The bar was the kind of place that didn’t advertise its presence. No painted sign, no etched lettering above the door—just a sliver of warm, amber light leaking from a half-cracked entrance, the smell of whiskey and smoke thick in the damp night air.


    The Black Veil catered to the kind of patrons who didn’t want to be known.


    People who paid in cash, used false names, and came to drink away the parts of themselves they couldn’t carry in daylight. I’d never had much use for places like this, but I knew their value.


    I stepped inside, the heavy door swinging shut behind me.


    The interior was dimly lit, the air thick with the scent of spilled liquor and old wood varnish. A few heads lifted at my entrance, eyes flicking over me in the brief, measuring way of men who knew how to spot trouble before it walked through the door. I wasn’t trouble. But I wasn’t welcome, either. Not here.


    But that didn’t matter.


    I was an Undertaker. We weren’t welcome anywhere.


    I made my way to the bar.


    The bartender was a thick-set man with silver-threaded hair and a scar running from his chin to his temple. He wiped a glass clean with the slow, measured patience of someone who’d done this too many times. His eyes barely flicked up as he set the glass down in front of me.


    He didn’t ask what I wanted. Just raised a brow.


    I leaned in, elbows on the counter. “I’m looking for someone.”


    He snorted, setting the glass down with a dull thunk. “That’s what they all say.”


    “Not like this.”


    I reached into my coat and pulled out the folded letter. I didn’t unfold it—just let it rest between two fingers, letting the faintest glimpse of the handwriting show.


    The bartender’s expression didn’t change. But his grip on the cloth tightened.


    I saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes. It was brief—so brief that a lesser man might have missed it—but it was there.


    “Name?” he asked, voice rough.


    “Nathaniel Kade.”


    The bartender’s jaw tensed. A subtle movement, but enough. “Never heard of him.”


    I kept my tone low. “Her. She was here, wasn’t she?”


    I watched him carefully, searching for some tell—a twitch of the lip, a narrowing of the eyes. Anything that might confirm what I already suspected. But the bartender was a hard man to read. He just stared at me with that same flat gaze, neither confirming nor denying anything.


    Finally, he spoke.


    “Not since last week. Last time I saw her, she said she was going to catch a train. Not that night, maybe not even soon. But the way she said it—like it was something she’d always been about to do, but never did.”


    “And?”


    “She came in. Had a drink. Talked to some folks. Left.”


    “Anyone in particular?”


    The bartender shrugged. “The usual suspects.”


    “What’s that supposed to mean?”


    He paused, wiping at the counter with the same methodical focus he’d given the glass.


    I waited.


    “That girl was trouble,” he finally said, not looking up from his work. “Not the kind that hurts people, mind you. The kind that finds it. Can’t seem to help themselves. Always getting mixed up in things they shouldn’t.” A pause. “You know the type.”


    “Yeah,” I said, thinking of the man I’d once been. “I do.”


    “She liked to talk,” he went on, sliding the glass down the bar. It came to rest near a stack of unpolished stemware, each one marked with a different name or initials. “Liked to listen, too. Bought rounds. Laughed at the right times. Didn’t cause any fuss. She always talked like he was passing through. Like she wasn’t planning to stay long. Funny thing is, I don’t think she ever actually left.”


    He shrugged. “Good company, but an odd one at that. You’d think you weren’t talking with a woman at all, if you know what I mean. Half expected her to walk in with a cigar, a bottle of gin, and a mouth full of swears like some of the dockworkers.”


    The line was delivered in a gruff, casual way, like he’d said it a hundred times before and would say it a hundred more. Maybe he had.


    Maybe it was that casualness that made it feel so strange.


    If Nathaniel Kade had been a fraction of Eleanor Reed’s mind, some piece of her soul fighting for control, what did it mean that her alter ego was the one who made all the social connections? That Nathaniel Kade was the one known at the bar, welcomed by name, allowed to engage in the fantasies of drinking and camaraderie?


    “A regular?” I asked.


    “For a while,” the bartender said. “Every day, right before closing. Never stayed past midnight.”


    “Alone?”


    He nodded. “Always. Well, almost always. She’d come in with someone every now and then, but they never stayed.”


    “Did she have a usual table?”


