The cold was not on Ren’s skin. It was inside the ink.
Ren Vale dropped to one knee on the silver glass, plunging his hand into his leather satchel. His fingers, trembling with ink-rot, scrambled past scrapers and linen thread until they clamped around his guild parchment. His indentured keeper’s license, stamped with the wax seal of the Low-Khorat High court.
Under the First Law of Contractual Grounding, an unlicensed entity could be anchored by establishing an unbroken bond of debt.
Ren dragged the thick parchment across his knee. He pressed the silver tip of his carved bone awl against the margin, and channeled life-force into the nib.
“By power of Chapter Seven of the Provincial Guild Charter,” Ren choked out, voice scraping against the metal air. “I register a main keeper’s debt claim upon these map points. Unclaimed entity, identify your sovereign underwriter—”
The ink didn’t flow.
A wisp of lavender smoke curled from the ivory metal pen. On the sheepskin, the black lettering of his license—careful calligraphy preserved for seven years—began to bubble.
The royal wax seal flaked into grey ash. Then, the characters of his name dissolved.
