Dallas steps into the study with the Liber Signorum Rubrorum held tight. The room feels smaller than before, boxed in by ancient texts, dust, and morning light. Dayton is already half-risen from his desk. Elena keeps the door covered, eyes moving over every shadow.
Professor Dayton
You brought it. Good. Put it down, carefully. Mercer Holdings did not just hide this book, they moved it like contraband.
Dallas sets the volume on Dayton’s desk. The old scholar’s fingers hover over the cover, not touching it yet. A faint odor rises from the binding, sour and chemical under the parchment smell.
Professor Dayton
That odor matters. Preservative, smoke, and something else, a residue from storage. If Mercer handled it, they wanted it sealed, cataloged, and forgotten.
Dallas Fontaine
The binding has been opened and closed more than once. Someone checked it recently.
Elena Vane
Then we are past the point of curiosity. If Mercer wanted the book buried, they are going to come looking for whoever has it now.
Dayton opens the first page and freezes. A clipped paper tab, stamped with Mercer Holdings routing marks, is tucked into the gutter. He looks up at Dallas, grave and certain.
Professor Dayton
This is the trail, Dallas. The book is not the prize. It is the proof they moved something out of reach, and whatever Mercer is hiding sits behind it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn the occult significance of the Liber Signorum Rubrorum
+ New Item Acquired
Liber Signorum Rubrorum
“Point to the routing tab and ask Dayton what the Mercer mark signifies.”
SUCCESS (Superb Psychology, rolled +0)
Dallas Fontaine
What does that Mercer mark mean?
Dallas points at the tab. Dayton bends closer, his glasses catching the blinds' pale stripes, and the room goes very still.
Professor Dayton
It is a routing stamp. Warehouse to archive, archive to courier, courier to disposal. Mercer used it to track anything they did not want seen twice.
Professor Dayton
And this one is not for the book. It is for what was taken from inside it.
He lifts the tab with a fingertip, revealing a faint impression beneath the glue, a handwritten church inventory code pressed into the paper fibers.
Professor Dayton
Mercer touched church material, Dallas. Not just the volume, something wrapped with it, catalogued with it, or hidden in it. The book was the shell.
Elena straightens at the door, her gaze flicking from the desk to the hall, while the cabinet gives a slow, dry knock from somewhere deeper in the apartment.
Professor Dayton
This means the Liber Signorum Rubrorum is not a relic. It is a container, and Mercer was moving a record with a church disguise on it.
Quest Complete
Bring the Liber Signorum Rubrorum to Professor Dayton
Quest Complete
Learn what Mercer touched in the church material
Quest Complete
Learn the occult significance of the Liber Signorum Rubrorum
“I check the knocking cabinet”
SUCCESS (Superb Perception, rolled +0)
Dallas sets the book aside and steps to the cabinet. The knocking stops the moment his hand hits the latch.
Dallas Fontaine
It is not the shelf moving. Something inside is answering touch and sound.
He opens the cabinet. Inside sits a narrow wooden box, shoved behind old files and wrapped in oilcloth, with Mercer shipping tape peeled back in a hurry.
Dallas lifts the wrap. A second paper tab falls out, marked with the same routing stamp and a church inventory number that matches the impression from the book.
Professor Dayton
There it is. They were not hiding the title, they were hiding the attachment.
Elena Vane
So the book was bait, and the rest is what they really moved.
At the bottom of the box, Dallas finds a folded manifest slip, a chapel address, and a handwritten note, Retrace after vespers. The paper smells faintly of salt and machine oil.
✓ Quest Accepted
Recover the church attachment