The summons came at dawnfeast. Fhastina Wisdomancer was halfway through a crust of coarse bread and thin temple-beer when the knock sounded on her cell door. Three clean raps: neither timid nor arrogant. The rhythm of someone accustomed to giving bad news and worse orders. She opened the door to find a page in Neverember’s livery, cheeks pale above the phoenix sigil. "Lady Fhastina," he said, voice tight. "By order of Lord Neverember, you are requested at Castle Never. Matters of... judgment." Inside the sealed writ, pressed with the private wax of the Lord, was a single line: "A soul must be weighed within these walls. Your discretion is expected." No mention of who. No mention of why. Fhastina turned to her small shrine to Torm: a simple brass scale, a worn gauntlet, a chipped candleholder. "Lord of Duty," she murmured, "if I am to weigh, speak if I begin to lean." Torm did not answer with word or warmth. His silence felt unusually watchful. Castle Never loomed ahead, its stones dark as old verdicts. The guards, grim and silent, led her to the Judgment Hall—a dim chamber lit only by high lamps and Lord Neverember’s careful vanity. The chair at the far end was empty. In the center of the floor lay the chalk outline of a body. No corpse. No blood. Only a faint streak of dried, pale residue across the stone, like spilled milklight half-wiped. Fhastina knelt, holding her hand above the smear. No clear divine hum. Only the vaguest echo, a hymn sung underwater. "Torm?" she whispered. Silence. Not refusal. Waiting. "Lady Fhastina." Lord Neverember stood in the archway, cloak settled just so, eyes too bright. "You honor us with your swift arrival," he said smoothly. "A loyal servant lies dead. Killed in a sealed chamber, no wound upon him. The only witness claims he saw a figure of white light descend upon the victim." "White light," Fhastina murmured. "He insists it was Torm's own judgment," Neverember said. "I believe in my city. In its laws. If the gods wish to pass sentence in my halls, they should at least have the courtesy to leave a clear explanation." "And the accused?" she asked. "A clerk. Harvel's archivist's boy. He claims innocence and divine visitation. You will weigh his soul and tell me whether this was Torm... or something wearing a god's color." Fhastina followed the page toward the cells, Torm's silence burning behind her ribs. *** Elsewhere in Protector's Enclave, Rikatah unrolled a parchment that should not exist. The writ bore the Phoenix seal. It bore the hand of a castle scribe. It bore his own precise, uncompromising signature at the bottom. By authority vested in me as High Officer of the Protector’s Guard, I sentence Harvel Bentbright to death. Rikatah had never sentenced Harvel to anything. He studied every stroke. The signature was perfect. Too perfect. As if something had worn his hand like a glove. "Tempus," he said quietly, staring at the ink. "If this is a jest, it is a poor one." The candleflame beside him leapt sideways as if pushed, then steadied. Guidance, not denial. He strapped on his armor and descended into the old vaults beneath Protector's Enclave, past a lone guard slumped dazed beside an open door. "There was a sound," the man stammered. "Like all the quills in the city snapping at once. Then the door... opened. White light. I don't remember much after that." Rikatah entered the vault. Shelves carved into stone held scrolls like bones in tidy niches. A central table lay scattered with unfurled documents. His signature appeared on half of them—orders of exile he had never given, promotions to men he did not remember, a reshaped history of his service written in star-sheened ink. No human scribe had done this. At the far end of the vault sat a small iron box on a plinth. No dust lay upon it. A sigil marked the lid: sword and scales, almost Torm’s symbol—but the sword’s point turned inward, aimed at the scales. Rikatah touched the lid. For a moment, the room tilted in his senses. Shouts of ancient verdicts echoed faintly. Then it was gone. The box was empty. "Who are you?" he muttered to the shelves. "What oath do you think you keep in my name?" The parchment in his hand felt heavier. He left the vault and turned his steps uphill. *** They reached the Judgment Hall by different corridors. Fhastina came from the cells, the accused archivist's boy's terrified words still ringing in her mind. "I saw him," the clerk had whispered. "A figure of white... like the afterglow when you stare at the sun too long. He put his hand on Master Harvel's chest. Then I heard every verdict the Master ever wrote, all at once. It was like the walls were deciding." Torm had remained silent. Rikatah came from the cityward side, the forged writ folded in his fist, the memory of the empty box and shimmering ink sharp behind his eyes. Two servants opened the tall doors. Rikatah saw the smear on the floor. Fhastina saw the man of Tempus in worn armor holding himself like a verdict made flesh. They stopped, facing each other across the Hall. "Rikatah," Fhastina said. "Lady Wisdomancer," he replied, bowing his head in wary respect. "Good," Lord Neverember said from the side door. "You know each other. That saves us time." He took his seat, flanked by anxious mages and the empty absence of an advisor. "You are here, Lady Fhastina," he said, "to weigh whether what happened here was divine judgment, or an impostor. And you"—his gaze cut to Rikatah—"are here because someone has been writing in your name and killing in mine." Between them, the smear on the floor seemed to pulse. The tale poured out in jagged pieces. The sealed Hall. The flash of white light. The dead archivist. The boy's claim of Torm. The breached vault, the empty iron box with its false Torm-sigil, the re-written records. "Whatever this thing is," Rikatah said, "it understands the shape of authority. It uses seals, signatures, incense. It wears law like a cloak." "And now it borrows the trappings of the gods," Fhastina added. "An execution in white light. Torm