The lead reliquary in Cardinal Vane-Krell’s skeletal gauntlet popped open with a dry, metal snap that sounded like a headsman’s trapdoor springing shut.
From within the lead casing, the Cardinal withdrew a single scroll of blackened, time-ravaged sheepskin thick parchment. It was bound with thick braids of human hair and sealed with a heavy medallion of rusted blood-lead.
The scroll touched the cold underground air. Then, a sickening, choking aura of old family guilt surged through the tiered arena. The surrounding heat dropped another ten degrees. The green corpse-candles in five hundred skulls flared into brilliant, blinding violet. And the iron flat stone slabs beneath Ren’s boots began to sweat beads of foul-smelling thick tar.
“Look upon the promise of your ancestors, keeper!” Cardinal Vane-Krell bellowed, unrolling the scroll with a slow, deliberate flourish.
The handwriting on the thick parchment was ancient, jagged, and clear.
It was written in the signed name orthographic style of the First Scribes’ Guild. The very hand that Ren had spent ten years learning to emulate in the apprentices’ scriptoria of Low-Khorat.
At the bottom of the thick parchment, signed in dark, congealed blood that had never fully dried, was a name:
ARLEN VALE, MASTER CONSERVATOR OF THE SEVENTH DAWN.
