Morning came thin and hard. The market below was already trading news in barters. Jinx packed the ledger in a bag wrapped with cloth wards she had swiped from Muro’s supply. She left Bramma a coin and a promise: “I will not bring trouble to your door.”

The artist utilizes heavy shadows in the treatment room scenes to emphasize the suffocating nature of their contract.

In the vault beneath Muro’s shop, light was low, and the air tasted like cut citrus. Runes on the walls were chalked in a handwriting that might have been accidental. Jinx’s fingers brushed the lock and felt its tiny hum against her skin. Wards were manipulative things; they read motive, not face. You bent your intent into an unthreatening braid: curiosity without malice, interest without ownership. She had done that before — lied to a ward about stealing a memory and left the memory as repayment.

Vireo smiled without mirth. “Promises can be undone if the promise-maker is made to remember why they promised. The ledger records those who owe. You need to make them feel the weight of what they traded. Harrow can be made to remember by a small theater of truth. But it requires a performance — witnesses, stakes, a ledger and a name voiced aloud in the place where contracts are kept.”