The annex door bursts inward behind them, guards shouting through splintered wood. Kynes, Bren, and Kaelen plunge into the district’s narrow service corridor as the hall behind them thrums with void-lattice hum.
Kaelen
This way. The map marks a tunnel under the records wing, then a stair to the architects’ passage.
Kaelen snaps the recovered route map open in the dim light, tracing one finger over a sealed junction. Bren falls in at Kynes’s shoulder, eyes back toward the breach.
Bren
They know we have it. If the architects reach the evidence first, they burn the whole chain.
Kynes
The tunnel line bends toward the inner archive, then splits again.
A low pulse rolls through the walls. Red script shivers faintly in the mortar, answering the stolen map like a living vein.
Kaelen
Good. That means the lattice is awake. Kynes, if you want the conspiracy broken, you take the map and lead us to the architects now.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach the architects’ passage