The folded thick parchment from Nym Correl’s diary was not a map itself. It was a catalog manifest, handwritten in purple elderberry ink that had faded to a soft amethyst gray.
Kezra laid the document flat under Paxa’s lantern, tracing the three lines of ancient office script written across the top margin:
RESERVE ARCHIVE SECTION VII: UPPER SLATE BAYS. CLASSIFICATION: FIRST-CLASS HORIZON Public works. STATUS: UNACTIVATABLE BY CURRENT DISTRICT STAFF (STATION CAPPED AT QUARTER).
“Look at where she points,” Yseld said. She stepped around the drafting table and shining her grease-lamp toward the rear wall of the vault.
Behind the central pillars. There, the limestone ceiling curved down into the northern bedrock, stood the deepest tier of slate shelving. Unlike the lower cubicles near the doorway, which had been rifled and overturned by Krail’s scouts thirty days ago, these upper bays rose twelve feet above the flat stone slabs. The slate uprights were three inches thick, secured with heavy oak dowels. The front edges of the shelves were protected by level bronze retention bars pinned with lead seals.
“The soldiers never climbed up here,” Fellis noted, squinting into the upper shadows. “Their boots only scuffed the floor near the entrance racks. They saw the label Unactivatable Reserve and thought it was an empty filing tier.”
