Chapter 11 · The Gatekeeper's Gambit - Chapter 11: Wei's Private Ledger

The ledger was burning.

Mo Han yanked his hand back as black fire crawled across the cover, eating through the physical binding like acid through skin. Not metaphorical fire. Actual flames, cold enough to frost the air around them, hot enough to make the paper curl and scream.

"Shit." He lunged forward anyway, fingers closing around the spine. The cold bit deep, past skin, past bone. His hand went numb instantly.

Behind him Su Jin sucked in a breath. "What are you doing? Let it go."

"Can't." The word came out through gritted teeth. The ledger was the only hard proof Wei Tiegu had been running off-book deals for three years. Audit logs could be altered. Witness statements could be suppressed. But this thing, this stupid physical book Wei kept because he was old-school and paranoid about digital traces, this was real.

And the tower knew it.

The black fire spread faster, licking up Mo Han's wrist. Ice and heat at the same time, the kind of paradox that meant high-level construct work. Someone had embedded a trap directly into the ledger's material existence, keyed to activate the second an unauthorized person touched it.

Wei's insurance policy.

"Mo Han.