Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
Lord Cassian catches the descending service door with one embroidered shoulder, salutes the dark with his blade, and strides after the silver prints. His boot passes over a hair-thin copper wire without noticing it. Click. Somewhere inside the wall, counterweights wake. The door jerks downward hard enough to throw sparks, threatening to separate Cassian in the passage from Mahir in the auction chamber. Beyond Cassian, the silver footprints divide unnaturally into three trails. Behind Mahir, one of the masked buyers whispers: ‘Ashhand... that sigil belongs to the Cinder Anatomists.’ The watch bells are closer now.
Cassian plants a polished boot against the eighty-year seal, catches the service door before it closes, and draws his rapier with an extravagant salute to the darkness. "At last—an entrance worthy of my memoirs." Without presuming to command Mahir, he follows the liquid-silver footprints into the passage, watching for the thief, traps, or an ambush.
MIDNIGHT, BENEATH THE ORISON OBSERVATORY. Rain drums against the copper dome overhead. Twelve masked buyers form a ring around a blackwood table. Upon it rests a thin book bound in grey hide; beads of liquid silver crawl across its cover like living script. The auctioneer raises a gloved hand. Before the first bid is spoken, every lamp burns blue and dies. A wet choking sound cuts through the dark. When Mahir conjures the faintest light, the auctioneer lies dead, the Codex is gone, and an iron service door—sealed for eighty years—swings slowly shut. A line of silver footprints leads toward it. From the dead auctioneer’s clenched fist protrudes a scrap marked with the same sigil Mahir once found in his vanished master’s notebook. City watch bells begin ringing above. Whoever is below has perhaps one minute before the exits are sealed.
Lord Cassian Veyr joined the campaign
Mahir Ashhand joined the campaign