Those Who Came Before.

Red Pheasant Inn

The Next Morning

The storm had passed.

It left behind a sky the color of cold iron, the smell of wet earth, and a village too damp to bother itself with gossip. Which suited Alistair just fine.

He ate quietly. Toast. A boiled egg. Tea strong enough to resurrect a horse. No one spoke to him, save the innkeeper's wife, who gave him that tight-lipped country smile that always meant I don't like you, but you pay well enough.

Perfect.

He retired to his room, lit the hearth again, and unwrapped the second letter for the tenth time. The real one. The one meant for him.

If you are reading this, something has gone terribly wrong.

It said nothing else. No signature. No warning. Just those twelve words.

But they had rewritten everything.

The ledger lay shut on the desk. For once, it was quiet.

Alistair should have been relieved.

He wasn't.

He cracked the spine open with a muttered sigh.

To his surprise, it did not open to a commentary on vengeance or forged letters or strategic disappearances.

Instead, it fell open to the center. The parchment yellowed with age. The ink different—browner, faded, messier.

The first entry read,

I do not know this name. They say I am Sir Lionel Charon. I am not. But I wear his face, and I walk through his debts. The Queen's whisperers think I survived the drowning. I did not.

—April 2nd, 1649

Alistair sat forward.

Another name.

Another life.

He turned the page.

They keep calling me General. But I do not remember the battle. I was a barista. In Seoul. I don't even like horses.

—Private Journal of one "General" Kang Min-Seok, Ottoman Borderlands, 1832

Another.

Lady Estelle of Ormont. Or so the emperor believes. Her death was convenient. My arrival less so. The maids whisper when I weep into the embroidery. But no one dares ask the real question: why the lady now reads maps in her study and poisons her tea before she drinks it.

—Entry dated 1781

Alistair turned another page. The entries came faster now, as if the book had been waiting.

I tried to vanish. Bought land in the colonies. Lived as a smith. Ten years of peace. Then a taxman arrived with my old name in his ledger. The past always comes back. Always.

—Anonymous, Virginia Territory, 1754

No one retires. Not truly. They find us. The roles shift. The stage resets. The applause always fades.

I began as a steward. Died as a king. Forgot who I was in between.

—A. Baruch, 1693

Alistair shut the book.

He stared at the grain of the desk beneath his hands. The heat of the fire. The hiss of rain on the glass.

He was not the first.

Not by a long mile.

The ledger fluttered once more. As if clearing its throat.

Then, across the margin of the next page, a single line appeared.

You are the first to pause.

Alistair did not move.

The others all ran. Toward power. Toward glory. Toward absolution.

A pause.

You reached for toast. And a boiled egg.

He exhaled through his nose. Sat back.

"What can I say," he muttered, "I enjoy a soft landing."

The ledger didn't reply.

But it didn't turn the page either.

The fire cracked softly in the hearth, throwing shadows across the room.

Alistair stared down at the open page of the ledger, where his name no longer stood alone. The entries had changed. Or perhaps revealed themselves. The past lives of those who had come before people thrust into broken skins, thrown into courts and trenches and tea rooms they did not belong to.

And now it seemed there were others still. Present tense.

The ledger's page didn't turn, but the margin darkened slightly. A whisper of ink surfaced, no flourish, no heading, just four words smudged in the margin as though a careless scribe had begun a list and walked away halfway through.

Bones. Hawk. Moth. Rook.

The letters hung crooked on the parchment, faint but deliberate.

Alistair leaned forward.

"Cryptic," he muttered. "How unlike you."

The ledger, predictably, did not reply.

He tapped the page with the back of a fingernail.

"You could have just given me more clues aside from moth, bones, hawk, and rook. Like... I don't know—locations? A surname or two? A friendly map? Even a tavern name scrawled in the back?"

The page remained unchanged. The ink didn't shimmer. No secret compartments unfolded. No coordinates appeared.

"Of course," he sighed. "Why make it easy?"

Still, the ledger had said nothing about vengeance. Nothing about empires or thrones or redemption. No bloody prophecies. No gold-lined quests. Only—pause. And now...find them.

He turned the page.

A slow crease appeared down the center, not from time, but intent. A new line bloomed.

If you wish to retire, you will need others willing to carry the fire.

Another curl of ink formed beneath it, less like handwriting and more like breath caught in paper.

The fire does not wish to go out. It only wishes to move.

Alistair narrowed his eyes.

"Poetic. But I'm beginning to suspect this entire book is just a long-winded attempt to drag me into employment."

He closed the cover.

Sat back in his chair.

His eyes flicked back to the list in his mind. Bones. Hawk. Moth. Rook.

Nicknames, most likely. Titles, perhaps. Not military code—he'd recognize the cadence. No ranks attached. Just identifiers.

Bones. A surgeon? A killer?

Hawk. Could be a scout. A sniper. A bird-watcher with a particularly aggressive disposition.

Moth. That one unsettled him. Too soft. Too quiet. Someone drawn to danger for its own sake?

Rook... That could be military. Or chess. Or a man who builds towers and waits for them to fall.

The fire popped in the hearth, startling him slightly.

---

He stood, walked once around the small room, then poured himself another half-measure of scotch. It was marginally less vile on the second day. Or he was adapting.

He returned to the desk, ledger closed now, his fingers tapping slowly against its surface.

"So let me guess," he said aloud, to the empty room. "These aren't names. They're Holders."

The word had slipped out before he could stop it. As if it had always been tucked at the back of his tongue.

Holders.

Not owners. Not readers. Holders. People who bore something more than knowledge. Something written into them.

The ledger remained inert. But there was a certain stillness in the air. Like a teacher refusing to interrupt a student who had finally reached the correct answer.

"Ninefolds," he said, voice low. "That's what you are, aren't you? One of... nine."

He hadn't known that a book could give the impression of watching without eyes, but the Gentleman's Ledger managed it. It sat there on the desk, mute, unmoving—yet somehow expectant.

"No prophecy? No chosen one? Just a checklist and a talent for sarcasm?"

Still nothing.

But something in him had shifted.

If the Ledger was one of the Ninefolds, then there were eight others. At least. Books with wills of their own, scattered across countries, each shaping a Holder in its own way. The Ledger hadn't given him powers...it had given him context. And now, it was giving him... delegates?

"So I do the hard work of not doing any work, and they handle the rest?" he mused. "A bureaucratic miracle."

He raised his glass to the fire.

"Well done, Ledger. You've just invented delegation."

---

Still, the names remained maddeningly vague.

He'd need to find them himself. One by one.

And not just find them. Convince them. Manage them.

Because if they were anything like him—unmoored, unwanted, dangerously competent—they would not be easy to sway. Or safe to cross.

He took another sip.

"I seem," he said to the empty room, "to have a great deal of work ahead if my retirement plan is going to succeed."

The ledger didn't answer.

But he could almost feel it smiling.