The first arrest team hit the dye shop door before anyone finished arguing.
Three hard knocks. One pause. Then Prell's voice from outside.
"Open. I know you're in there."
Jak looked at Varen with one eyebrow up.
"Could be real Prell. Could be clerk with good mimic."
Sera moved to the hinge and pressed two fingers to the seam.
"Pulse pattern matches him," she said. "And he's alone."
"Alone is worse," Rill muttered.
Varen opened the door with his hand on a blood thread.
Prell stepped in, rain on his coat, eyes taking inventory in one sweep: Caed bandaged, Elya awake, Iven armed with a stolen chisel, Varen still bleeding through side wrap.
"Continuity office posted four detention writs," Prell said. "Yours included. They claim you obstructed lawful seizure in Ash Market and colluded with active cult leadership."
"That's a creative summary," Jak said.
Prell ignored him.
"Halren calls emergency mourning assembly at second bell. Public service for Miri and Tams. Then vote on interim security authority." He looked at Varen. "If you don't appear, he gets uncontested quorum and signs White Ledger release under panic clause."
Elya's head snapped up.
"Panic clause bypasses seven signatures?"
"No. It compresses witnesses and allows proxy marks." Prell's jaw worked. "I argued against it. Lost."
"Convenient loss," Caed said.
Prell turned to her. "I lost a warden in your tunnel today. Save your sermon."
Varen stepped between them.
"Can we block release legally?"
Prell nodded once. "If you force open challenge in assembly and demand full-sign witness chain. But you need physical evidence, not accusations."
Elya held up the skin strip from the cylinder.
"This is credential key material."
Prell read it and went still.
"Where did you get this?"
"From the shipment you didn't know existed," Elya said.
Prell handed it back without comment.
"Bring it," he said. "And bring everyone willing to testify."
Rill laughed tiredly.
"In your court?"
"In public," Prell said. "That's the only reason you survive the morning."
---
Lantern Court smelled like wax and wet stone and fresh grief.
Miri and Tams lay on cedar boards in the center, faces covered, names carved into quick pine markers because no one had time for proper memorial work. Students crowded the upper galleries two and three deep. Refugees stood along the back wall under guard. Inquisition officers took neutral stations that looked very much like prepared choke points.
Halren stood at the dais with black ribbon tied around his arm.
"We gather," he began, voice ringing, "to honor two young lives stolen by faction violence and unauthorized operations."
A ripple of angry murmurs followed that phrase.
Unauthorized operations.
Varen felt Sera shift beside him.
"He just blamed the dead for his policy," she whispered.
Brask sat shackled on a low platform to Halren's right, bruised but upright, expression calm in the way snakes looked calm.
Vael sat opposite him, wrists bound, eyes hollow.
Prell called Varen, Elya, and Vane to the witness rail when Halren reached procedural motions.
"Motion one," Halren said. "Interim security authority transfers from fractured instructional chain to continuity office until crisis resolution."
"Objection," Varen said.
Halren pinched the bridge of his nose.
"State basis."
"Continuity office appears on White Ledger credential chain tied to child trafficking routes." Varen held up the skin strip. "Evidence recovered this morning under mixed-operation seal."
The court erupted.
Halren hammered for order and failed.
"Forgery," he shouted when the noise thinned.
Elya stepped to the rail and spoke before fear could catch her.
"Not forgery. Bone-shell inner script. You can test reagent pattern right now in front of everyone." She lifted a vial. "If this line blooms black, it's authentic choir chain script."
Halren pointed at her. "She is compromised witness under coercive influence."
Iven from the gallery screamed, "She's smarter than your whole table!"
The gallery laughed, then shouted, then split into chants too fast to parse.
Vane stepped forward and raised one gloved hand.
He did not yell.
"Quiet," he said.
People went quiet anyway.
"We test in open view," Vane said. "No private chamber, no substitute sample."
Prell nodded, called for a neutral basin, and supervised the reagent himself.
