The document arrived at the Citadel gate at the seventh bell.
Not through the usual channels. Not through the tribunal's intake office or the Council's formal post or any of the standard routes that official correspondence traveled. It came by hand, carried by a single messenger who gave her name to the gate guard and waited to be received, which was itself a statement. People who came by hand and waited meant to be seen coming. They were not hiding the delivery. They wanted it noted.
Maren brought it to Vaelor still sealed.
The seal was not the Conclave's recent mark. It was older than that, a pressed design that Vaelor looked at for a moment before he opened it, and his face did the thing it did when he recognized something he had not expected to see.
He read it standing up.