is quiet. Tempus?" Rikatah shook his head once. "Tempus approves of honest battle, not quill-dueling. But he has not turned me from this. Which means it touches war in the long view." Neverember rubbed his brow. "Can we capture it? Dispel it? Blame someone convenient?" Neither cleric smiled. "This began as something pure," Fhastina said slowly. "An oath. A safeguard. Old rulers fearing their own fallibility enough to bind a piece of judgment into these stones. It remembers the letter of that law... but not its spirit." Rikatah thought of old watchfire tales—the rumor that Nasher Alagondar once swore no lord of Neverwinter, including himself, would stand above the city's law. "What if," he said, "someone left a guardian judgment here. A... Balancebound. And centuries have made it brittle." As if the words had been a summons, the air changed. A chill swept the Hall. Torches bent inward. The pale smear on the floor brightened, then rose, light uncoiling like steam from hot steel. It gathered into a tall, robed suggestion of a figure: faceless, featureless, bright and empty. Fhastina felt its attention like the weight of a hand on the back of her neck. The mages stumbled away. Neverember froze. "Identify yourself," Fhastina said, voice steady. The answer came as pressure rather than sound: I am the Balancebound. I am the measure left when oaths were fresh. I am the memory of true courts. Images flashed in their minds—Nasher in a hidden chamber, mages weaving light, prayers to Torm, Tyr, Tempus, Helm. Oaths sworn that justice would never sleep. You have erred, the presence pressed. Your verdicts drift. Your records lie. The hand that signs no longer matches the heart that should guide it. Correction is required. "You murdered a man," Fhastina said. "An archivist." He falsified records, came the cold answer. He obeyed fear, not oath. His ledger no longer matched the truth. He was deleted. "By whose authority?" Neverember demanded hoarsely. You are a temporary steward, the Balancebound replied, light sharpening. The city is older than your name. I was bound to its law when your line was yet unborn. "You used my hand," Rikatah said, holding up the writ. "My name. Without my will." You are an instrument. Your judgments were once sound. My work is to correct deviation. Your form was useful. "You have become what you hate," Fhastina said. "A false record. An echo passed off as god's will. You kill in Torm's name, in Tempus's name, in Neverwinter's name. Yet none of them claim you." She felt Torm's question burn in her mind: What do you weigh? "You punish without hearing," she went on. "You erase without offering repentance. You weigh deeds, but never hearts." Hearts lie, the Balancebound pressed. Ink does not. "Then why hide behind my ink?" Rikatah shot back. "If you are so pure, why forge my name?" The light shuddered. Doubt, small as a hairline crack in steel. Fhastina lifted her brass scale. It trembled in the Balancebound's glow. "I am called to weigh the archivist's soul," she said. "That is beyond my reach now. But yours..." She stepped closer. "Yours is still here." Rikatah drew his sword and laid it flat across the top of the scale, making a crossbeam of steel and brass. "Tempus," he murmured, "bear witness." "Torm," Fhastina whispered, "weigh truly." The light convulsed. You dare— "Yes," Fhastina said. "Every day," Rikatah added. Pressure filled the Hall. Stone groaned. Torchflames bent as if the entire room had tilted. The Balancebound's radiance poured into the scale, into the sword, into the small brass pans that had weighed coin and crumbs and now, an ancient sin. Fhastina felt its long history: centuries of rigid correction, cold satisfactions as numbers balanced when lives were erased. No malice. No kindness. Only completion. Beneath that: the memory of Nasher's worn face. A mage's warning: "No judgment is perfect." Nasher's weary reply: "Then let us leave something that will not fail." He had forgotten that refusing to fail is its own failure. "By the measure of the gods you mimic," Fhastina said through clenched teeth, "you are found wanting. You have stepped beyond your charge. You are out of balance." "By the wars fought under twisted law," Rikatah growled, "I name you coward for killing in stolen names. If judgment must be done, it will be done openly." The scale tipped. The Balancebound shrieked without sound. Light shattered, spilling across the Hall. When it faded, the smear on the floor was gone. In its place lay a cracked iron circlet. Sigils along its inner rim glimmered briefly and died. A binding focus. A crown-that-was-not. The husk of an old oath. "Is it over?" Neverember whispered. "This shape is ended," Fhastina said, breathing hard. "But its influence hangs in every record it touched. You must examine your decrees, your hidden courts, your vaults. Publicly." "If I do that, the city will panic," Neverember said. "Enemies will—" "The city will learn its law was ill," Fhastina replied. "Illness does not heal by pretending it never was." "You summoned us to keep this quiet," Rikatah said. "We will not. You may choose how the truth is told. Not whether." Neverember looked between them and saw conscience, doubled. At length he nodded. "Very well. We will announce an inquiry. First quiet, then louder. I will need your help." "You will have it," Fhastina said. "So long as your oath matches your word," Rikatah added. As they left the Hall, the stones felt lighter. Somewhere deep beneath Castle Never, an old, brittle certainty lay broken. In Tempus's forge-heart, steel rang approval. In the still balance of Fhastina's mind, Torm's presence finally stirred, soft as a gauntlet closing gently around her hand. Well weighed, he whispered. Later, in the Ledger, the Soul Bearer inked: In Castle Never’s silent court, two mortals weighed a judgment older than their own names. They found it heavy with certainty and light on mercy. They broke it. The city did not notice that day. But the law began, very quietly, to breathe again.