Elya placed one drop.
The script line darkened from brown to midnight black.
Authentic.
You could feel the room tilt.
Halren swallowed.
"Authentic does not prove authorship."
"Correct," Vane said. "It proves active release infrastructure exists. Which means your panic clause motion is suspended pending chain audit."
Halren slammed his rod down.
"Suspended by whose authority?"
"Mine," Vane said.
"You are external observer."
"I'm Lantern Witness Prime under your own emergency treaty addendum, Rector." Vane produced a slate strip. "Signed by you at dawn three days ago when you wanted hunting companies off your ridge."
Whispers exploded across the galleries.
Elya stared at the strip.
"Prime title," she whispered. "That's the missing seventh mark."
Halren looked sick for one flicker of a second, then recovered.
"Fine," he said. "Motion one tabled. Motion two: expand detention authority for named colluders Brask Pellor and Councilor Vael Morn and move all associated witnesses to deep hold pending audit."
Brask smiled at that.
Too quickly.
Varen saw it and knew something was wrong before the first shot.
The shot came from upper gallery west.
Not at Varen.
At Vael.
The bolt punched through Vael's throat and pinned him to the restraint chair.
Chaos detonated.
Students screamed and dropped. Wardens drew blades. Inquisition officers snapped into kill lines. A second bolt hit the platform chain by Brask's left ankle and shattered the lock pin.
Brask moved instantly.
He rolled off the platform, kicked a warden's knee sideways, and grabbed the fallen bolt launcher.
"Down!" Sera shouted.
Varen cast a lattice toward Brask and felt his right hand fail halfway. The pattern collapsed. Brask fired blindly into smoke pellets someone had already thrown from the gallery.
Planned.
Prell charged through the smoke and tackled Brask low, both of them crashing into memorial boards. Miri's marker snapped in half.
Rill cried out from the back rail, "Child route seals! Protect the evidence!"
Two masked figures vaulted the witness barrier toward Elya.
Iven jumped from the gallery and slammed into the first attacker with all his weight. The attacker drove an elbow into Iven's face and reached for the skin strip.
Elya stabbed his forearm with a brass pen and held on to the strip while Sera's pin froze his wrist to the rail.
The second masked attacker made it to the dais.
Vane intercepted, baton cracking ribs, but the attacker bit a capsule and foamed black at the mouth before anyone could pull a name.
Dead in seconds.
Prell stood from the wreck with blood on his face and Brask no longer beneath him.
"Where is he?" Prell shouted.
Jak answered from above.
"South crawl!"
Brask had used the broken memorial platform to drop through the service hatch below the dais.
Varen sprinted after him despite his ribs screaming.
He hit the hatch ladder with Jak and Vane close behind, descending into dark maintenance corridors that smelled like old lime and lamp smoke.
Brask's boot scuffs marked the dust for twenty paces, then vanished at a three-way split.
Jak knelt, touched stone, and frowned.
"Salt scatter," he said. "He masked sweat trail."
Vane pointed left.
"Airflow strongest there. Exit likely."
They ran left.
Dead end.
By the time they doubled back and checked center route, they found only a dropped wrist shackle and one chalk line on the wall.
A circle cut by a slash.
Rill's mercy code.
"Key moved, not destroyed," Elya said when they brought her down to read it. "Brask took something or someone important and passed it on."
"Could be ledger copy," Vane said.
"Could be a living key," Rill answered. "Some credential chains use people as marks."
No one liked that thought.
They returned to court to find Vael dead, one attacker dead, one in chains, Brask gone, students panicking, and Halren already trying to reassert procedural order over the blood on his own floor.
"Assembly adjourned," Halren yelled. "All testimony sealed pending internal tribunal."
Varen pointed at the broken memorial board.
"You don't get sealed process after this."
Halren's face hardened. "You don't get to dictate terms while fugitives hide in your pockets."
"Fugitives?" Sera stepped forward. "You just watched a targeted execution and a planned escape in your chamber."
