The high-vanguard ledger did not bleed when it was altered, but the thick, iron-gall ink that stained Jaxon’s thumb felt dangerously like drying vein-blood.
The Beta sat alone at the heavy ironwood desk in the central guardroom, the single, unhooded oil lamp overhead casting a harsh, yellow glare across the thick columns of the fortress logs. Outside the iron-reinforced door, the midnight air was dead, frozen solid by the first true breath of the solstice blizzard. But inside the guardroom, the air was hot, stagnant, and thick with the chemical stench of whale-oil, wet leather, and the heavy static of his own acrid, anxious scent-profile.
Leo. Sector 4. Western Scullery Drain. Mid-watch rotation.
Jaxon stared at the entry, his dark eyes tracking the tight, nervous handwriting of the unr
