The violet dust from the shattered quartz stronghold had barely settled. Just then, the sound of rustling bone-parchment and clicking finger-joints echoed through the western row of stone pillars. Stepping through the settling powder walked Necro-Scribe Ren, the Bone Notary, his long, threadbare robes woven from grey shroud-linen. He smelled of dry mausoleums, cold embalming wax, and the bitter copper of dead-house coins. In his right hand, he held his signed name metal pen. A four-inch instrument ground from the index finger-bone of an ancient High Notary, its hollow marrow cavity charged with black ghost-ink that dripped with a faint, whispering hiss upon the silver glass.
In his unchosen timeline from the Stygian Vaults, Ren had rejected the terrestrial courts. Then he dropped into the Stygian Vaults beneath the capital to serve as the chief contract clerk for the Dead Synod. He had spent thirty years auditing the unfulfilled oaths, unpaid debts, and broken covenants of deceased aristocrats, discovering that a mortal soul didn’t escape its legal liabilities simply because its heart had ceased to beat. His Mastered Craft, Soul-Debt Seizure, allowed him to court order the spirits of the left, binding them by their unfulfilled mortal signed names to enforce payback against the living.
