Ashmoor keeps one book. Every obligation contracted inside the city walls — coin, labour, grief, promise — is entered into the civic ledger beneath the Records Hall, and the entry is the debt. Not a record of it. The thing itself. This makes Ashmoor orderly in a way other cities envy and no one visits twice. Nothing is forgotten and nothing is forgiven; a debt may only be moved. The Registrars who keep the book are neither loved nor opposed, because opposing them is itself an obligation and obligations are written down. What the city does not say aloud is that the ledger has margins, and that a person can be moved into them. A struck name still walks and eats and speaks. It simply stops being owed anything by anyone — including a place, a history, and a brother.