    “Back corner,” he gestured with a jut of his chin. “Faced the wall, usually.”


    Interesting. Most people who sat alone preferred to sit with their backs to the wall so they could see who approached them. Eleanor—or Nathaniel—had chosen to sit exposed, where they couldn’t watch the door, but had the room at their back. It was a gesture of trust. Of vulnerability. Of inviting companionship, instead of guarding against it.


    I glanced back at the empty table. “Were any of her companions here tonight?”


    “Doubt it. She hadn’t been here since last week.”


    “But when she used to come in, any regular drinking partners? Any faces she spoke to often?”


    “Sure.” A shrug. “Some of the regulars. Other folks, too.”


    “Names?”


    The bartender’s mouth settled into a firm, unyielding line. “Look, whoever you are, I run a business. And my business is built on discretion. People come to places like this because they need to be forgotten for a while, and I’m not going to be the one to take that away from them.”


    He looked me straight in the eye, and I knew he meant every word.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    “I’m not here to cause trouble,” I said. “Or to make things difficult for you or your patrons. I just want to find out who she really was.”


    I let the silence hang for a beat.


    “So I know what name to put on the book.”


    He didn’t look away, and I didn’t blink. I could tell he was weighing his choices, measuring the risks. A man like him had to be careful. This wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to anger. But neither was the Library.


    Finally, he exhaled, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. “Wait here,” he muttered.


    He headed into the back room.


    I watched him go.


    The bar had filled up in the meantime, a steady trickle of patrons drifting in, and the space was starting to get noisy, a dull roar of conversation and clinking glasses. I caught snatches of conversations, arguments about politics, flirtations between workers coming off long shifts.


    Snatches of life.


    I ignored them all.


    The minutes crawled by. I waited. When the bartender emerged, he set something on the bar between us.


    A pocket watch.


    It was old, the brass casing scratched and dulled with time. A small, delicate engraving on the back.


    I turned it over, brushing away the layer of dust.


    E.R.


    Eleanor Reed.


    I shut my eyes briefly.


    “Never seen him with it before that night,” the bartender murmured. “Seemed strange, how she just... left it behind.”


    Not strange.


    I opened the watch with a quiet click.


    Inside, the cracked face of the clock hands was frozen at a time that meant nothing to me. But the inner lid had something else.


    A mirror.


    Small. Just enough to reflect a single eye, a sliver of a face. Smoky, speckled, and distorted, but enough. It was the kind of mirror meant for quick glances—a stolen look before stepping into the world, before ensuring that everything was in place. Not for vanity, but for certainty. A reassurance. A check.


    Had Eleanor Reed looked into this mirror and seen herself? Or had she seen someone else entirely?


    I turned the watch slightly, angling it so I could see my own reflection. The dim light from the bar caught the edge of my face, distorting it, making it unfamiliar. It struck me then—Nathaniel Kade would have only ever seen himself like this. In fragments. In pieces. Never whole.


    He had existed in the cracks of Eleanor Reed’s life, slipping into the empty spaces where she let him take shape. But did he know? Had he ever understood that he was just a reflection, a second self carved out of necessity?


    Or had he believed himself to be real?


    I swallowed, my grip tightening around the watch. The weight of it was wrong.


    Pocket watches had a kind of presence—something meant to be felt in the hand, its weight a comfort, a reminder of time passing in steady, measured increments. This one had the opposite effect.


    It felt like something left behind.


    Forgotten.


    Discarded.


    Nathaniel Kade had owned nothing. No records, no belongings, no past. He had only ever existed when Eleanor let him.


    But this watch was Eleanor’s.


    She had carried it. Checked it. Used it.


    And yet, somehow, it had ended up here, left behind by a man who had never existed.


    I traced the engraving with my thumb—E.R.


    Had she carried it even when she was Nathaniel? Had she slipped it into her coat pocket, fingers brushing over it absentmindedly while she ordered a drink at the bar, while she spoke in a voice that was not hers, but was?


    Had she pulled it out in moments of doubt, flipping the lid open, looking into the mirror just to remind herself of who—or what—she was?


    Had Nathaniel done the same?


    Had he looked into it and seen a ghost staring back at him?


    The hands of the clock were frozen in time, but maybe that was fitting. Maybe this was the moment it had stopped mattering. The moment she had stopped fighting.


