DIRTY CASH (MONEY TALKS)

When In Doubt

The storm split the heavens, lightning clawing across the night like fire upon parchment. For a single breath, the square stood frozen in that light, and all was revealed.

Grathok’s blade caught the bolt and drank it whole. The steel blazed white, then black again, as if it had been tempered in the furnace of creation itself. Sparks hissed upon the stones, yet none dared step near.

In that illumination, the truth was laid bare. Nathaniel Harrow stood across from the giant, and in his hand he held not pistol nor lantern, but a contract. His eyes widened as he recognized the script. The same hand that had carved death into ledgers and altars had written his orders. Each coin he had accepted, each note he had read, each step he had taken—funded by Grathok himself.

The contract was no longer parchment. It was thunder given form, lines of fire written in the rain. The letters crossed themselves out as he read, names of the dead dissolving like ink in floodwater. The tally was complete. All debts had been balanced.

And yet, one line remained. A single name not yet erased. His own.

The crowd, if it could still be called that, felt the weight of revelation without reading a word. Knees struck stone. Mouths opened in prayer or silence. The thirteenth bell tolled again, though this time it came from the sky, as though the storm itself were the belfry.

Grathok raised his helm toward Harrow. The gesture was not challenge but benediction, a gauntlet offered in inheritance. In that moment, the hunter understood: he had not been chasing a specter. He had been prepared, molded, summoned.

Chapter XV: The Contract Revealed

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