The bell had stopped ringing.
Only its memory lingered, like smoke curling in the silence. Daima Ryuji descended the winding stair behind the southern tier, each step worn smooth by generations of boots, rituals, and secrets. Torches lined the walls, their flames flickering in protest against the chill. The stone breathed here, old breath, damp with time.
Below the citadel's heart lay the Sanctum Archives, once known as the Hall of Oaths.
Few walked these halls now. Fewer still remembered their purpose.
The door groaned as it opened, hinges protesting. Dust hung in the air like sleep left undisturbed. Wooden shelves sagged under the weight of ledgers and sealed tomes, each one stamped with the crest of some long-dead tribunal or forgotten war-band.
Ryuji moved with quiet purpose, eyes adjusting to the gloom.
This was not the place for war-councils or declarations. Here, truth waited, not in the clarity of ink, but in the spaces between.
He walked past iron-banded scroll cases and cracked memorial tablets. The silence pressed in, thick and reverent. Every footfall echoed louder than the last.
Finally, at the far end of the room, he found it: a narrow alcove shielded by a rusted lattice gate. Behind it, the sigil of the Ninth Oath, his order, still clung to the arch like a scar: a blade encircled by a broken ring. It had been partially scratched through, but not removed.
It seemed even shame had its limits.
He paused, then reached for the gate.
It creaked open.
Beyond it lay Vault Tertius, once reserved for confidential missives between the Oath-bound and the Inner Court. A failed attempt at oversight. But some letters had escaped fire. Some truths had survived neglect.
Ryuji lit a torch from the nearby brazier and stepped in.
The vault's air was colder, closer. Its walls were etched with faded runes meant to deter tampering, more ceremonial than practical now. He moved past the first few cabinets, knowing what he sought would not be stored near the surface.
And then he found it.
A narrow drawer, marked only with an unadorned sigil: the stylized eye of the Dominion Pact, slashed through at the center.
He slid it open.
Inside, sealed in oilskin, brittle with age, were fragments. Letters. Codices. Interrogation transcripts marked Denied Entry by Order of Citadel Prime. Pages not meant to endure. But they had.
Ryuji read in silence.
Names.
Dates.
Incidents buried beneath fabricated rebellions.
Testimonies altered.
A signature, his mentor's, beside orders that led to deaths Ryuji had once blamed on chaos.
The torchlight swayed.
Something in his chest twisted, not rage, not yet, but a slow collapse of certainty. Like watching a wall crack inward, revealing the hollow where a foundation should've been.
He didn't finish all of it.
Not here.
He folded the documents into his cloak, careful not to crease them. They were thin, but heavy, like stones hung around the neck.
He turned back.
The walk out was longer than before.
The torch crackled faintly as Ryuji reached the top of the vault's stair. He extinguished it with a gloved hand, slipping once more into the empty hush of the outer halls.
The fortress above had not changed, but something within him had.
He stepped through the corridor's faded light, each footfall echoing with a new weight. The papers hidden beneath his cloak pressed like stone against his ribs, not from bulk, but from what they meant. Secrets. Names. Betrayal not only of crown or creed, but of soul.
As he passed beneath the shattered crest of the Ninth Oath, he paused, fingers brushing the cold iron. The mark had been defaced, but not erased.
Not entirely.
He would need answers.
But the dead gave only fragments.
The living still walked these halls, cloaked in half-truths and ceremonial silence.
And one of them would talk.