonder if she had somehow stopped breathing. The silence stretched on, broken only by the soft sounds of the child sleeping.
Finally, the Witness-Master spoke.
"You bound yourself as collateral for a debt of undefined scope, owed to a creditor listed as 'Absent,' for a child you had never met before tonight."
"Yes."
"Without knowing what the debt was for. Without knowing what fulfilling it would require. Without any understanding of the consequences if she fails."
"Yes."
Vessen closed her eyes. When she opened them again, something had shifted in her expression—the hollow emptiness replaced, briefly, with an emotion Kael couldn't identify.
"You fool," she said softly. "You magnificent, absolute fool."
Kael had expected anger. Condemnation. Perhaps even punishment for violating House Mourning's protocols by offering a dying man's secrets as a bargaining chip. What he had not expected was this—a tremor in Vessen's voice that sounded almost like... admiration?
"Do you know what 'Absent' means?" she asked.
"No."
"It's an accounting term. A placeholder in the Ledger for creditors who no longer exist in the conventional sense. Beings who have departed from the world but whose debts remain active." Vessen leaned forward. "The only creditors listed as Absent are the gods."
The word hung in the air between them.
"This child owes a debt to a god," Vessen continued. "An undefined debt—meaning the god can demand anything, at any time, for any reason. And you, Kael Ashford, have made yourself the guarantee for that debt."
"What does that mean?" His voice came out hoarse. "In practical terms. What happens if she fails to pay?"
"If the debt comes due and the child cannot pay, the Collectors will come for you instead. Not creatures like the one you faced tonight—those are merely Processors, minor functionaries who handle routine enforcement. The Collectors are... worse. Much worse."
Kael thought about the faceless thing in the alley, its casual power, its utter indifference to his existence. The idea that something worse existed—something that would come for him personally if this nameless child failed to fulfill an impossible obligation...
"How do I help her?" he asked. "How do I make sure she succeeds?"
Vessen laughed—a dry, humorless sound. "You don't even know what success looks like. You don't know what she's supposed to do or why she owes what she owes. You've bound yourself to a mystery, boy. And mysteries in this world have teeth."
"Then help me understand. You know more about debt and death than anyone in Verantum. Tell me what I need to know."
The Witness-Master studied him for a long moment. Her hollow eyes seemed to look through him, past him, into some distant place only she could see.
"There's something else," she said slowly. "Something you haven't mentioned. The warmth and cold you described—the sensations that guided your actions. You still feel them, don't you?"
Kael nodded. The twin presences had faded to background noise, but they were still there. Still alive inside him, in a way that felt both alien and intimately familiar.
"That's not normal," Vessen said. "I've witnessed over three thousand deaths. I've absorbed more regrets than anyone should carry. I've touched the edge of the void that separates the living from the dead more times than I can count. And I have never felt anything like what you're describing."
She stood and walked to the window, her back to him.
"Something changed in you tonight, Kael. Something more than just the contract you made. The child isn't the only mystery here." She turned to face him again. "You asked me to help you understand. I'll try. But first, I need to know—the creature in the alley, the one that was hunting the girl. What happened to it? Exactly?"
"It accepted the contract and... left. Disappeared, like it had never been there."
"Left." Vessen's voice was flat. "A Processor simply left without completing its task, because a sixteen-year-old Witness with no combat training offered to guarantee a child's debt."
"Yes."
"That doesn't happen. That has never happened, in all the history of the Ledger. Processors don't negotiate. They don't accept substitutions or guarantees. They simply do what they're sent to do, regardless of cost."
Kael felt the warmth in his chest pulse gently. As though something inside him agreed with Vessen's assessment—agreed that what had happened was impossible—but didn't care.
"Something protected you," the Witness-Master said slowly. "Something powerful enough to make a Processor bend its own rules. And whatever it is..." She looked at him with an expression that might have been fear. "It's still inside you."
In the bed behind them, the nameless child stirred in her sleep.
And Kael Ashford felt the beginning of a very long night stretching out before him.