"Because you brought war into this school."
Vane cut in before the argument became blades.
"No one leaves Lantern Court until bodies are documented and chain marks copied by all parties."
Halren glared. "You overreach again."
"I keep overreach from becoming massacre," Vane said.
Prell spoke from behind them, voice rough.
"Rector, with respect, stand down." He held up his hands, palms blistered raw from the harbor fire. "Your office is compromised. Let mixed custody hold until we know how deep."
Halren stared at him like a betrayal had just become visible.
"You too," he said.
"Especially me," Prell said.
They pulled the surviving masked attacker into Records Antechamber C because it was the nearest room with a drain and two doors. He was young, maybe nineteen, hair shaved to scalp, left ear burned with choir brand and then cut away to hide it.
He kept trying to bite his tongue off.
Sera packed his jaw with cloth and tied it behind his neck.
"You want answers?" she said to Varen. "Then keep him alive long enough to hate us."
Vane stood across from the chair, arms folded, no visible threat in his stance. Somehow that was worse than shouting.
"Name," he said.
No response.
"Cell."
No response.
Prell laid the recovered bolt launcher on the table and spun the firing wheel once. It clicked in a distinct pattern.
"This wheel was filed for left-thumb reload," Prell said. "You trained in East Yard under quarter armorer Dren. Dren died six months ago. His surviving students number fourteen."
The prisoner flinched.
Small movement. Enough.
Elya stepped forward holding a slate of copied symbols from the dead attacker's capsule.
"Your partner swallowed black foam with river alkaloid binder," she said. "That's not hardliner stock. That's continuity lab stock. Do you know what that means?"
The prisoner's eyes jumped to Halren's aide at the door, then back down.
Varen caught it.
"He's not afraid of us," Varen said. "He's afraid of whoever signed his family."
The prisoner shook once, hard.
Vane saw it too and shifted tactics.
"Fine," he said. "No confession. Give me one route and I'll mark your kin as protected witnesses instead of collaborators. Lie and I pull the mark back myself."
Silence stretched.
Then the prisoner scraped a boot heel against stone in three short lines and one long line.
Jak crouched, frowned, and translated.
"South spillway. Third grate. Midnight."
Prell swore softly.
"That's old courier pass to river barges."
Varen leaned in. "Who moves there?"
The prisoner looked at him for the first time and whispered through cloth.
"White room makes names. Spillway makes bodies."
He bit down hard enough to tear his own cheek open. Sera clamped his jaw again before he could break his tongue.
"He's done," she said.
Vane nodded to Prell. "Double guard. No continuity access."
At the door, Halren's aide protested. "Rector authority requires-"
Prell shoved him back with one burned palm.
"Rector authority can file a complaint," he said. "After we stop the next funeral."
Varen took the route marks and copied them onto his forearm with blood so he would not lose them in the noise.
Midnight. South spillway. Third grate.
Another problem waiting in line.
---
By late afternoon, the court cleared enough for the dead to move.
Miri and Tams were carried through the east gate under black cloth while students lined the path in silence. Even Brask's supporters kept their mouths shut.
Varen walked with the procession until the stair split toward burial shelves. There he stopped because Sera grabbed his sleeve and pointed.
A continuity clerk stood alone by the bell tower base with a sealed crate and no escort.
Wrong.
Jak drifted behind the clerk without sound and lifted the crate slip.
"Transfer order," he said. "Signed Halren. Destination: Archive Sublevel White Room."
Elya took the slip and read the item line.
"Not item," she said. "It's a person code."
"Whose?" Varen asked.
Elya's mouth opened, then closed.
She passed him the slip.
He read the code and felt his stomach turn.
The transfer target wasn't Rill. Wasn't Caed. Wasn't Iven.
It was Sera Nightbloom.
Above them, the convocation bell began ringing again, one long note, then another, while rain started falling hard enough to erase fresh blood from the stone.
