The office erupted into motion—quills scratching, scrolls unfurling, the rosemary plant muttering "Hubris, hubris" as enchanted ink pots boiled over. But the chaos stalled when the door groaned open, revealing Enzo Glass and Ethan Fetters, their hair windblown and boots caked in mud from the northern roads.
Seth's glare could have frozen lava. "You're late."
Enzo adjusted his spectacles, smudged with what looked like dungeon ash. "Apologies. The mana-caravan routes were clogged with—"
"Excuses." Seth cut him off, jabbing a finger at the water clock dripping ominously on the wall. "We're neck-deep in a crisis, not hosting a tea party. Ethan—the coalition's financial trails. Follow the silver, the bribes, the hidden bribes. Enzo—cross-check their mana-siphon permits with the temple's 'blessed' quotas. I want discrepancies, double-deals, bloody receipts."
Noah sidled up, clutching a ledger that hummed with truth-detection runes. "I'll catch them up," he said, shooting Enzo a sympathetic glance.
"You'll do more than that," Seth snapped. "Tell them how Kaufmann's playing patty-cake with the temples while the hospital's foundation cracks. Then get them to work before I toss them into the dam's overflow."
As Seth stormed off, Noah herded Enzo and Ethan to a cluttered corner desk, its surface buried under maps of mana conduits and autopsy reports on corrupted dungeon cores. He launched into a hushed briefing, his words punctuated by the occasional flare of Lucy's experimental explosive runes across the room.
"Kaufmann's coalition is siphoning dungeon energy," Noah whispered, sliding a schematic of the Shattered Spire toward them. The dungeon's labyrinthine tunnels pulsed faintly on the parchment, as if alive. "But the temples are skimming a cut. Every surge in the Spire's activity lines up with their 'donations.'"
Ethan frowned, his Truthwhisper pendant twitching. "So the temples are laundering mana?"
"Worse," Noah said. "They're sanctifying the theft. If Kaufmann's hoarding cores, and the temples are blessing it, the crown's left holding a beggar's bowl."
Enzo pulled a jar of glowing moss from his satchel—a souvenir from the northern wastes—and set it on the desk. Its bioluminescent haze cast shadows over the maps. "Seth wants us to trace the permits? Those things are faker than a gremlin's apology. The guilds forge them by the dozen."
"Then follow the forgeries," Noah said. "Start with the Blackwater Quarry. Kaufmann's been funneling 'sanctioned' mana through there. If the permits are falsified, the quarry masters will have records. Or scars."
Ethan paled. "Scars?"
Lucy lobbed a charred scroll fragment at them, grinning. "The quarry's run by a clan of earth elementals. They don't take kindly to paperwork fraud. Last auditor who snooped came back as a rock garden."
Enzo adjusted his spectacles, undeterred. "We'll take the risk. But we'll need—"
"Already done," Gretchen interrupted, materializing with two satchels of supplies. Inside: truth-serum ink, anti-petrification charms, and a pouch of caramel candies "for bribes or morale." She winked. "Try not to die before lunch."
Enzo shouldered his pack, eyeing the anti-petrification charms like they were cursed relics. "Charming pep talk."
Before he could take a step, Seth's voice cracked across the office like a whip. "Take the new girl!" He jabbed a finger at Astris, who had been silently annotating dungeon core tax records at her desk. "She needs field seasoning. And someone has to keep you two from getting entombed in limestone."
Harvey Spectar snapped his head from an infernal contract he'd been dissecting. "I'll go. They'll need a strategist if the elementals turn hostile."
"You'll stay," Seth said, not looking up from the scroll he was scrawling on. "The Celestaviel treaties need your particular brand of charm. Lucy's explosives melted half the clauses."
Lucy lobbed a wadded-up parchment at Harvey. "Nice try, pretty boy. Better luck next time."
Harvey scowled but sank back into his chair, his infernal contracts hissing faintly in solidarity.