    Or the moment she had given in.


    A last confession, left behind in brass and glass.


    I shut the case with a quiet click, sliding it into my pocket.


    Nathaniel Kade had never owned this watch.


    But Eleanor Reed had.


    And she had let it go.


    Maybe that was all the proof I needed.


    “Thanks,” I muttered.


    The bartender grunted, picking up another glass.


    I headed for the door.


    <hr>


    I walked through the rain-slicked streets, the city stretching out before me in flickering gaslight and half-seen reflections. The pocket watch felt heavier than it should have—brass and glass weighed down by something less tangible, something that pressed against the edges of my thoughts like an unanswered question.


    The pieces fit now.


    Nathaniel Kade had existed. Not in a way that left records, not in a way the world had ever acknowledged. But he had been real enough to step into bars, to drink among strangers, to carve out moments where he could exist beyond the confines of Eleanor Reed’s life.


    And yet, he had never been allowed to stay.


    That was the truth of it.


    Eleanor Reed was the one the world knew. The one who paid rent, walked the streets unnoticed, lived a life quiet and small. Nathaniel Kade had been something else—a self built from longing, from defiance, from the need to be someone other than what the world expected. But he had existed only in between things, in the shadows of another name, in places where he didn’t have to answer to anyone but himself.


    The bartender had said Nathaniel always talked like he was passing through—like he was waiting for the right moment to leave, but never did.


    That was because he was never meant to stay.


    I turned the pocket watch over in my palm, tracing the engraved initials on the back. E.R. Eleanor Reed’s name, etched in metal.


    But she hadn’t been the one to leave it behind.


    Nathaniel had.


    That was the part I had almost missed.


    Nathaniel wasn’t a life that had been cut short—he was a self that had been cut short. And in that last night, when he’d stopped in at the bar, buying rounds and laughing at the right times, he’d known it was the end.


    Nathaniel Kade had been real—but even he had known he was slipping. That he was losing his grip on whatever thin thread tethered him to existence.


    I clicked the watch open.


    The mirror inside caught a flicker of lamplight, reflecting only a sliver of my face. I thought about how many times Nathaniel had looked into it, seeing his own reflection, but always within Eleanor’s possession.


    Had it ever felt like his?


    Or had it always reminded him of the self he could never fully escape?


    The watch was a marker of time running out—not just for Eleanor’s body, but for Nathaniel’s existence.


    And maybe he’d known.


    Maybe that was why he left it behind.


    Because he had known, deep down, that he wasn’t going to last.


    That the lines were blurring.


    That soon, there wouldn’t be space for him anymore.


    That he was about to be lost.


    I thought of the letter—his words, scrawled in hurried ink.


    <blockquote>


    “I can’t do this much longer. The lines are blurring. I don’t know where I end and she begins. If something happens to me, please—let me be remembered for who I was. Not for who they think I am.”


    </blockquote>


    Nathaniel had written that.


    Not Eleanor.


    Because Nathaniel had been the one who knew he was disappearing.


    He had felt it—the way Eleanor’s life would always reclaim him, the way she could step back into the world unquestioned while he was always a risk, an uncertainty, a shadow.


    Nathaniel had left behind that letter because he knew he might not last.


    Nathaniel had left behind the pocket watch because he didn’t need it anymore.


    And when death finally came—when Transcription took hold, unraveling a life into ink and parchment—it hadn’t taken the life the world knew.


    It had taken the life that had fought hardest to exist.


    Nathaniel Kade had been the one standing at the end.


    The one holding the pen.


    That was why Transcription had recorded his story.


    I exhaled slowly, tilting my head up to the rain.


    <blockquote>


    “The Last Confession of Nathaniel Kade.”


    </blockquote>


    A confession of existence.


    A final admission.


    Nathaniel had lived.


    Not in full.


    Not in permanence.


    But he had lived enough.


    And Eleanor Reed had known it.


    She had known it when Nathaniel wrote that letter, his last desperate plea not to be erased.


    She had known it when Nathaniel left the pocket watch behind, as if he had finally stopped running.


    And I knew it now, too.


    For the first time since becoming an Undertaker, I wasn’t sure what to do with the book.


    I wasn’t sure what to do with the truth.