Chapter 1 – The Ledger of Lies
The first thing Aden Holt remembered was the smell.
Rot, sweat, and smoke — thick enough to choke him awake. He gasped, his throat burning as if he'd swallowed fire. His eyes snapped open to a low wooden ceiling, beams crawling with cobwebs. Light flickered through a cracked shutter, dust motes dancing in the beam like tiny ghosts.
He sat up. The bed beneath him creaked — rough straw, the blanket stiff with dried sweat. His body ached in strange places. When he pressed his palm to his chest, he felt lean muscle, scars, and calluses that weren't his.
The reflection in the grimy mirror across the room wasn't his either.
A gaunt, pale man stared back — brown hair streaked with dirt, a small scar beneath his left eye. His clothes were threadbare but neat, the kind a scribe or clerk might wear.
He whispered hoarsely, "What the hell…"
But the voice wasn't his either.
Outside, distant bells tolled over the sound of a city — a sound unlike any city he knew. Criers shouting, hooves clattering on cobblestone, gulls crying above the harbor. A voice drifted through the window:
"Smallfolk! Bread and salt, two coppers a loaf!"
Then another:
"By order of the Master of Coin!"
He froze. That name — Master of Coin.
It couldn't be.
But when he stumbled outside, the truth was written across the skyline.
The Red Keep loomed above the city like a crimson crown. Beyond it, the smell of the sea carried over rooftops and alleys that wound like veins. He'd seen it before — in pictures, in fan theories, in stories.
King's Landing.
And somehow, impossibly, he was standing inside it.
---
Aden didn't remember how he'd died. The last clear image was a screen glowing in the dark, a half-read article about Littlefinger's economic schemes. Then pain — sharp, electric — and a blur of motion. After that, nothing but voices, fragments, and a sense of falling.
He'd awakened in the body of Aden Holt, a minor scribe in service to the Crown. A man of no birth, no titles, but enough skill with numbers to be noticed by one of the realm's most dangerous minds.
And within weeks, he'd been recruited into the office of Petyr Baelish himself.
---
Now, weeks later, he sat under candlelight, scratching figures onto parchment.
Two thousand gold dragons — unaccounted for. Gone like breath in the wind.
The ink gleamed wetly under the candle's glow. Beyond the narrow window, King's Landing slept, if one could call that restless sprawl "sleep." The Red Keep pulsed above it like a beating heart, its veins full of gold, lies, and whispers.
And he — Aden Holt of nowhere — was its bookkeeper.
Or rather, Littlefinger's bookkeeper.
The Master of Coin had a habit of disappearing after sunset — to brothels, councils, or darker corners of the city. Aden stayed behind, stitching numbers into neat rows, pretending they made sense.
"Gold is power," Baelish had told him on the first day. "But only to those who know how to move it unseen."
Aden had smiled. He'd known that line already — from a quote online, back when this world was fiction. Hearing it here had chilled him to the bone.
Still, he learned fast.
He noticed when tariffs were shifted.
When debts vanished overnight.
When the Crown's coffers grew lighter but its debts thicker.
And sometimes, when the numbers refused to align, he made them align himself.
No one noticed when he changed a merchant's report, or adjusted a column.
It was frighteningly easy to alter fate with a quill.
---
The door creaked open.
Petyr Baelish stepped in, wearing that patient smile — half amusement, half calculation.
"You're still awake," he said softly. "I do admire a man who loves his ledgers more than his sleep."
Aden didn't look up. "Numbers don't lie. People do."
Littlefinger chuckled. "Ah. But the trick, my boy, is to make your numbers lie so beautifully that people thank you for it."
He approached the desk, eyes glinting in the candlelight. "Tell me, Aden. If I were to vanish tomorrow, how much of this kingdom would still stand?"
Aden met his gaze. "Half," he said flatly. "The rest would drown in its own debts."
Littlefinger's grin widened. "Then you see as I do."
He turned, cloak brushing the floor. "You'll do well here. But remember — clever men climb quickly… until their cleverness offends the wrong fool."
Aden smirked faintly. "I'm careful which fools I offend."
"Good." Baelish paused by the door. "Tomorrow, you'll meet the Spice King. He grows impatient about the Crown's repayments. Handle it. Quietly."
The door shut with a soft click.
Aden exhaled, eyes flicking to the parchment again.
Smarter than the game? Littlefinger had said once.
He almost smiled.
No. I intend to become the one who writes the rules.
He dipped his quill, adjusted one number, and in doing so, changed another man's life — or ended it.
Outside, the bells of the Red Keep tolled midnight.
Inside, in the flickering candlelight, the new game began.
---
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