The calfskin binding of Nym Correl’s third notebook was stiff with a century of desiccation, its leather cracking like dried birch bark along the spine as Kezra opened it flat on the larch table.
Paxa set the horn lantern on an overturned wooden folio tray. She cast a clean, warm circle of yellow light across the open page. Yseld leaned her climbing staff against the edge of the drafting bench, her gaze fixed on the dense, handwritten columns of dark oak-ink. Beside Kezra, Fellis drew his stool close, resting his braced left forearm carefully on his lap. Meanwhile, his right hand held his field pencil poised over clean scrap thick parchment.
“A hundred and twelve winters ago,” Kezra began, reading the introductory heading inked across the top margin. “The winter of the Iron Collapse. The border prefectures were dissolving, and private armies were marching north to secure the high passes before snow blocked the gaps.”
The narrative that unfolded across Nym Correl’s neat, upright handwriting was terrifying in its familiarity. An expansionist warlord named General Vane, commanding four hundred heavy infantry and three siege giant crossbows, had marched up Needle Gorge in the late autumn. His objective had not been mere plunder. He sought to seize the Needlehouse archive, confiscate its master topographical plates, and compel the Survey Corps mapmakers to map hidden military bypasses through the Spine.
