By morning, the winter hall is sealed beneath layered royal wards. The surviving witnesses remain within, while Hildra and the fleeing demons are absent beyond the eastern breach.
King Theodan Valiks
Let the judgment begin. The ledger, the sealed tome, and every sworn witness will be heard before House Wulfharth is sentenced.
The royal clerk arranges the Grathan ledger beside Valia’s warded tome. Tilla stays near Beareth at the council table, her sword still bearing frost-scarred scratches.
Valia Wulfharth
The three hidden wards revealed payments, names, and summoned powers. Yet one final layer remains sealed beneath the family’s oldest oath.
House Grathan rider
Our riders can identify the mercenary colors and the routes used to move stolen supplies. Their backer may be named if the crown follows the coin.
A guard carries in a captured satchel recovered from the breach, its clasp stamped with a half-scraped sigil. The mark resembles neither Grathan nor Valren.
Tilla Valren
Then this is no longer only House Wulfharth’s trial. Beareth, the crown needs what you recognized in that tome before its deepest revelation is opened.
“Nursing my injured arm I examine the satchel's half-scraped sigil”
FAILURE (Great Perception, rolled -2)
“Nursing my injured arm I examine the satchel's half-scraped sigil”
SUCCESS (Great Perception, rolled -1)
Beareth steadies his injured arm against the council table and turns the captured satchel beneath the ward-lamps. Frost flakes away from the half-scraped clasp.
Beareth Wulfharth
The remaining strokes match the oldest oath-mark in the family records.
Pain pulses through his reopened wound as he traces the sigil’s surviving lines. Beneath the damage, he recognizes a crownless sun crossed by three hooked strokes.
Tilla Valren
You know it. Tell the crown exactly what it means.
The mark is no foreign crest. It is a binding seal used by House Wulfharth’s oldest oathkeepers, authorizing hidden payments and summoned aid without bearing the family name.
Valia Wulfharth
Then the deepest layer is not merely concealed. It was made to command the others, and our house kept that authority alive.
King Theodan Valiks
Clerk, record the sigil and Beareth Wulfharth’s identification. The inquiry now reaches the oathkeepers themselves.
The clerk’s pen moved swiftly as royal wards shimmered across the sealed winter hall.
King Theodan Valiks
Let the record show: the oathkeepers stand beneath the judgment they once wielded.
Valia Wulfharth
Then the deepest lie has a name at last. House Wulfharth will answer for it.
Tilla Valren
And your reading opened the way, Beareth. The crown will not mistake silence for innocence again.
Beareth Wulfharth
Let the seal be broken. Let truth bear the family name, whatever else that name must bear.
The final oath layer yielded to the crown, and the hidden payments, summoned aid, and oathkeepers’ command entered the royal record. House Wulfharth’s power ended not in bloodshed, but in judgment made visible beneath the winter wards. Beareth stood among the witnesses as his family’s oldest mark became evidence, and the hall grew still around the truth.