The Lantern Ledger

The Lantern Ledger records every person, ship, relic, debt, and oath admitted beneath the Covenant's lamps. Its pages are copied in secret fragments and carried in oilskin, hidden in sea-chests, shrine walls, and the hems of mourning robes, so no fire or corrupt steward can erase a people twice. To be written there is shelter, obligation, and political existence in one stroke of ink. Families weep when their names enter it. Traitors fear the same page, because Vaelorn remembers not only who was saved, but who used salvation as a mask. Its bindings smell of salt, wax, damp leather, and lamp smoke, and some fragments are said to have crossed battle lines hidden beneath surgeons’ bandages or inside the false bottoms of supply chests.