In relief to her frustration, this seal responded to her far more readily than those before, even though it still took several lungfuls of aether gathered and released at once to break it. Upon disintegration, it revealed a glyph inlaid into stone using silver, tarnishing and erosion already taking hold within seconds of her removing the seal.

It lit up and the gate opened, and with a sense of urgency, she stepped through. Travel by this gate was much like travel by those within the Dungeon, if not nearly as pleasant, and she was spat out within a small, pitch-dark chamber. She breathed and called forth lightning to illuminate her surroundings, finding it to be a perfectly cubical chamber seemingly carved out of solid bedrock… And empty.

There was nothing. No shelves, no scroll racks, no vault, no treasury.

Or so she thought.

In the next moment, the entire chamber lit up, a great sprawling glyph spreading out from wherever she stepped, broken up only by the Fog Gate’s frame - a frame which, at a glance, didn’t even look like silver, so tarnished it was, and it was only decaying further with each passing moment.

Soon enough, great Fog serpents swirled inward from the chamber’s walls, ceiling, and floor alike, forming into a spherical maelstrom of Fog in the center, an otherworldly window to a place which shimmered with colours that hurt to look at.

For the first time since she had aided three deserters in escaping the Exclusion Zone, Zelsys felt a thought distinctly not her own float to the surface. Whoever she had subsumed when she unsealed the door, they clearly had more to share before they fully joined her whole:

“Be quick, the gate will collapse soon.”

A second immediately followed the first, but it quickly faded, like someone shouting from further and further away.

“The Eternal Vault will only permit you to remove one scroll...”

Not needing any encouragement she reached into the vortex, focusing her mind upon the intention to obtain some means to better combat Fog-walkers, to mitigate their mobility advantage. A probing tendril of searing, brilliant thrumming pain shot up her arm and deep into her chest, for but a moment. Something appropriately cylindrical came into her hand, and upon pulling it out, she dashed for the already-collapsing gate.

Zelsys fell upon the cold stone, death-gripping the scroll so as to not lose it. Chunks of oxidized silver rained down upon her, the gate demanifesting well before she stood back up. She wasn’t willing to risk that damned floor trap again, and so, after stowing the scroll into her own Fog Storage, she jumped, wedging her legs and hands against the walls. In this manner she traversed back through the hallway, finally walking back through the library.

What she was greeted by back in the main room of the elder’s quarters was a flabbergasted look from Zefaris. An unspoken question, one that Zel answered by summarizing what had happened, retrieving the scroll from storage as she did so.

It was only now that she got a good look at it, seeing that it was made from some type of vellum, rolled up on two spools made of carved ivory.

“It’s no matter, I’d meant to get something new to wear either way,” Zel excused, even if she was a little upset at the loss of her leg-plates. She raised the scroll, looking at it in consideration, “At least we’ll have time to handle that errand. I’d rather have the elder’s letter translated and this thing looked at before I risk reading it.”

“What, so now we’re going shopping to kill time?” Zef laughed amusedly.

Zel smiled back, jokingly remarking, “I can’t just walk around and fight like this all the time, I’d just chase away all the prospective recruits, make them feel inadequate from the outset.”

And so, they departed the sect, leaving a note for Ozmir on the off-chance that he returned before they did. They encountered the groundskeeper as they left, though to say they interacted with him would’ve been an overstatement - he was a gaunt, nightmarish figure looming by the trees, lazily waving at them as they left with one hand whilst clipping errant branches at inhuman speed with the other using a brush hook.

An old eye peered through the roiling mass of a crowd. It watched the Black Horse sect property, watched and grew curious. He knew not of the sect’s rapid loss of members during the war, but he did know what the absence of the Guardian Golem meant.

The old sect had fallen beyond recovery, and a new sect elder had asserted authority.

He was already here, and so saw no reason not to observe.

Perhaps this new generation could be an appropriate vessel for his knowledge.

Perhaps the old man just didn’t feel like being a hermit anymore.

Or, perhaps, the appeal of this new era’s commerce had outweighed his distaste for society at large.

It had been a successful, if altogether uneventful time for a particular merchant-craftsman.

He wielded the tools of his trade with dexterity and skill surpassing the limits of mortals, he even possessed a piece of ancient essentech that he had purchased from the Ankhezians in his travels after he realized that it was, indeed, a mechanized sewing machine built to the same standards as any other Imperial artefact.

...And here he was, plying his trade by crafting and repairing workmen’s boots, slippers, and the ridiculous footwear of this land’s lesser noblemen. His skill in sewing and working leather also expanded his portfolio to other articles of clothing, from jackets to pants, belts, purses, and of course, the local customers without fail ordered something normal, something boring. It was a near-effortless thing, basically free money, but it was still disappointing that the news of the war’s devastating consequences had been mostly true. He supposed he’d have to keep making boots for those Iron Brotherhood folks. Uninspired as they were, they made good customers.