The Price of Prying

For the first time since the Vanguard had met her, Lady Hannah Vaelen’s high-born, scholastic composure completely shattered.

She had stood before the condescending Arch-Magisters and dismissive Directors of the High Spire, matching their arrogance with cold, unyielding intellect and eloquent high-born spite. But those were men of paper, posture, and political ambition.

The man standing over her now was not a politician.

Reis was a creature of war, ancient iron, and terrifying resolve. Right now, the raw, suppressed fury radiating from his towering frame filled the narrow alcove with a suffocating, paralyzing weight. Hannah’s throat went bone-dry. Her lips parted, but no sharp observations, no defensive logic, and no clever High Spire rhetoric came to her tongue. Her hands trembled slightly as they rested flat against the walnut table, her hazel eyes wide and completely terrified behind her spectacles.

Beside her, Dashiel and Shierra were frozen into absolute silence.

The gnome’s usual witty banter and mechanical chatter were dead. Dashiel sat stiff as stone on his wooden stool, his small hands glued to his knees, his brass goggles pushed up on his forehead as he stared up at the Field Marshal with wide, trembling eyes. Sweat beaded along his white moustache.

Shierra’s knuckles were white where she gripped her deadwood staff, her breath hitched in her chest. A heavy, sickening wave of guilt washed over her. They had sat in the warmth of the archives, dissecting the secrets, the past, and the bloodline of the man who had pulled them from the ashes of Fieri, healed her burns with his own Light, and laid down sovereign gold to buy them a sanctuary.

Morohtar remained as motionless as a statue, his silver eyes completely unreadable under the Field Marshal’s glare. They looked like children caught red-handed in a grand crime, stripped of every excuse.

Reis did not blink. He stood immovable over the table, his shadow burying the maps, the registry, and their notes in complete darkness, waiting for an answer that none of them possessed the courage to speak.

The tension in the narrow alcove felt solid, thick enough to be carved with a blade.

Seconds stretched into what felt like an absolute eternity. Then, the terrifying, stone-cold severity on Reis’s face began to shift.

The harsh line of his jaw eased. The dark, burning fury in his eyes softened, replaced by a quiet, faint glint of ancient amusement. A small, subtle smile touched the corner of the Field Marshal’s scarred lips – a rare, barely perceptible expression that instantly shattered the suffocating weight in the room.

The crushing atmospheric pressure vanished like a drawn bowstring being released.

Lady Hannah let out a long, trembling gasp, her hands gripping the edge of the walnut table as the colour slowly returned to her pale cheeks. Dashiel slumped against his wooden stool with a loud, dramatic exhale, pressing a small hand over his racing heart, while Shierra let her shoulders drop, her fingers relaxing slightly on her deadwood staff.

Without a word, Reis reached deep beneath the folds of his tattered white cloak.

His hand emerged holding a bound volume. It was an ancient-looking journal, its dark leather cover carrying the deep, timeworn aesthetic of a bygone age, yet its surface was immaculate - pristine, unblemished, and perfectly preserved, as though the bookbinder had applied the final stitching only hours ago. The Field Marshal took the volume from Vault Seven this morning.

Reis stepped forward and laid the ancient journal softly onto the dark walnut table, placing it directly over Lady Hannah's vellum notes and The Imperial Registry of Peerage.

Reis looked at his companions, gesturing toward the gleaming, embossed emblem set into the centre of the journal's pristine leather cover.

"If you wish to investigate my lineage," Reis spoke, his gravelly bass calm, deep, and steady, "do not waste your time searching the modern rolls of the High Spire. Tell me..do you recognize this sigil?"

Lady Hannah pulled her spectacles up her nose, leaning forward. Dashiel leaned over the wood, his magnifying lenses clicking into sharp focus, while Shierra stepped up beside the Field Marshal.

Embossed upon the dark leather in fine, shimmering gold and cold-rolled iron was a crest of impossibly ancient origin.

