Chapter 9 – The Gallows Archive
Durelin's Gallows Archive sat like a silent wound in the city's eastern quarter—a fortress of blackened stone, its walls carved with scripture that glinted in torchlight. To the faithful, it was a sanctum of holy records. To Lucian, it was a prison for truth.
The Oathkeepers' plan was simple in outline, treacherous in execution. Lucian would enter during the changing of the night watch, posing as one of the Church's "penitent couriers." The woman—now introducing herself as Selvara—had stolen the necessary garb, the coarse grey cloak that smelled faintly of ash and incense.
"Once you're inside," Selvara murmured as they crouched in an alley opposite the Archive's gate, "you have until the next bell. After that, the Watch Captain makes his rounds, and your face will be remembered."
Lucian adjusted the hood and moved toward the gate. Two guards glanced his way, their attention drifting back to a nearby brazier as he mumbled the courier's prayer. The heavy oak doors groaned open.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of old parchment and burnt wax. The dim corridors curved like a maze, each lined with barred alcoves where scrolls were kept in iron cages. Pale-robed archivists padded between the shelves, their eyes lowered, their voices whispers.
He followed the route Selvara had traced on the map: left at the scriptorium, down a spiral stair, past a locked chamber where muffled sobs hinted at a prisoner. The Archive's belly was colder, damper, lit only by oil lamps. Here, the cages held not prayers or edicts, but ledgers bound in black leather, each stamped with a single mark—an inverted sun.
Lucian found the shelf Selvara had described. His fingers closed around a ledger dated 137 AE. Inside, names filled page after page—families, villages, entire provinces—struck through in red ink. Margins held the Church's justification: heresy, sedition, impurity.
The truth was worse than rumor.
He was sliding the ledger into his cloak when footsteps echoed down the corridor. Lucian ducked behind a pillar as a robed figure passed, holding a torch. The archivist paused, sniffing the air as though sensing intrusion, then moved on.
Lucian exhaled and slipped toward the stair.
If he could get out with this book, the Oathkeepers would have their proof. But he knew—by the tightening in his gut—that leaving the Gallows Archive would not be as easy as entering it.