The guild representative challenged the custody before anyone read the expedition order aloud.
He did it politely, with a prepared list and a voice made calm by practice. The pages had come from a collapsed chamber. People opposed to Rook had handled them. Some had been separated for preservation. The public was being asked to consider copies of damaged material. He wanted every gap acknowledged before the family turned the hearing into a verdict.
The moderator asked him to identify the first specific gap he wished examined.
Sera took the witness chair with the custody record in front of her. She did not object to the questions. The hearing would have been weaker if the representative’s suspicions were the only account the room heard about what recovery could and could not establish.
Eli sat beside the family’s intermediary. The younger relative held her prepared statement face down. The older had chosen a seat near the side exit and said nothing as the questioning began.
The first challenge concerned the interval between removal from the chamber and controlled sorting. Sera described the recovered packaging, the witnesses recorded for each stage, and the damage that had required separation. She showed which marks appeared in the earliest copies and which handling notes were later. Where the record did not establish uninterrupted observation, she said so.
