The questioning chamber smelled of wax and old paper and the kind of gravity that made people speak smaller than they meant to. Keeper Sera had the Remnants' tiles laid in a ring on the floor, each one tuned to a slightly different counterpoint so that lies would feel like walking on ice. The chamber's walls were lined with shelves of sealed folios; the light from the single lamp pooled on the table like a promise. Aria stood with the Spiral Log at her elbow and watched the room fill with witnesses—magistrates, guild clerks, a neutral delegate from Haven, and two marketkeepers who had agreed to come despite the risk.
They had called this session the Oath of Witness because names and signatures were not enough anymore. The ledger had shown them how easy it was to dress experiments as mercy; the Remnants had insisted that testimony be more than words. Witnessing, they argued, had to be a ritual: notarized, warded, and public enough that procedure could not swallow it whole.
Calder arrived under Remnants custody with his hands folded and his face the color of someone who had been up too many nights. He had agreed to speak again—this time under warded tiles and with three neutral witnesses at his side. The warded ring hummed a note that made evasion feel like a bad habit. Aria watched him sit and felt the ledger's map tighten into a path they could follow.
Keeper Sera began the ritual with the formalities: names read aloud, seals broken in triplicate, the Remnants' oath recited so that every witness understood the legal weight of what they were about to do. The oath was simple and precise: to tell what one had seen, to distinguish memory from graft, and to accept the Remnants' record as a public artifact. Each witness touched a sigil tile and spoke the words; the tiles recorded the cadence of their voices in a way that made later tampering obvious.
Calder's testimony was quieter than the first time. The warded tiles made his evasions small and costly. He described the contracts he had signed, the broker's ledger, the FACV invoices, and the donor notes that had framed trials as mercy. He read aloud the marginalia he had once thought meaningless—"bell echo at dusk," "test at market node"—and the room listened as if the words themselves were evidence.
When he spoke of the facilitator shorthand, his hands trembled. "I routed requests," he said. "I followed channels. I did not see the patron's face. I saw the trust and the broker and the courier names. I thought I was building tools for safety. I did not know they would be used to bind memory."
A marketkeeper who had come to testify—call her Mara—rose and told the room what it felt like to wake with someone else's grief. She did not dramatize; she narrated the small, human facts: the taste of bread that did not match her town's recipes, the bell tone that did not belong to any harvest she had known, the way a child's laugh had folded into silence. The Remnants' scribe recorded the differences and notarized them. The warded tiles hummed approval.
Luna sat at the edge of the chamber and held a small stone in her hand. When a witness faltered, she offered a short cadence—a single line of a song that steadied breath and made memory feel like a thing you could hold and set down. Her presence was not spectacle; it was a practical anchor. People who had been used as nodes needed a way back to themselves, and Luna's small rituals were the scaffolding.
The Oath of Witness did more than gather testimony. It changed the legal texture of the ledger. Where once a FACV invoice could be a line on a manifest, now it had faces attached to it—people who had narrated the graft and signed under warded tiles. The Remnants' packets were no longer just paper; they were notarized artifacts that could be presented in any public forum and would carry the weight of witnessed memory.
When the formal testimony ended, Aria asked Calder one last question in the quiet that follows truth: who had asked for the trials to be framed as mercy? Calder looked at the warded tiles, at the witnesses, and then at Aria. "The donor notes used language that made it easier to sell the idea," he said. "They wanted towns to accept forgetting as kindness. The trust's donors believed they were buying stability. Whether they understood the cost—" He stopped, the sentence unfinished but heavy.
Keeper Sera closed the packet and stamped it with the Remnants' seal. "This goes to the Loom's vault and to the Council under Remnants custody," she said. "We will not hand artifacts to any office without a notarized chain and a Remnants witness."
Outside the chamber, the city moved with its usual commerce, but the ledger's map had shifted. The Oath of Witness had made the harm legible in a way that procedure could not easily swallow. It had also made the sanctuary's case harder to dismiss as rumor. The Remnants' packets would travel to Highbridge; Calder's warded testimony would be entered into the public record; the guild's manifests—sealed and notarized—would be presented under neutral observation.
Aria felt the small, stubborn comfort of a rule kept: consent first, witness always, learn before you break. The Oath of Witness had been a ritual of law and care, and it had changed the tenor of the inquiry. Procedure could still be used as a blade, but now it had to cut through a public ledger that bore names and warded signatures.
That night, in the Loom's low light, they prepared for the next step. Thorne refined the technical appendix so it explained harm without teaching craft. Keeper Sera arranged for the Remnants' escort to carry the sealed packets to Highbridge. Marcus organized a discreet patrol to shadow the guild's courier to Saltport. Luna taught a short diffusion chorus to magistrates who would be called to testify—an improvisational line they could use to scatter attention in a single breath.
Aria added the day's entry to the Spiral Log with hands that did not shake: Oath of Witness completed; Calder's warded testimony notarized; Remnants packets sealed for Council submission; guild manifests under Remnants custody; diffusion modules taught to magistrates; prepare technical appendix for public hearing (principle only).
She closed the log and listened to the Loom's courtyard where the children practiced the cadence. The song braided into the night like a net. The Oath of Witness had made the ledger speak in a new voice—one that could not be easily erased. The work ahead would be political and slow, but for the first time in weeks Aria felt the ledger's map move toward accountability rather than concealment.