The morning of Day Twenty-Nine broke over Lathmere with crisp, crystal clarity, the autumn sun striking the whitewashed walls of the Old Ferry Storehouse until the building gleamed like a newly carved chalk cliff against the dark river water. Inside the front bay, beside the newly lime-washed hearth, Auditor Varo Nenn sat at a small oak desk. He was surrounded by leather coin-bags, a care beam balance with brass weights. A heavy brass-bound ledger with green thick parchment leaves.
Opposite him sat Pella Rook, her canvas apron clean and pressed, her father’s measuring tongs resting in her breast pocket. Between them lay thirty metal bars of cast antique silver, each roughly the size of a carpenter’s chalk stick. They were stamped with the ancient dolphin and gate seal of the Municipal Assay Office.
“The financial foundation of the Courtesy Workshop must be as level as Eren’s ash benches, Candidate Rook,” Auditor Nenn said, his quill tracing the top column of the ledger. “For two hundred years, academy summoners relied on magical tokens, promissory glyphs, and ritual debt that dissolved the moment an entity crossed back over the threshold. That was how Sorell operated: he promised ghostly spirits sky glory in the astral planes, while paying them nothing that could buy a turnip or mend a shoe.”
