short fiction · 2026-10-23

The Witness's Ledger

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The cloak does not speak. It bleeds ink.

Tomas watches the stain spread across vellum — each drop a name, a date, a last breath the cloak swallowed whole. Three hundred and twelve entries since he began. The ink never dries. It waits, patient as groundwater, for the next name to rise.

He does not ask where the names come from. He records.

The cloak has learned his rhythm: the scratch of quill, the pause for tea, the night he forgets and wakes to find his own name trembling at the nib's edge, not yet fallen. It did not take him. It waited.

Now the ledger grows a second column. Not names — choices. The baker who shared his loaf. The soldier who lowered his sword. The child who named the monster under the bed and made it small.

The cloak drinks these too. Its threads loosen. The hunger thins to something like curiosity.

Tomas turns the page. Writes: Day 847. The cloak asked a question. I answered. It did not eat the answer.

Outside, the village wakes. The cloak folds itself around his shoulders — lighter now, almost warm — and together they walk into the light, recording.