The journal was heavier than it should have been. Ledger sat at the desk with the window open just enough to let the air turn over. The street below was quiet — too early for crowds, too late for the night-walkers.
He opened the journal to the middle and began flipping forward page by page, looking for patterns. The handwriting shifted over time — tighter when careful, sprawling when hurried. Some pages were filled corner to corner with scrawls that collapsed into lines and scratches.
Near the back, the margins were crowded with diagrams that didn't match each other. Circles with lines shooting off like compass points. Stacked squares. Something that might have been a map, or a schematic of a building that no longer existed.
One entry started mid-sentence:
…no use speaking to the mirror unless you know whose voice will answer. The square keeps the hooks off, but it doesn't keep the reflection from looking back. That's different. That's the ego. Everyone has one, but not everyone should meet it.
Ledger read the last line twice.
The next paragraph was barely legible, the words curling back over themselves:
Feed the glass what it wants — the right kind of hunger, the one it recognizes. Ask in the right way and it will answer, but it answers as you. It knows the shape you walk in, and it will remember if you lie to it.
Below that was a numbered list, the only place in the journal with a sense of order:
Vessel of water that hasn't boiled.
Black cloth with no hem.
Ash from burned bone (human is better).
Key that doesn't open anything.
Salt, untouched by hand.
A name you haven't used in a year.
Time — between the last bell and the first crow.
The last item wasn't numbered, just written sideways along the page's edge: Don't look directly at it until it speaks first.
Ledger closed the journal, keeping a finger in the page. The writing had the cadence of paranoia, but the list was tangible. It could be done.
The room around him felt smaller. He stood, pulled on his coat, and pocketed the keys.
The street was louder now. A man hawked fish from a cart, his hands and apron wet with brine. A girl with a basket of folded cloth moved against the tide of foot traffic, head bent low. The bell in the distance rang once, not a call to service but a reminder: morning was slipping away.
Ledger kept to the edges, eyes on the shop signs. The first item was easy — a vessel of water. He ducked into a secondhand stall and found a glass bottle, narrow-necked, with a stopper carved to fit. The shopkeeper, a woman with clouded eyes, wrapped it in paper without a word.
Black cloth with no hem came from a draper's on the next street. The roll she cut it from looked old, the edges frayed already. He didn't ask where it came from.
The ash was harder. The journal had said "human is better," and though Ledger doubted he'd find that openly, the city had a way of making room for things that shouldn't be possible.
On Fishbone Street, a Bonewright's stall was set up between two shuttered shops. The man behind it wore an apron blackened at the edges, a leather pouch hanging from one shoulder. Ledger asked for crematory ash. The man nodded, took out a small tin, and tapped it twice before handing it over.
"Human," the man said. "Better."
Ledger didn't ask the price — just left coins on the counter and moved on.
The key came from a locksmith's who smelled of oil and dust. Ledger picked through a tray of discards until he found one with the teeth filed blunt.
Salt was easy, but finding it untouched by hand meant taking it directly from the sack, letting it pour into paper. The grocer gave him a look but said nothing.
That left the name. The journal hadn't explained how to get one — just that it had to be unused for a year. Ledger thought about the names he'd carried, both his own and the one belonging to this body. Neither fit the rule. But he remembered something: a half-name someone had once called him before he'd stopped answering to it. A name that had hung in the air for a moment before falling. That would do.
He didn't write it down.
By the time he returned to the apartment, the light had flattened into the color of tin. The woman in the black scarf was back under the lamppost, head tilted up toward his window. This time, her scarf had slipped, revealing a jaw that didn't quite match the rest of her face.
Ledger unlocked the door and went inside without looking back.
He set the items out on the desk in a neat row. The bottle of water. The folded black cloth. The tin of ash. The key. The packet of salt. The name, unspoken. And the knowledge of the hour it would have to be done.
He opened the journal again and read the paragraph under the list:
When the crow calls, it's already too late. The ego doesn't wait for you — it knows when you're late, and it will take what you brought without asking. Don't ask for more than you can carry. Don't give it more than you mean to.
Ledger closed the journal and sat in the chair, listening to the building. Upstairs, a floorboard groaned. Somewhere far below, a door slammed, and voices broke into argument before settling back into silence.
The ritual could wait until night.
But the day already felt shorter than it should.