The ledger wight stirred.

  It did not move violently, or with panic. It shifted the way something patient did when a pattern breaks—when a reliable process stops yielding results.

  Orestis felt the pressure return, tentative this time. A cautious nudge brushed against his thoughts, clumsy and unfocused, as though the creature were poking at him with a stick. It slid across his mind and found nothing: no fear, no confusion, no memory to tug loose.

  The wight recoiled. Not in pain—ledger wights did not understand pain—but in something very close to professional dissatisfaction. The absence of resistance was, apparently, not how this interaction was meant to go.

  I sympathise. I too find it unsettling when things refuse to work as expected.

  Ledger wights did not defend lairs the way predators did. They defended ambiguity. Violence was what happened when a system failed, and ledger wights survived by ensuring it never came to that.

  Which was why Orestis wasn’t worried about his physical safety. Still, nothing would be solved by engaging it in a staring contest.

  The spider form clung to the impossible ceiling, legs spread wide across space that should not have existed. Its body twitched—adjusting, re-evaluating—as though it were deciding whether Orestis represented a genuine threat or merely an irritating edge case.

  Orestis suspected he was currently filed under unexpected complications. Either way, that deliberation would not take long.

  He looked up at it one last time before turning around and locking the warehouse. With another thought, he folded space and returned to his room. He sat on the edge of his bed and exhaled.

  There had been a time when this would have been simple—when he could have walked into the warehouse, drawn a line through the air, and reduced the problem to ash. Solutions measured in force rather than paperwork. Back then, consequences were something other people worried about.

  He missed those times. Briefly. Then reality asserted itself, as it tended to do.

  Killing the wight himself would prove nothing. Even if he hid his involvement perfectly—and he would—the goods were gone. Consumed. They would not reappear just because the culprit was removed. The contracts would remain broken, and the paper trail would still point at his father.

  Reputation, once damaged, does not regenerate. It accumulates annotations.

  So, this had to be handled properly. Which meant convincing his father to hire a mage. A competent one. Not the sort who chased curses and blessings for temple coin, or declared every unexplained discrepancy the will of the gods and called it a day.

  This would require someone who understood anomalies and was strong enough to deal with them. Someone reputable. Someone whose conclusions would hold weight once matters became public.

  Fortunately, his current reputation as a prodigy would make it considerably easier. People were remarkably receptive to unsettling ideas when they came packaged with good handwriting and too many books.

  And, as he recalled, one of the older volumes in the library mentioned ledger wights.

  Which meant all he had to do now was locate it and pretend he had just learned what was in it.

  ***

  Orestis waited a full day before presenting his case—not because he needed it, but because patience sold the illusion of research.

  He spent the morning in the reading room, copying notes in careful, uneven handwriting. He made sure to be seen carrying a book too large for him, to ask one question too many about record-keeping and warehousing practices. He let his mother fuss and his father nod absently in approval.

  In the late afternoon, he went to his father’s office.

  His father was still at his desk. The ledgers lay open before him, aligned with meticulous care, as though order alone might produce answers. His posture had not changed much since Menandros’s visit—shoulders squared, jaw tight—but his eyes moved more slowly now, lingering too long on columns that had already been checked.

  Orestis paused in the doorway.

  His father did not look up. “If you’re here to ask whether I’ve found something, the answer is no.”

  “I know,” Orestis said.

  That earned him a glance—brief, wary, exhausted. “Then why are you here?”

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  “I think I might know what happened,” Orestis said carefully.

  His father stilled. There was no hope in the expression that crossed his face, and no relief. Only exhaustion.

  “You think,” he repeated. “Based on what?”

  “Patterns. And one warehouse.”

  His father frowned. “We’ve already established that—”

  “No,” Orestis interrupted, then stopped himself and softened his tone. “We established that several missing commissions passed through the same warehouse. That is not the same thing.”

  His father leaned back and folded his arms. “Go on.”

  Orestis stepped forward and placed a thin stack of notes on the desk. “Warehouse Seven. Every missing commission went through it. Different buyers, different goods, different years. Same location.”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “I know. So I kept looking.”

  “Looking where?”

  “In the past,” Orestis said. At his father’s expression, he amended, “Your past.”

  His father’s brow creased. “Explain.”

  “Do you remember firing a warehouse manager there?” Orestis asked.

  His father blinked. “Yes. Years ago. Sloppy man. Records didn’t match deliveries. Claimed mistakes, but there were too many of them.”

  “Do you remember anything missing?”

  His father opened his mouth, then closed it. He frowned.

  “No,” he said slowly. “I remember discrepancies. Confusion. Arguments. But not loss.”

  Orestis nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  His father straightened. “What are you implying?”