Astris stood, her movements deliberate, and retrieved her briefcase—Phoenix Quill tucked inside, alongside the hidden aetherium shard. She met Enzo's nervous gaze and Ethan's wary shrug with a nod. "I'll handle the permits. You handle the elementals."
Ethan blinked. "That's… not how fieldwork usually goes."
"It is today," Seth barked. "Move. And don't let Kaufmann's lackeys smell your fear. They're part basilisk."
The Blackwater Quarry loomed at the city's edge, its jagged maw belching clouds of dust that glittered with residual mana. The earth elementals who governed the pit were creatures of living stone, their bodies etched with glowing mineral veins, their voices like landslides given tongue.
"Permits," rumbled the quarry master, a hulking elemental with quartz crystals jutting from its shoulders like armor. It extended a hand the size of a shield, fissures in its palm glowing orange with latent heat.
Enzo hesitated, but Astris stepped forward, unrolling a scroll stamped with the royal seal. "Sanctioned under Codex 12.7.3, subsection Mana Harvesting and Mineral Rights." Her tone was calm, rehearsed, but her fingers brushed the Phoenix Quill in her coat pocket.
The elemental leaned down, its granite face inches from hers. "The seal is fresh. The ink is nervous."
Ethan stiffened, but Astris didn't flinch. "The ink is royal. The nervousness is yours to interpret."
A beat passed. Then the elemental snorted, a sound like boulders colliding, and stamped the permit. "Two hours. Disturb the deep veins, and we bury you in them."
The quarry's tunnels were a claustrophobe's nightmare, the walls throbbing with trapped mana. Enzo scanned falsified permits by the light of his glowing moss jar, while Ethan muttered incantations to keep the truth-serum ink from overheating. Astris trailed them, her eyes on the mineral seams—and the faint golden threads of aetherium veining the rock.
"This isn't just about Kaufmann," she murmured, chipping a sliver of black crystal into a hidden vial. "The temples are mining these veins too. Sanctified theft."
Enzo glanced back, his spectacles slipping. "You sound like Seth."
"Seth's right," she said. "Rot this deep needs sunlight."
A rumble echoed through the tunnel. Somewhere, stone shifted.
Ethan gulped. "Or a really, really good lie."
Back in the office at dusk, Seth reviewed their findings—a stack of forged permits, a vial of smuggled aetherium, and a bill for "reparations" from the quarry master (Three barrels of dwarven whiskey. Paid in advance.).
"Not bad, rookies," he grunted, though the compliment was buried under six layers of sarcasm. He tossed the quarry report onto his desk, where it narrowly missed toppling a precariously stacked tower of dungeon violation notices. The aetherium vial glinted in the sunlight filtering through the office's grime-streaked windows, its golden veins pulsing faintly, as if laughing at him.
Seth's gaze snapped to Gretchen, who was calmly pruning a carnivorous fern that had taken to eating loose paperclips. "Gretchen! Get Kaufmann on the speaking stone. Tell him I want him in this office by sundown. And if he whines about 'prior engagements,' remind him I know where he buries his tax skeletons."
Gretchen didn't look up, her shears snipping a wayward tendril. "He won't come. He's hosting a gala tonight at the guildhall. 'Celebrating Free Trade's Triumph,' or some equally pompous nonsense."
"Then we'll triumph right into his wine cellar," Seth snarled. "Set the meeting somewhere else. A tavern, a privy, a dungeon—I don't care. By the end of the week, or I'll let Lucy redecorate his precious guildhall with blast runes."
Lucy glanced up from her desk, where she was etching explosive sigils into a paperweight. "I'd do it for free."
Noah, hunched over a ledger, muttered, "The last time you 'redecorated,' the archives smelled like burnt hair for a month."
"That was an accident!"
"Your face is an accident."
The rosemary plant rustled in its pot, its voice dry as parchment. "Children, please. Some of us are trying to meditate."
