The lantern light in the small side-nook was amber, quiet, and smelled faintly of lavender oil from Mira’s tin of soothing skin salve.
Fifty yards away, the rhythmic clang of the Warden testing high-pressure relief valves shook through the flat stone slabs, but in this narrow pocket of dry brickwork, the world had tightened to a space no larger than a prayer rug. A small iron kettle boiled over the potion-made fire bowl, venting the clean, bitter scent of wild chicory root and dried peppermint leaves. The cheap ration tea that bookbinder apprentices drank during twelve-hour winter shifts.
Ren sat on a rough-hewn stone bench, his back pressed against the damp lime mortar. His right forearm throbbed with a dull, heavy ache where the Ink-Rot veins had burst. But the bleeding had stopped. It was bound in clean linen strips that Mira had torn from her spare under-tunic. Across his knees lay the reforged Ivory-Iron Composite Awl, its cold steel and fossil bone resting quietly in the shadows.
Beside him sat Mira.
She opened the small cloth-bound notebook. Its cover was made from coarse grey sailcloth, stained at the corners with soot and water-rings. But the heavy rag paper inside was spotless. Every page was covered in her compact, upright hand. Rows of violet ink documenting twenty years of a family that the world was trying to erase.
