The balance scale hung from its blackened iron frame, bolted into the stone, beam polished smooth where hands brushed it day after day. The pans were shallow and scarred, their rims nicked from years of careless placement.

The weights were kept in a low rack beneath it, each one seated in a worn groove. Dull gray, square-shouldered, stamped once and never touched again. They existed to settle arguments, and they did that by agreeing with themselves.

Rell had lifted them all day.

That had always been the job at the end of a shift. Clear the pans, return the weights, check the beam. Make sure nothing had gone missing or been swapped. It was work done by feel as much as sight. After a few years, you stopped reading the stamps. Your body knew which weight asked more of it, which one made your wrist turn just a little.

The larger weights went first. Then the mid-range. Then the small ones, used for fines and balance checks.

Rell reached for the eight-mark weight. He felt it before it left the rack.

It wasn’t wrong in a dramatic way. It didn’t pull or drag his arm down. It was just…heavier than it should have been, the way a stair can be a finger-width higher than expected and catch you.

He lifted it anyway.

His forearm tightened too early. His breath set itself for a heavier pull. He adjusted mid-lift without thinking, compensating for weight that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Rell paused, the weight in his hands. He set it into the pan.

The beam dipped, then settled level. Clean. No hesitation. No bias to either side. The scale agreed with itself, the way it always had.

Rell frowned and lifted the weight again.

Still wrong.

Not enough to strain. But enough that he couldn’t talk himself out of it.

He glanced around, then back at the scale. The room was unchanged. Stone walls, open shutters. Chalk dust ground into the floor. No draft tugged at the pans, and no vibration traveled through the frame.

He set the weight down, flexed his fingers once, and lifted it a third time.

Wrong.

Rell stood there longer than he should have, staring at the weight. It was the kind of pause that didn’t belong anywhere official.

If the weight was wrong, the scale was wrong. If the scale was wrong, every balance struck on it today was wrong. And if that was true...

Rell set the weight back in its groove rather than finish that thought.

He checked the stamp. Intact. No filing. No cracks. He lifted the seven-mark weight beside it. Fine. The nine-mark. Fine. Back to the eight.

Wrong again.

Someone coughed at the far end of the hall. Rell felt the moment tighten, then pass. He slid the weight into place, wiped his hands on his apron, and moved on.

The rest of the rack behaved.

By the time he finished, the hesitation already felt like something that had happened earlier in the day, not just minutes ago. He carried the logbook to the desk near the door, flipped it open, and scanned down the column.

Balances verified.

Measures within charter.

No variance observed.

His initials sat neatly at the end of the line, angled the way they always were.

Rell stared at them.

He didn’t remember writing that.

That wasn’t unusual on its own. End-of-shift notes blurred together. You learned to write while thinking about supper, about sore hands, about the walk home. Still, he stood there with the book open longer than necessary, replaying the moment in his head. The lift. The strain. The pause before he’d moved on.

He closed the logbook and turned back to the scale.

The eight-mark weight lifted cleanly. Perfectly, even.

His arm didn’t brace. His breath stayed even. He set it in the pan and paired it against the others. The beam settled level, patient and impartial. He lifted it again and felt nothing out of place.

Rell hadn’t realized he was holding breath, but it came out in a huff.

The record was correct. The scale was correct. The weight had nowhere left to be wrong.

He returned the logbook to its shelf and hung his apron on its peg.

At the tavern that night, the talk was loud and loose, the way it always got once the first mugs were empty. Someone complained about a balance sticking at the docks. Someone else swore a sack had come up light for no reason at all.

“One of those thin spots they keep talk—”

“No. You can’t just keep blaming veilstress, Armand,” someone said, a few heads nodding as laughter rolled down the table. The conversation itself moved on without waiting for an answer.

Rell drank and said nothing. Whatever had gone wrong had been named, corrected, and dismissed all at once.

Tomorrow he would lift the weights again. He would watch the beam settle. He would trust the stamps, the beam, and the book.

And when his hands prepared for a weight that wasn’t there, he would not pause long enough to notice.