Gretchen set down her shears and plucked a speaking stone from her desk—a smooth obsidian shard etched with guild sigils. She whispered into it, the stone flaring violet as it connected to Kaufmann's network. Static crackled, followed by the tinny voice of a clerk: "Master Kaufmann is… indisposed. Would you like to schedule a consultation next Fireday?"
"Indisposed my left boot," Seth barked, snatching the stone from Gretchen. "Tell him if he's not across a table from me in forty-eight hours, I'll have the temples audit his 'sanctified' spice shipments. And we both know what they'll find in those crates."
The clerk's pause was palpable. "…I'll convey your… enthusiasm."
Seth slammed the stone onto the desk, its glow dying with a resentful hiss. "Guild peacock."
Harvey glanced up from a smoldering Celestaviel treaty, his infernal contracts coiled like sleeping serpents. "You could always crash the gala. I hear the hors d'oeuvres are to die for. Literally, if Lucy caters."
"Tempting," Seth said, "but I'd rather not spend my evening dodging Kaufmann's sycophants and poisoned canapés. We'll corner him on neutral ground. Gretchen—"
"Already on it," she replied, her ivy tendrils weaving through a calendar of moon phases and mercenary availability. "The Drowned Quay. Midnight tomorrow. He'll hate it—too many rats, not enough silk. But it's the only place his pride won't let him refuse."
Seth's grin was all teeth. "Perfect. Lucy, prep the usual deterrents. Noah, dig up every scandal Kaufmann's buried since the First Dynasty. And someone—" He glared at the rosemary plant, which was now humming off-key. "—silence that thing before I repot it."
As the office lunged back into chaos, the aetherium vial throbbed in time with the distant clang of the city bells. Somewhere, Jack Kaufmann was adjusting his cravat and plotting countermoves.
But Seth Guilladot had never lost a game of legal brinkmanship.
Not yet.
Astris slipped out as the debate over Kaufmann's "neutral ground" escalated into a shouting match between Lucy and Noah about the ethics of rigging chandeliers with paralysis powder. The dusk air was a balm, cool and thick with the scent of roasting chestnuts from a vendor's cart. She bought a skewer of dubious meat—labeled Griffin? Gryphon? Who knows!—and leaned against a lamppost, its mana-crystal glow flickering like a tired heartbeat.
"That's dinner?"
Miles Doran materialized beside her, his cloak dusty from the road and his boots caked with what looked like dried hydra blood. A scarred falcon perched on his shoulder, eyeing her skewer with predatory interest.
Astris shrugged. "It's efficient."
"Efficient." Miles plucked the skewer from her hand and sniffed it. "Smells like efficient food poisoning. Come on." He tossed it to the falcon, which devoured it in one gulp. "Theo's got a venison stew that'll actually keep your organs intact. And I want to hear how you're really doing."
She opened her mouth to protest, but Miles hooked an arm through hers, steering her toward The Gilded Gryphon. "Don't bother lying. You've got that 'I just outwitted a demon' look. Which, congratulations, but demons don't care if you skip meals."
The tavern was a roar of familiar chaos—adventurers arm-wrestling over dungeon maps, a minstrel butchering a ballad about a lovesick troll, and Theo behind the bar, glaring at a keg like it had personally offended him. He looked up as they entered, his scowl softening into a grin.
"Look alive, folks! The Doran calamity siblings are here!" Theo banged a tankard on the counter. "Stew's on the house if you promise not to start a brawl."
"No promises," Miles said, sliding onto a stool.
Theo served them bowls of stew so hearty it could resurrect the dead, garnished with dumplings shaped like tiny dragons. Miles launched into a tale about his latest dungeon crawl—a sentient labyrinth that had tried to "marry" him via trapdoor—while Astris picked at her food, her mind still knotted with aetherium schematics and Kaufmann's smirk.
"Your turn," Miles said, nudging her. "How's the palace? They working you to death or just half-death?"
"It's… strategic," she said carefully. "Lots of reading. Negotiating. Occasionally threatening guild masters with heresy charges."
