Vaeroth's Lower Archives lived beneath bureaucracy: a place where forgotten petitions and legal debt notes went to become compost. They smelled of mildew, iron, and old paper — the honest odors of history. The Hall of Records refused easy answers, so they asked for the tedium that becomes truth.
Keeper Vellin met them at a narrow gate, frowning. "You went into the Cradle?"
"Yes," Soryn said. "And the Wraith tested Aeron. The Heartstone merged with him."
Vellin's hands shook faintly. "If that is true, then the Sovereign's tale is no longer myth."
They entered the archives, where scrolls sat like sleeping beasts. Vellin led them to a recessed room cold enough to make them rub their arms — the sort of place records go to preserve ink. Here the ash-markings would be less likely to lie.
Lyria ran a finger across a brittle chart. "We need: names of prior Ashborn, their origins, methods of binding, and the sites where fragments of the Sovereign were hidden."
Vellin flipped through a ledger and then drew a thin map. "There were three attempts, centuries apart. Each time, an Ashborn rose. Each time, a civic leader, or a warlord, or an embittered priest bent the people's pain into worship of flame. The Sovereign thrives on the cracks of society."
Garron leaned in. "So the Sovereign eats what society breaks."
"Exactly," Vellin said. "Corruption is the kiln that tempers him. Where families are sold, where children turn to the streets, the Sovereign finds a place to hide."
Sable Crier's face flashed in Lyria's mind — his powders, his trafficked childhood. Here was a small sample of the kiln. The team had cases within their city: emptied granaries, sent-away mothers, castoff children. Each made Vaeroth fertile ground.
Maera's voice was soft. "So our villains are often victims of something bigger."
"And sometimes victims become villains," Soryn said. "Sable is a symptom. The Sovereign is the disease."
Halik added, "And someone is feeding the disease. A network. A person or group that profits from chaos as much as from order."
Vellin's finger landed on a ledger. "There is mention of a group called the Forgefathers — not smiths, but policy-makers. They were behind a series of land seizures. Centuries ago, they burned the commons. The Sovereign rose in the ruins afterward."
Garron's hands curled into fists. "Sounds familiar."
Kethra ground her teeth. "The rich always rewrite maps to fit their pockets. People die so ledgers can look tidy."
Vellin's tone turned grave. "If the Sovereign rises now, someone may be engineering the hunger again — land seized, food redirected, people forced into dependency. We must look for those ledgers."
Soryn's plan sharpened like a spear. "We split. Two to the market, three to the city offices, and two to the river slums. Find where goods disappeared and why."
They moved like a team that had learned to trust urgency. Even Aeron, still raw from the Cradle, saw that strategy could slow the sovereign's spread. Strategy — not brute force — was a weapon the Sovereign had not expected them to use so early.
At the market, Garron and Maera questioned vendors with practiced bluntness: Garron's Hammerfall intimidation softened by Maera's sly humor. Maera's jokes were a wedge; Garron's presence, a hammer. They learned that shipments had been redirected for weeks to an old mill owned by an absentee baron named Tregar Voss. Voss's name was a ledger line that led them toward corruption — not yet the Sovereign, but a professional hand turning the city's wounds.
At the office of commerce, Kethra and Lyria found voided contracts and signatures cut from seals. Where legal paper should have shown ownership, someone had burned a series of cancellings into the margins. They followed the burned ink to a clerk who muttered, "The Forgefathers' mark doesn't ask questions."
Meanwhile, Soryn and Aeron went to the river slums. Aeron's eyes glowed faintly near small children whose bellies looked hollow. He paused, hand fluttering as if to touch an absent look.
"We need to be careful," Soryn said. "The Sovereign eats families, remembers their absence, and turns it into worship."
Aeron knelt by a group of boys trading buttons for stale bread. One boy had a metal toy—an old soldier—missing an arm. Aeron recognized himself in the toy's patched paint: an accidental mirror. He set a small coin into the hands of the smallest boy. The child stared like a miracle had touched him.
Aeron swallowed and left the coin as if it were an offering he might one day reclaim. In that small exchange, Aeron felt how hunger becomes faith. The Sovereign would not need to force belief if belief tastes like bread.
When they reunited at the Hall, the map of corruption looked like a spiderweb. The Forgefathers' fingers touched mills, clerks, and docks. The Sovereign's path had a planner. It was no accident.
Garron's voice was a blunt instrument. "So we find Voss. We break the mill's chain. We cut off one artery. It won't stop the Sovereign, but it will hurt his feeder."
Soryn's eyes were cold with the cost of decisions: "And remember, breaking chains sometimes kills people. Our choice will be violent."
Lyria's hand tightened on her rapier. "Then choose the least bad violence."
They slept poorly that night, each with a ledger of what might come from their hands.