Ferra transferred the socket cradle into the witnessed reception vault before Hajin left the palace court. He closed his single Ring after the Legendary Chain released its travel pressure, leaving Juna beside Ferra plus the four record guards.
Eirwen placed her memory-root cutting inside a separate diplomatic cabinet and remained to register its treaty seals. Neither old-system object followed Didi toward the academy’s northern records building with them.
She led Hajin plus Elina through a side entrance used by faculty clerks rather than students. The borrowed room belonged to an academy survey professor whose authorization covered historical service maps, not active palace security records.
Four long tables occupied the narrow chamber beneath its tightly shuttered academy windows. Didi had covered each one with copied duty books, gate rolls, transfer slips, plus replacement pages divided into laundry, infirmary, archive, and waste routes.
Every copied sheet carried a pale-blue ice-flower impression beside its source reference. Some pages bore the seal twice where Didi had returned to compare a replacement entry against the original book.
"You sealed every copy yourself," Hajin said, following the repeated impressions through Divine Eye, "none of these requests can be mistaken for a clerk’s routine search."
"That is why the copies can enter the hearing," Didi replied, placing her hand above the laundry row without covering a name, "the same trail also tells every office exactly what I examined."
She began with Sera Noll, whose final laundry mark appeared upon the disposal cart containing the blood-soaked child bandages. The original duty book kept her name, work hours, plus return route beneath the western washroom.
Its replacement page removed the return line and described her as released after temporary service. The departure gate roll for the same date contained no Sera Noll, household carriage, or authorized exit matching that claim.
Beside Sera rested Lorin Bale, a boiler worker reassigned from the same laundry two weeks earlier. His transfer ended at a lower linen store that reported receiving no new worker.
The infirmary row began with Mera Doss, an orderly assigned to carry sealed treatment basins toward the western washroom. Perrin Holt followed through a linen delivery order that removed him from the ordinary patient floors.
Both replacement rolls described completed temporary service plus voluntary departure in identical administrative language. Their names appeared nowhere in the gate books, discharge wages, infirmary lodging changes, or palace employment releases.
"No patient names accompany their assignments," Aria said, aligning the copied treatment schedules, "the orders moved supplies plus workers without identifying anyone who received care."
"The private infirmary clause allows that during royal treatment," Didi replied, separating lawful privacy from the missing exits, "it does not permit the household office to erase the workers afterward."
Avra Sen plus Tollin Vey occupied the archive table nearest the locked faculty door. One had copied damaged indexes, while the other moved sealed boxes through the western document lift beneath a temporary-assistance order.
Their original shift pages ended before either person returned aboveground on their separate assignment dates. Later copies replaced the unfinished marks with identical departure language authorized through the First Prince’s household chain.
The waste-route table held Edda Pell plus Kel Oris, both assigned to furnace intake counts. Their final carts entered different disposal corridors, although neither load appeared in the furnace ledger before the workers vanished.
Didi had preserved the complete missing entry behind every named worker, each attached to an original line, altered replacement, claimed departure, plus the gate page that failed to support it. Within her complete ledger, no missing person existed only as an anonymous total.
Hajin read every name before allowing Aria to collapse the copies into route geometry. None produced a soul record, living marker, or location by itself, leaving the documents as evidence of disappearance rather than proof of death.
The laundry orders descended through the western washroom ramp before turning beneath the service floor. Infirmary transfers reached a lower linen stair, while archive assignments used the document lift and waste carts followed the furnace passage.
On the public palace plan, all four routes remained separate from their first marked service doors. Aria aligned their last recorded checkpoints instead of extending any line beyond what a worker had actually signed.
The distances narrowed beneath the western palace wing only after Aria overlaid every signed endpoint. Each route ended around the same foundation block from a different direction, no farther apart than the command house plus registry across the Sixth square.
"Four service systems converge around one buried section," Hajin said, fixing the last signatures across Divine Eye, "the public plan calls every approach a separate dead end."
"The current maintenance book still does," Didi replied, placing a newer foundation page above the older survey, "nothing lists a shared room, crossing corridor, or occupied level beneath them."
The First Prince’s household authorization did not appear anywhere upon the recorded physical foundation survey. It appeared upon every temporary assignment that carried a worker toward those endpoints, then again upon the replacement rolls removing their destinations.
The pattern supported controlled access beneath the western wing without proving who occupied the hidden space. It also left Didi without a legal route through any of the four sealed service approaches.
Elina arranged the copied names into one hearing ledger while preserving their separate source seals. Her gloves stayed beneath every page, preventing an academy room from becoming another unexplained custody break.
"How many offices know you copied their books?" Hajin asked, finding different receipt numbers beside Didi’s ice flowers, "the laundry, infirmary, archive, gates, waste intake, plus household records all kept your seal."
"Seven offices and the royal examiner," she replied, tightening one ribbon around the infirmary copies, "it is paperwork, Hajin. Dangerous paperwork, but still only paper until somebody lets me enter those routes."
He placed his left hand over the empty destination at the center of Aria’s map. Sera’s hidden bandages remained the only physical evidence tied to a possible victim, while every other person survived publicly as a false departure line.
"Paperwork is how they removed these people without opening a gate," he replied, meeting Didi’s eyes across the four tables, "your seals put your name beside every one they erased. Stop describing that risk as if you only borrowed a ledger."
Didi held his stare before looking toward the ice flowers repeated across the room. None could be withdrawn without destroying the evidence chain she intended to place before her father.
"If the inquiry closes, those seals become a list of every question I asked," she said, leaving both hands visible above the records, "I knew that before I made the first copy."
"Then call it what you chose," he continued, removing his hand from the route center, "you followed missing people into an office controlled by the heir, and you signed each step so nobody could bury it quietly."
She did not answer by calling the dangerous work mere paper again. Instead, Didi read all eight names aloud while Elina entered the four convergence routes beneath them.
{Laundry / infirmary / archive / waste assignments converge beneath the western palace wing.}
{Shared room or route upon public plans: none.}
{Final authorization chain: First Prince’s household office.}
{Named workers with verified palace departure: none.}
The academy’s hearing bell sounded beyond the shutters as Elina closed the completed ledger. Didi pressed one final ice-flower seal across its cover, placing every vanished name inside the case she would carry into the palace herself.