Kynes and the others push through a narrow service arch and emerge into the Hall of Records, a colder chamber below the office. Rows of leaning shelves vanish into dust and lantern haze, and the air tastes of old glue, wax, and damp stone.
Bren shuts the arch behind them, then turns to the sentient Ledger in Kynes's arms. The book's pulse steadies, its gold light touching the spines of stacked rolls and sealed boxes.
Kynes
This room is older than the office above.
Ledger
Here, at last. These shelves still remember what the magistrate tried to bury.
From a reading table near the center, Mara is already there, pale under lantern light, one hand braced on a spread of copied notes. She looks up sharply as the group enters with the Ledger and the rescued records.
Mara
You brought it down. Good. Then we can compare its memory against the copies before anyone follows you here.
Bren moves to the shelf ends, scanning the doorway and the shadows beyond it. The Hall of Records holds, quiet but tense, while Kynes steps into the center light with the Ledger still throbbing against his chest.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the Ledger in the Hall of Records
“I burn the bodies in the furnace to get ride of the evidence and again let the house dispose of any foreign scripts including xar and old domini”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled +0)
Kynes turns from the table and takes the stairs with the Ledger tucked close, following the lower passage toward the cellar vault. Bren shadows him, one hand on the stone, while Mara lingers at the hall mouth with the copied notes.
The cellar furnace waits in a soot-black alcove, cold now, its iron throat open beneath a cracked hood. Kynes feeds the first bodies in without ceremony, and the ledger-light skims over ash-smeared brick.
He speaks the working in a low arcane murmur, and the fire catches hard. Pale script clings to the corpses, Xar seams and old Domini marks alike, then peels free in strips of red and violet smoke.
The furnace roars brighter than it should, swallowing the foreign writing before it can settle back into the walls. The cellar stones answer with a dull gold pulse, like the house swallowing a bad taste.
Ledger
At last, a clean read. The house is learning what to keep.
Bren
That worked. Keep it burning until nothing left in here can be named by Xar or Domini.
Kynes shuts the furnace door on the last of the evidence. The ash below settles into a sealed gray bed, but the floor beyond it gives one deep, answering thrum, as if something below the cellar has noticed the purge.
Investigate the source of the deep pulse beneath the cellar
Quest Complete
Secure the Ledger in the Hall of Records