  Orestis reached into his satchel and withdrew a book. It was old, its binding repaired twice, the margins crowded with cramped notes from long-dead hands. He placed it on the desk and opened it to a marked page.

  “I was reading about anomalous inventory failures. The sort that don’t show up in audits.”

  His father snorted. “Anomalous inventory failures.”

  “Merchants are very creative with terminology,” Orestis said. “This one is older.”

  His father glanced down.

  Ledger wights, the heading read.

  He scanned the paragraph once, then again. “This is superstition.”

  “Some of it. Yes,” Orestis agreed.

  His father tapped the page. “You expect me to believe a creature—”

  “—that eats records, ownership, and memory,” Orestis finished. “And eventually, the goods themselves, is occupying Warehouse Seven.”

  His father looked up sharply.

  “Read the next paragraph,” Orestis said.

  His father did. His expression shifted—not to belief, but discomfort.

  “… Affected parties often recall confusion rather than loss,” he read aloud. “Contracts remain valid. Receipts remain signed. But the goods themselves are… unremembered.”

  He contemplated in silence. Orestis waited.

  After a long moment, his father said carefully, “Are you suggesting I’ve forgotten entire commissions?”

  “I’m suggesting that you don’t remember them now.”

  His father leaned back and stared at the ceiling, jaw working slowly. “I don’t remember missing goods. Only arguments about paperwork.”

  “Yes. Neither did the buyers. Until one of them died.”

  His father’s gaze snapped back.

  “When Menandros checked his father’s records,” Orestis continued, “he found obligations that still existed. Signed. Paid for. And never fulfilled.”

  His father exhaled slowly. “This is… an extraordinary claim.”

  “I know.”

  “And you believe this thing is still there.”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because the pattern hasn’t stopped,” Orestis said. “It has simply learned to be quiet.”

  His father was silent again for a moment. “If you’re wrong—”

  “Then nothing changes,” Orestis said. “You hire a mage. They investigate. They find nothing. You’ve demonstrated good faith.”

  “And if you’re right?”

  Orestis did not hesitate. “When you’re accused of fraud, proving innocence matters more than proving loss.”

  That stopped him. Petros studied his son—not the book, not the notes. Him.

  “You shouldn’t be thinking about this,” he said quietly.

  “I know.”

  “And you shouldn’t be able to connect it this cleanly.”

  “I know that too.”

  His father rubbed a hand over his face. “And you think a mage can handle this.”

  “A specialist. One who deals with non-divine anomalies. Quietly. Discreetly.”

  His father gave a short, humourless laugh. “You’ve thought this through.”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause followed. Then his father nodded once. “Very well. We do this properly.”

  Orestis inclined his head, and allowed himself to relax.

  ***

  His father handled the problem the way he handled all serious matters: by producing a list.

  It was not a short list.

  Orestis sat opposite him, watching his father work through names with the same care he applied to contracts. Some were crossed out immediately. Others earned a circle, followed by a note in the margin that usually meant absolutely not, but politely.

  “This one,” his father said, tapping a name, “is very effective.”

  Orestis leaned forward just enough to see it. “He’s also incapable of discretion.”

  “Is this the one who announced a curse investigation from the city gate?”

  “Yes.”

  The quill came down harder than necessary, and the name was violently eliminated.

  His father moved on. “This one? Temple-trained.”

  “They’ll report anything interesting. Possibly with hymns.”

  Another line drawn through the ink.

  His father exhaled. “Finding a mage who is competent, quiet, and willing to testify without sermonizing is harder than it should be.”

  Orestis considered that. “Most of the good ones learn to stop talking.”

  His father paused and looked at him. “I won’t ask how you know that.”

  They continued.

  One mage charged triple for anomalies involving paperwork, which his father rejected on principle and mild moral offence. Another specialized in memory curses but insisted on a public cleansing for ‘community reassurance’.

  “That would reassure no one,” his father said, unmoved.

  Agreed. Loud rituals create more questions than answers, and most of them are the wrong ones.

  Eventually, the list grew shorter and the margins grew crowded, until they stopped.

  His father studied the remaining name. “This one doesn’t advertise. No temple affiliation. No recorded miracles.”

  “And has testified in three commercial disputes without starting a holy war,” Orestis added.

  His father glanced up. “You’ve already checked.”

  “Yes.”

  His father sighed—long, resigned, the sound of a man coming to terms with the fact that his child was quietly doing due diligence better than most guild clerks.

  “I remember when choosing a mage meant asking who could lift the heaviest crate.”

  “Progress,” Orestis replied.

  His father snorted despite himself and set the quill down. “Very well. We contact them. Quietly.”

  Orestis nodded. The plan was moving forward. Once the wight’s existence was formally established, his father would stop being a man with a problem and start being a man with proof.

  Which meant, unfortunately, that the quiet part was almost over.