The old buttery was a chamber of profound stillness. Its stone walls, cold and bare, absorbed all sound, its slate floor a sheet of frozen darkness underfoot. It was a place outside of time, a room meant for the preservation of wine and winter stores, long since abandoned. Now, it served a grimmer purpose. In the center of the room, upon a makeshift bier of two wooden trestles, lay the body of the knight Sir Dagobert, shrouded in a simple linen cloth. The air was cold, clean, and utterly devoid of history—the perfect, neutral ground for the grim work to come.
Wulfgar, the captain of the Morgenstern household guard, stood sentinel by the heavy oak door, his face a stoic mask that betrayed nothing. He had followed Cædmon's instructions to the letter, his disciplined mind accepting the Walker's strange requirements as just another part of a grim, esoteric duty.
"The chamber is secure, Master Walker," Wulfgar said, his voice a low rumble. "No one will enter until you are done. Master Aldred has been informed of your… procedural necessities."
Cædmon gave a curt nod, his attention already elsewhere. He was not looking at the guard; he was looking at the shrouded form on the trestles. He felt a strange calm settle over him, the cold clarity that always preceded a Walking. But today, it was different. It was not the calm of an empty vessel waiting to be filled. It was the sharp, predatory stillness of a hunter waiting for its prey to step into a trap. He knew this echo was a performance, a play written and directed by the Serpent Circle. He was not here to be a spectator. He was here to be a critic.
"Leave me," Cædmon said, his voice quiet but absolute.
Wulfgar nodded once and withdrew, the sound of the heavy bar sliding into place on the outside of the door a definitive, echoing thud. Cædmon was alone with the dead.
He approached the body and gently drew back the linen sheet.
Even in the pallor of death, Sir Dagobert was an impressive figure. He had been a man in the prime of his life, his body a testament to a lifetime of martial discipline. His face, now peaceful, was framed by a thick mane of lion-blond hair, touched with grey at the temples. A single, neat, almost surgical wound was visible on his chest, a small, dark mouth in the pale flesh. But it was his hands that caught Cædmon's attention. They were resting at his sides, but even in repose, they were the hands of a warrior—large, calloused, scarred with the tales of a hundred battles. This was not a man who would have fallen easily.
A wave of profound sadness washed over Cædmon. This was Sir Dagobert, the 'Lion of the Regent,' a man whose name was a legend in the city, known for his unshakeable loyalty and his prowess in the tourney lists. To die here, not on a battlefield in a blaze of glory, but in a quiet gallery, in a house he trusted, by a single, treacherous blow… it was a tragedy of a deeply personal kind. The Serpent Circle had not just killed a knight; they had stolen a legend.
Cædmon began his ritual, his movements slow and deliberate. He washed his hands, the cold water a shock to his senses, a tool to sharpen his focus. He held the smooth river stone, its familiar weight an anchor to his own reality. He breathed. He did not try to empty his mind this time. Instead, he fortified it. He built walls of ice and iron around his own consciousness, preparing himself not to receive a memory, but to dissect one. He was not opening a door. He was laying a siege.
He leaned over the still form of the great knight. "Sir Dagobert," he whispered, a strange sense of fellowship with the dead man filling him. "They have stolen your truth. Forgive me for walking through their lies to find it."
He placed his fingertips on the cold temples.
And the world dissolved into a perfectly crafted lie.
He was standing in the west wing gallery. The scene was rendered with impossible clarity, more vivid than a true memory. The late afternoon sun slanted through the high arched windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air like golden sprites. The ancestral portraits on the walls seemed to watch with a painted solemnity. He was in Sir Dagobert's body, feeling the comfortable weight of his velvet doublet, the solid strength in his limbs. He could taste the faint, lingering notes of a fine, Dornish red wine on his tongue.
The forged echo was a masterpiece.
He looked across the room. A man stood by the grand fireplace, his back to Dagobert. The man was dressed in the livery of a rival courtier, a Baron a Faelan, known for his political ambitions and his open animosity toward the Regent's inner circle. The Scrivener had chosen their scapegoat well.
"You should not have come here, Dagobert," the courtier said, his voice a theatrical, villainous sneer. He turned, and in his hand, he held a long, gleaming stiletto.
Cædmon, from within the echo, felt the surge of Dagobert's noble outrage. A fine performance, a cold, critical part of his own mind noted, even as he felt the knight's phantom muscles tense for battle.
"Faelan! You dare draw steel in this house?" Dagobert's voice boomed, full of righteous fury. "This is treason!"