Miles nearly spat his ale. "You threatened someone? Cybele's tears, they are corrupting you."
Theo leaned over the bar, wiping a tankard with his ever-present rag. "She's always been scary. Remember when she convinced that bandit chief to surrender by reciting tax law at him?"
"He cried," Miles said, grinning.
"He reconsidered his life choices," Astris corrected, though a flicker of pride warmed her chest.
As the night wore on, the tavern's chaos swirled around them—a drunkard serenading a disinterested barmaid, a stray cat pilfering sausage links with military precision. Miles ordered a second round of stew and a plum pie drenched in honey, ignoring Astris's protests that she couldn't eat another bite.
"You've got shadows under your eyes," he said, uncharacteristically serious. "The city's chewing you up, isn't it?"
Astris hesitated, then nodded. "But I'm learning to chew back."
Miles raised his tankard. "To chewing back. And to family. The only loophole that matters."
They clinked drinks, the falcon squawking its approval. In the hearth's flickering light, for a moment, the weight of mana conduits and temple conspiracies felt distant.
But as Astris stepped into the cold night hours later, the aetherium shard in her pocket hummed, a reminder that some debts couldn't be outrun.
She'd barely crossed the tavern's threshold when footsteps clattered behind her. Miles jogged into the frost-kissed street, his breath misting in the lamplight. "Hold up, ink-blade. You really think I'd let you wander home alone? This city's got more shadows than a dungeon vault."
"I've survived worse," Astris said, though she didn't protest as he fell into step beside her. The falcon swooped ahead, scouting the rooftops like a feathered sentinel.
The night was alive in its own quiet way—street vendors packing up carts of charred skewers and mana-glazed sweets, nightsoil collectors murmuring curses as their wagons rattled over cobblestones, and the occasional drunkard serenading a stray cat with off-key ballads. Miles steered her around a puddle of suspiciously glowing sludge, his tone casual but sharp. "So. How's settling in really going?"
"Fine."
"Fine." He snorted. "You've got 'fine' down to an art. Which means it's a disaster."
Astris glanced at him. Moonlight carved the scar along his jaw into a silver thread, a souvenir from a dungeon wyrm years ago. "The palace is… strategic. The work matters. That's enough."
"And the rest?"
"The rest is mine to handle."
Miles stopped, turning her to face him. The falcon landed on a nearby awning, its golden eyes reflecting the mana-lanterns' glow. "You're not in the Iron Crescent anymore, Astris. Here, secrets fester faster than rot. Whatever you're tangled in—whatever you're hiding—it'll eat you alive if you let it."
She held his gaze, the shard's hum a silent accomplice. "Do you know anything about the Shattered Spire?"
The question hung between them, sharp as a blade. Miles's easy grin faded. "Why?"
"Academic interest."
"Bullshit." He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "That dungeon's not some dusty ruin. It's alive. Shifts its walls, drowns intruders in illusions. Last team I sent there came back babbling about 'singing stones' and seeing their own ghosts. They quit adventuring. Opened a bakery."
Astris tucked her hands into her cloak, fingers brushing the shard. "What do the stones sing about?"
"Depths. Hunger. The usual cheery stuff." He gripped her shoulder, his callouses rough against the wool. "Stay clear of it, Astris. Whatever you're hunting, it's not worth your soul."
She didn't flinch. "Souls are overrated."
Miles sighed, releasing her. "Stubborn as ever. Come on."
They walked the rest of the way in silence, the falcon's wings slicing the air above. At her door, Miles hesitated, then pulled a dagger from his belt—a sleek, blackened blade etched with dungeon runes. "Take this. It's tuned to disrupt illusions. And if anyone bothers you…" He mimed stabbing. "Aim for the kneecaps. Slows 'em down long enough to lecture them about tax law."
Astris almost smiled. "Thanks."
He lingered, as if weighing whether to say more, then turned with a mock salute. "Don't work too hard. Or do. I'll annoy you either way."
