Some buildings keep their secrets in their basements. The Hall of Justice keeps its secrets on the front steps. Daylight makes it look noble—pillars, carvings, banners that insist order is not only possible but triumphantly inevitable. At night, those same pillars cast shadows long enough to hide regrets in. The banners hang heavy and tired. The stone remembers every decree, every pardon, every sentence. I sit three steps down from the top, far enough to be ignored, close enough to listen. “Loitering is discouraged on temple property,” Elunara tells me quietly as she descends from the higher landing. Her armor whispers more than clanks; she has learned to move like a priest trying not to wake a sleeping god. “I am not loitering,” I say. “I am auditing.” “Whose faith?” “The city’s,” I reply. She considers this and, to her credit, does not try to argue the theology of it. Instead, she sits two steps above me, facing outward, eyes scanning the square. We arrange ourselves like notes on a scale, waiting for someone to play us. The plaza before the Hall is nearly empty. A drunk stumbles past, three guards share a quiet joke near the far archway, and the great doors remain closed. Inside, the last of the day’s petitions are being sorted into piles. Which pile matters more than most people know. I close my eyes and listen. Bootsteps. Cloth. The dry rasp of paper moved by nervous hands. Two voices. One is a clerk—I know the cadence by now. Efficient, crisp, words filed alphabetically in his throat before he lets them out. The other is… harder. Too smooth. Like a legal document read by the man who wrote the law for his own convenience. “…cannot simply bury the survey,” the clerk is saying. “The stone sings wrong around the Chasm, my lord. There are patterns—collapses that don’t align with the fault lines—” “Fault lines are whatever we say they are,” the smoother voice answers. “If you put enough ink on a map, even a canyon becomes an administrative error.” Elunara stiffens. She hears them now too. The voices are not far; perhaps just inside the doors, down the short entry hall where petitioners wait to be weighed. “We have three independent reports,” the clerk insists. “The dwarven surveyor. The wizard from the Arcane Collegium. The… ah… anonymous informant in the Driftwood.” “That one,” the lordly voice says, “is a gossip.” “He is a very accurate gossip, my lord. And all three reports mention the same anomalies. Pressure where there should be none. Vibrations like—” “Like a city being reminded it was built on someone else’s foundation,” the smoother voice finishes. “Yes. I read your summaries.” Silence. Then: “With respect,” the clerk says, and the words *with respect* hit the air like a thrown glass, “if you read them, why are we not sending more support to the Underways? At least to the survey team beneath Protector’s Enclave. If something is… teaching the stone to move—” Elunara and I exchange a look. Her eyes are shadowed, but they are awake. “We are not sending more support,” the lord says, “because the last thing I need is twenty different factions all deciding the Chasm is an opportunity.” He paces; I can hear the turn of his heel on the polished floor. “The Faith will want miracles,” he continues. “The mages will want experiments. The mercenary companies will want contracts. The guilds will want ownership. And people like your anonymous informant will want leverage.” “So we do nothing?” the clerk asks, horrified. “We do,” the lord replies. “We *delay.* We let the city forget the tremors while we quietly reroute resources. We send only those who can be trusted not to panic the streets with talk of thinking stone.” “Trusted like… who?” the clerk asks. The answer comes with a smile in it I do not like. “Like a certain dwarven surveyor with more stubbornness than imagination. A Dragonborn whose solution to most problems is ‘hit it harder.’ A glutton whose fear threshold is buried somewhere under his stomach. People the city will not listen to, even if they shout the truth from the walls.” Elunara’s breath hitches almost imperceptibly. “That is unkind,” I say softly. “That is politics,” says a third voice behind us. We both turn. Varri Skynner leans against the side pillar, arms folded, half in shadow. I did not hear him approach. That bothers me almost as much as what he heard. “How much of that—” Elunara starts. “Enough,” Varri says. “More than I wanted. Less than I should have, probably.” Inside, the conversation continues. “If anyone is to receive the full reports,” the clerk is saying, “it should be the temple, the Watch, and the Collegium. Not just your private—” The smoother voice cuts him off. “You forget yourself.” “I remember the city,” the clerk says. There is a pause. A long one. I do not like long pauses in powerful halls. When the lord speaks again, the warmth is gone from his tone. “You remember *your position,*” he says. “You will deliver a summarized version of the reports to the appropriate parties. You will omit all mention of directed pulses, of rhythmic vibration, of external agency. You will frame this as a matter of aging infrastructure and routine reinforcement. Am I understood?” “Those omissions could kill people,” the clerk whispers. “Yes,” the lord agrees. “With any luck, the right ones.” Elunara is on her feet before her own sense of caution can catch up. I reach out and touch her wrist. “Not yet,” I say. Her jaw tightens. “He is choosing who dies to keep his paperwork simple.” “He is choosing which truth survives until morning,” Varri says quietly. “There’s a difference. A poisonous, useful difference.” “What would you have us do?” Elunara demands. “Swallow this? Wait until the stone finishes what he is too careful to admit is happening?” Varri’s eyes glint in the spill of light from the Hall. “I would have you consider that if he is rearranging the reports, someone should be rearranging *him.* But I don’t mean with a sword. I mean with a pen.” I stand and dust off my cloak. “Write it down,” I say. They both look at me. “If he wants to control which version of the story is remembered, we write another version,” I continue. “We tell the walls. The taverns. The markets. The dwarves at the forges. We tell the city the stone is restless. The city will decide what to do with that fear.” “That could start a panic,” Elunara says. “That could start a preparation,” I counter. Inside, the doors creak. The conversation is ending. Papers are being re-stacked, lies folded into neat piles. Varri steps deeper into the shadows. “You two are charmingly reckless,” he says. “I approve. I will help. On one condition.” Elunara narrows her eyes. “Which is?” “When this all collapses,” Varri says, “and it will—do not pretend you were surprised.” We listen as the lord of the Hall strides past on the other side of the doors, bootheels loud, conscience quieter. In the margin of the Ledger, the Soul Bearer would later note: The city tried to hide a tremor under ink. The ink leaked. The stone kept its own score.