Four days later, Kaelen and Elara were back in the geothermal shelter of the Sunstone Caves. The trip had been uneventful, thanks to their successful merchant disguise and the continued focus of Valerius's hunt on a high-powered magical fugitive.
Kaelen immediately retrieved the Codex of Echoes. The obsidian scroll, now resting on the central table, pulsed with a controlled, dense silence.
"The decree of treason against me is being finalized now," Kaelen explained, his hand resting near the Scroll. "It will be read by Lord Eamon in the Veridian Square tomorrow afternoon. We have hours to execute the final part of this plan."
He unrolled the Scroll of Debts and then carefully unsealed a small portion of the Codex of Echoes. The section revealed was not filled with traditional language, but with complex, shimmering glyphs—the pure blueprints of arcane design.
"The Broadcast Rune needs to be extremely high-range and low-power, a conflicting magical requirement," Kaelen explained, tracing the ancient Varr script. "A Blue Rank spell would be immediately tracked. The Codex, however, contains the ultimate solution: the design for a Temporal Echo Rune—a subtle wave that can carry a message on the ambient Aether flow for hundreds of miles, undetected."
Kaelen needed to find the specific blueprint within the Codex and transpose it onto a specialized focusing artifact.
"The issue is the scale," Kaelen continued, his focus entirely on the shimmering text. "The Varr designs are often intended for Archmage-level power. I must recalibrate the rune to work with minimal Blue Rank energy, using the Aether Key as my focusing lens."
He laid the obsidian feather (The Aether Key) on the table beside the Codex.
Elara sat opposite him, holding the Scroll of Debts. "I need to ensure the message is perfect. We can't just say Eamon is in debt. We need his exact total, the guild name, and the timeline, proving the information is insider knowledge. I'll write the message out now, in a common tongue."
Kaelen worked on the Temporal Echo Rune for hours, his focus absolute, channeling small, precise bursts of Aether into the feather. The work was painstaking, requiring him to essentially rewrite an ancient, master-level spell to operate on a fraction of the power.
Finally, just as the sun was setting outside, Kaelen exhaled sharply. The Aether Key in his hand now glowed with the complex, shimmering pattern of the miniaturized Temporal Echo Rune.
"Done," he announced, his voice raspy with exhaustion. "This rune will only carry the message, but it will travel to every major city, delivered as a whisper on the wind. It will be untraceable."
Elara pushed the final version of the message across the table: a concise, damning text listing Lord Eamon's debt to the 'Black Hand Guild' and the specific date Valerius secretly paid it.
"Now, how do we activate it at the right moment?" Elara asked. "Eamon is reading the decree tomorrow afternoon. We are days away."
Kaelen smiled—a brief, cold flash of triumph. He picked up the Scroll of Debts, holding the plain paper over the glowing feather.
"The simplest magic is often the most effective, Elara. We are not casting a spell. We are casting a spark."
He channeled a tiny, focused sliver of Blue Rank Aether into the Temporal Echo Rune. The feather glowed intensely, absorbing the debt information from the scroll.
Then, Kaelen activated the final command: Remote Activation.
"I'm setting the key to activate when it senses a massive, localized surge of Voice Rune Aether—the exact signature of Eamon's decree broadcast tomorrow," Kaelen explained. "When he begins to announce my treason, the Aether Key will release this information, overriding his voice with the truth. The message will be broadcast through his own, now compromised, signal."
Kaelen secured the Aether Key in his warded pocket. He looked at Elara, whose face was illuminated by the residual glow of the rune.
"The Codex and your knowledge have given us a weapon that requires no army. Now, we wait. If this fails, we will be hunted by every force in Eldoria."