As he vanished into the shadows, Astris climbed the stairs to her apartment. The shard's hum crescendo as she unlocked the door, its vibration syncing with the distant, discordant chime of the city bells.
She lit a candle and unrolled a map of the Shattered Spire, Miles's dagger glinting beside it. The falcon's cry echoed outside, a warning or a lament—she couldn't tell.
But the Spire's song had already hooked its claws into her.
The Royal Lawyer's Office buzzed like a kicked beehive the next morning. Noah hunched over a mountain of scrolls, muttering incantations to stabilize truth-detection runes that kept fizzling into smoke. Lucy balanced on a wobbly stool, wiring a chandelier with paralysis powder canisters "for ambiance." Gretchen's ivy tendrils pinned a map of the Drowned Quay to the wall, annotated with red ink that dripped like blood.
Seth stormed in, a dossier of Kaufmann's sins tucked under his arm, and slammed it onto the central table hard enough to rattle the rosemary plant. "Meeting. Now."
The room froze. Even the carnivorous fern paused mid-bite on a paperclip.
"We've got Kaufmann by the tail," Seth barked, flipping open the dossier to reveal sketches of black-market mana conduits and temple donation ledgers. "But that peacock's got fangs. The Drowned Quay meeting is in twelve hours. Here's how we gut him."
Evelyn leaned forward, her rainbow quill already dissecting a forged permit. "His financial trails loop through three shell guilds and a 'charitable' fund run by the High Priest's cousin. If we expose the temple's cut, their alliance crumbles."
Harvey smirked, polishing a dagger disguised as a letter opener. "I've drafted a contract laced with soul-binding clauses. Sign it, and Kaufmann's assets default to the crown if he breathes wrong."
Ally, hunched over a tray of cursed-looking muffins, piped up, "His clerks are bribable. One of them owes me a favor from a… misplaced dice game. I can get intel on his bodyguards."
Seth nodded, eyes narrowing. "Astris."
She looked up from her notes, the aetherium shard's hum muffled in her pocket. "His dungeon core stockpiles are stored in the Shattered Spire. If we threaten to leak their locations to rival guilds, he'll have a rebellion on his hands."
"Good." Seth jabbed a finger at the map. "Here's the play. Evelyn—burn his financial web to ash. Harvy—your contract's the snare. Ally—turn his lackeys. Astris—hold the Spire over his head like an axe."
Noah raised a tentative hand. "What about the elemental mercenaries he's hired? The ones made of living tar?"
Lucy grinned, tossing a vial of glowing powder. "Fireworks. Tar burns real pretty."
Seth ignored her. "We'll need leverage. Gretchen—get the High Priest's scandal ledger from the vault. Blackmail's a universal language."
Gretchen's ivy tendrils saluted. "Already en route. The vault master owes me for the rat infestation mishap."
Harvey raised an eyebrow at Astris. "Why's the rookie on frontline duty?"
"Because Kaufmann's scared of her," Seth said simply. "He's all silk and sneers, but she's got that… scholar's chill. Makes men like him sweat."
Astris said nothing, but the shard pulsed in agreement.
By dusk, the team was armed and armored in legal finery—Evelyn in a gown stitched with anti-curse runes, Harvey in a jacket lined with infernal contract scrolls, Ally with pastries laced with truth serum, and Astris with her briefcase of quills and a dagger that hummed with Miles's warning.
Seth stood at the office door, his shadow stretching like a war banner. "The Drowned Quay's a den of liars and leviathan spawn. Kaufmann will have traps, bribes, and at least one assassin pretending to be a waiter. Stick to the plan. And if it goes to hell—"
"Burn it brighter," Lucy finished, slipping a blast rune into his pocket.
The rosemary plant sighed. "Do try not to die. Pruning your corpses would be tedious."
As they filed out, Astris glanced back at the office—its chaos, its grudging camaraderie, its fragile sense of order. Then she followed Seth into the mist-choked streets, where the city's heartbeat thrummed with deceit and the Spire's song whispered just for her.