It was not the heraldry of the High Crown, nor the crest of an imperial high house. It was an outline of a peaked heater shield emblazoned with an eight-pointed silver star set proudly above a new crescent moon - the personal, foundational banner of the First High King of Thorreon."

The silence in the archive alcove was absolute.

Reis reached down, his large, calloused hands resting upon the pristine leather cover of the journal. With incredible care, his fingers unfastened the silver clasp that bound the book shut. The metal clicked open with a soft, clear ring that seemed to echo into the vaulted stone ceilings above.

As Reis opened the cover, a subtle, warm scent filled the air. It was the clean, unmistakable aroma of dried cedarwood, ancient ink, and preservation magic held in perfect stasis.

The pages were made of thick, ivory vellum, adorned with intricate geometric borders traced in gold leaf and crushed lapis lazuli. The script was not the modern cursive used by the High Spire’s scribes, but the rigid, angular runes of the First Age - the High Script of the Founding.

Lady Hannah leaned over the table, her hungry eyes scanning the opening folio. Her lips moved silently as her mind translated the ancient phrasing, and her breath catching in her throat as the realization settled in.

"This isn't a family diary," Hannah whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "This is..The Sovereign Chronicle of House Thorreond."

Reis pulled out a heavy oak chair and sat down, his massive frame filling the space beside the table. He rested his forearms against the dark walnut, eyes fixed on the glowing gold runes.

"Three hundred years ago, during the Night of Fire and Tears," Reis began, his gravelly bass low, steady, and resonant, "the Grand Council of mages and merchant-barons sought to consolidate their power over the capital. They rewrote the Registry of Peerage, burned the ancestral rolls, and declared the line of the Founding King extinct."

Dashiel’s brass goggles clicked as he zoomed in on an illuminated crest on the second page. "Declared extinct? You mean... they purged the history books?"

"They purged the paper, Master Dashiel," Reis corrected quietly. "Because paper is fragile. But they could not purge the blood, nor could they unseal the Primal Vaults built by the Dwarves of Brimholt. The Elum Key does not answer to ink or council decrees—it answers to the unbroken lineage of the First King."

Reis paused, his dark eyes turning to Lady Hannah, who was staring at the ancient runes with breathless academic longing.

Gently, the Field Marshal pushed the pristine journal across the walnut table, resting it directly in front of the Senior Scribe.

"You may parse the chapters within with the Lattice, My Lady," Reis rumbled softly.

Lady Hannah reached out, her hands trembling with profound reverence as her fingertips touched the ancient leather. She drew a slow, deliberate breath, steadying her heart as she began carefully flipping through the illuminated ivory pages.

She raised the gold quill in her right hand over the book and invoked her magic.

"Veritas Codicis," Hannah whispered.

Instantly, her Lexical Lattice ignited around her fingers in a brilliant web of geometric, sapphire light. The thin filaments descended onto the vellum, scanning the angular runes at impossible speed. A deep, magical concentration crossed Hannah's features. Her spectacles caught the radiant glare, and beneath the glass, her hazel eyes began to glow softly with an ethereal, sapphire illumination as centuries of forgotten history poured directly into her mind.

Dashiel and Shierra watched in awe as the sapphire light danced across Hannah’s face. She flipped faster and faster through the centuries of records. She parsed past the wars of the First Age, past the sealing of the Primal Vaults, past the founding of the Boundary Garrisons..until her hand reached the very final pages of the journal detailing the events of thirty years ago. The sapphire threads illuminated a singular, striking entry penned by Baron Lucian Eron himself, recording the recovery of the orphaned heir from the ashes of a border smithy. The sapphire glow in her eyes flared brightly, then suddenly vanished.

The Lexical Lattice collapsed into quiet air. Lady Hannah froze, her hand resting flat against the final entry.

Slowly, the scholar looked up from the table. The colour had completely drained from her face. Her hazel eyes were wide, vacant, and filled with a stark, terrifying disbelief - an expression so pale and stricken it looked as though she had seen a ghost rise directly from the vellum.

Reis looked at Lady Hannah, and flashed a rare smile.

“Tell the story.”