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
“I open a lattice powered void portal and drop the architects in front of me”
SUCCESS (Legendary Arcana, rolled -1)
Kynes plants the staff point into the stone and drags a sigil through the air. The corridor answers with a wet red throb, and a slit of darkness tears open ahead of him.
Kynes
The seam is keyed to the lattice.
The void-mouth widens, not behind them but in front of Kynes, hanging between wall and floor like a wound that knows its shape.
Bren
Move, Kynes. Something is coming through.
Bren shifts to Kynes’s flank, blade up, as the corridor lights gutter and the red script in the mortar flares hard enough to stain the dust.
Kaelen snaps the map down and points into the opening. Two silhouettes strike the other side at once, their boots hitting stone with a sharp, answering crack.
Kaelen
There. The architects’ passage.
The portal holds, and beyond it a pair of robed enforcers spill into view, blocking the far side and turning toward Kynes in the same breath.
Quest Complete
Reach the architects’ passage