"It is progress," Faelan sneered back. "The Regent grows old and weak. New men must rise. You are a symbol of the old order, and you are in my way."
The fight began. It was a beautiful, terrible ballet of violence. Faelan was quick, his stiletto a blur of motion. But Sir Dagobert was a lion. He met the attack not with brute force, but with the sublime, economic grace of a true master of combat. He sidestepped, parried, his movements a fluid dance of effortless defense. The echo perfectly captured the knight's legendary skill, a detail designed to lend the narrative an unshakable authenticity.
Cædmon watched it all with a cold, detached fascination. He was both participant and observer, feeling the surge of adrenaline in Dagobert's veins while a separate part of his mind acted as a critic, analyzing the scene. The dialogue was too sharp, the motivations too clean. Real life was never this perfectly scripted. This was not a memory; it was a story.
But where was the flaw?
He searched for it desperately, scanning every detail of the memory-scape. The light from the windows was consistent. The placement of the furniture matched what he had seen in the real gallery. The emotional tenor, though dramatic, was internally consistent. The Scrivener who had crafted this was a master.
The duel reached its climax. Dagobert, in a brilliant move, disarmed his opponent, sending the stiletto clattering across the floor. He stepped forward, his own sword now at Faelan's throat. It was a moment of victory.
But the echo was a tragedy. Faelan, with a desperate, final gamble, kicked a small footstool into Dagobert's path. The knight, surprised by the ignoble trick, stumbled for a fraction of a second. It was all the opening Faelan needed. He produced a second, smaller blade from his boot and lunged, burying it deep in Dagobert's chest.
The pain was a white-hot sun exploding behind Cædmon's eyes. He felt the knight's shock, his disbelief, the sudden, catastrophic failure of his powerful body. He felt Dagobert fall, the world tumbling in a welter of agony and encroaching darkness. It was a perfect, heartbreaking rendition of a hero's fall.
And in that final, falling moment, as the life fled from the knight's body, Cædmon found the flaw.
It was not a sight. It was a sound.
Throughout the entire, dramatic confrontation—the shouted accusations, the clash of steel, the final, dying gasp—there had been another sound in the background of the echo. It was a faint, persistent, and entirely out-of-place noise: a rhythmic, mechanical click-clack… click-clack… click-clack. It was the sound of a complex clockwork device, like an astrolabe or one of the city's great timepieces.
Cædmon, having just examined the real gallery, knew with absolute certainty that there was no clock, no mechanical device of any kind, in that room.
The Scrivener, in their focus on creating a perfect emotional and visual narrative, had made a mistake. They had included a sound from the true moment of death without understanding its context. It was a single, stray thread in a flawless tapestry. It was the accidental seed of truth planted in a field of lies.
Cædmon pulled his mind from the echo with a shuddering gasp, the sterile quiet of the buttery crashing back in on him. He was slick with sweat, his heart pounding. The phantom wound in his chest ached with a terrible, intimate reality. He had the lie. And now, he had the flaw.
He took a few moments to compose himself, to push the grand, tragic performance of the echo away. He stood, his legs unsteady, and unbarred the door. Wulfgar, the guard captain, stood waiting, his face impassive. Master Aldred was beside him, his expression one of perfect, scholarly concern.
"Well, Walker?" Aldred asked, his voice smooth as silk. "What truth did the noble Sir Dagobert have to share?"
Cædmon met the tutor's gaze. The game was on. He had to deliver the performance of his life.
He let out a weary, sorrowful sigh, a perfect imitation of a man burdened by a terrible truth. "The truth is a poison, Master Aldred," he said, his voice low and gravelly. "Sir Dagobert was betrayed. He was murdered by Baron Faelan."
He recounted the story of the forged echo, presenting the lie with an actor's conviction. He described the duel, the treachery, the final, fatal blow. He saw a flicker of satisfaction in Aldred's eyes, the quiet pride of an artist whose work is being praised.
"Baron Faelan," Wulfgar growled, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword. "That ambitious viper. It has the ring of truth."
"It is the truth," Cædmon said, his voice leaving no room for doubt. "It is the last testament of a dying man. I have delivered it. The rest is in the hands of the Regent and the Stǣl-witan."
"You have done the House a great service," Aldred said, his voice resonating with false sincerity. "We are in your debt."
Cædmon knew he had to get back to the gallery. He needed a pretext. "One final detail," he said, turning to Wulfgar. "In his final moment, the knight's gaze fell upon the northern wall. A spatial detail was… unclear in the echo. I must see the room one last time to confirm the exact line of sight. It may be of importance to the magistrates."
