Cale’s iron-gall ink smelled of crushed oak galls, rusty nails, and sour rainwater—the plainest, least magical brew in the Realm of Orren.
Noll Vey pulled every thread of his core force back into his western wall niche before the first quill touched the rag paper. It took real discipline to do nothing. When you are a dungeon core whose awareness soaks into every damp mortar seam and pine bench leg in the room, the temptation to lend a little warmth to the inkwell or steady a writer’s hand is as natural as leaning forward across a card table. Yet Noll knew, with the sharp certainty of a fraud who had finally read the rulebook, that if a single spark of his claim credit touched those sheets, Vane’s register would read them as dungeon illusions and scrub them twice as fast.
THRESHOLD RANK — TWENTY-TWO CLAIM CREDITS STORED — CORE FORCE WITHDRAWN FROM BENCH
“Keep your elbows clear of the wet margin, Hobb,” Cale murmured, setting three cut goose quills, a horn of blotting sand, and three clean quarto sheets of unbleached linen paper along the pine bench. “State the date at the top, your name and trade, the place you observed the act, and the plain physical particulars. No adjectives you wouldn’t swear to before a parish bailiff.”