It was a weak excuse, but in the face of his confident delivery of the echo's narrative, it passed without question. Wulfgar nodded. "Of course, Master Walker. I will escort you."
"No," Cædmon said quickly. "I must be alone. The psychic residue is delicate. The presence of others can disturb the reading."
He held his breath. Aldred watched him, his expression unreadable. For a moment, Cædmon thought he would object, that his bluff had been called.
But Aldred merely smiled his thin, cold smile. "Of course. The artist must have his silence. Wulfgar, allow the Walker his final observation."
Cædmon had his permission. He gave a curt nod and walked away, his heart pounding. He could feel Aldred's eyes on his back, and he knew this was the most dangerous moment yet. He had to find the source of the sound before the tutor's suspicion overcame his arrogance.
He returned to the west wing gallery, the scene of the crime. The room was just as he had left it, steeped in a cold, aristocratic silence. But now he was not looking for clues of a murder. He was listening for a ghost.
He closed his eyes, casting his mind back into the echo, focusing only on the single, anomalous detail. Click-clack… click-clack… The sound was rhythmic, precise. Mechanical. He opened his eyes and began to search, moving with a silent, desperate urgency. He ran his hands along the paneled walls, tapping lightly, listening for a hollow space. He checked the floorboards. He examined the fireplace. Nothing.
The sound in the echo had been persistent but faint. It was close, but muffled. His gaze was drawn to the room's largest feature: a massive, floor-to-ceiling tapestry depicting the founding of the House of Morgenstern. It was a masterpiece of the weaver's art, its colours still vibrant after two centuries. It was also the perfect object to conceal a secret.
He went to the tapestry and began to examine the wall behind it, pressing against the stone, listening. Halfway along its length, his knuckles rapped against a section of the wall that gave off a slightly different sound. Not hollow, but… different. He pressed harder. A faint click echoed in the silent room.
A section of the stone wall, no larger than his hand, swung inward, revealing a small, dark cavity.
His breath caught in his throat. He peered inside. It was a listening tube, a simple but effective device of polished brass, common in the spycraft of the old kingdoms, leading to an adjacent room. But there was something else. Tucked just inside the opening was a small, tightly-wound clockwork mechanism. It was still moving, its delicate gears turning with a soft, rhythmic click-clack. It was an arcane device, an 'aural chronometer' used by spies to record the exact time of conversations.
The Scrivener, while crafting the echo, had been in a nearby room, listening to the real murder through this tube. And this small, precise machine had been running, its sound bleeding into their psychic senses and, inadvertently, into the memory they had forged.
Cædmon reached into the opening, his fingers closing around the clockwork device. It was still faintly warm. As he drew it out, he saw something else tucked deeper inside the cavity. A small, folded piece of parchment.
His hands trembling, he unfolded it. It was not a message. It was a list of names.
Tomin Fenn, Weaver (the name was crossed out)
Sir Dagobert Stanhert, Knight of the Regent (also crossed out)
Leofwynn Aescbroc, Archivist
(and a couple more…)
It was a list of targets. A list of souls to be harvested or eliminated. And there was one person on the list that made him cold to his core.
A cold, absolute dread, purer and more terrible than anything he had ever felt, washed over him. This was not just a conspiracy. It was a purge. And it was aimed at the heart of everything he had just begun to care about. He had the truth. A piece of it. And it was a truth that was going to get them all killed.
From the Dunholm Compendium: An Official Communiqué from the Lord Regent's Chancellery
Subject: On the déplorable murder of Sir Dagobert of the Argent Shield.
Let it be known by all subjects of this city that a great injustice has been righted this day. Sir Dagobert, a knight of my own household and a man of unimpeachable honour, was struck down by a treacherous hand within the very walls he sought to protect.
By the power of this office, and with the use of the singular art of the city's chartered Echo-Walker, the perpetrator has been identified. The evidence provided by the unassailable testimony of the departed spirit is absolute.
Therefore, let a warrant be issued for the immediate arrest of Baron Wyot of the House of Faelan. He is charged with treason and murder. Let his lands and titles be forfeit to the Regent's authority, and let him be brought before the Magistry to answer for his heinous crimes.
The justice of Dunholm is swift and its memory, by the grace of the Walker's gift, is perfect. The matter is concluded.
Signed and Sealed,Lord Regent Aethelred of Dunholm