Greyspire floor Fragments

[the top of the page is torn]

...Day 2. The association calls the Greyspire a hunting ground. I call it the first water I have seen in twenty years that nobody has fished. There are lakes in here. Real ones, between the stairs and the dungeons, dark and still, and things move in them that no map of ours has a name for.

My Angler’s Rod lasted one cast. The line held, the wood did not.

Day 3. Found a Weathered Log wedged against the stair rail, grey and heavy, older than the tower has any right to be. Pulled a few Corroded Iron Shards from the wall to band the grip, the way the old oak rods were made. Kept the reel from my Angler’s Rod and rebuilt everything around it. It is ugly. It is stubborn. I am calling it the Stalwart.

[the rest was ripped away]

..Day 9. The Stalwart brings in plain fish, nothing a collector would pay for. The better ones keep their distance, as if they can smell the cheap wood.

Day 10. The spirit of the lake sheds a Plume of the Deepborne when it surfaces at dusk. They drift, shimmer, and hum when wet. I braided several into a lure and the fish came closer than they ever had. The line was the problem. Plain cord kept snapping. I worked Elastic Slime Gel, taken from the slimes on this floor, into it until it would stretch and come back. Now the rod seems to listen to me.

The association would call it uncommon. I call it good.

[the ink is smeared]

..Day 18. Faster. I need to be faster. Something silver took the bait and was gone before my hands understood.

Day 19. Swiftstep Runes, the kind sewn into the boots of scouts. Cut four from a fallen scout’s gear and set them along the rod. Plumes of the Frostbird to balance the weight, dozens of them, soft as snow. Rebuilt from the Stalwart, again. It hums in the hand. A bite, and the line is already running.

I named it Swiftcatch. Fishermen name things. It is the only vanity we have.

[the page ends here]

THE SEAL I

...the seal is breaking.

The ancients said the gods forged it to contain the Abyss for all eternity. But something has changed. The Eye has opened, and the

[the rest of the page is torn, illegible]

...with my own eyes, the rift in the sky, it was no imagination. Whether the gods erred, or simply grew weary of watching, that I still -

...Day 27. The lake on this floor hides something heavy. My rod bent toward the water and nearly took my arm with it. Wood and cord will not do for this.

Day 28. Tarnished Steel Plates, from the armor of men who did not come back. Hammered them thin and laced them to the body of the uncommon rod. A rod of metal feels wrong, so I asked the Adamantine Crystals from the depths of the dungeon to settle it: dense, radiant, they hold the steel the way a promise holds a man.

Reinforced Steel. It carries weight now. So do I.

[torn]

...Day 33. There are two kinds of anglers. Those who haul and those who flick. The steel rod is a hauler. I have always been a flicker.

Day 34. Moonsilver Ingots. Cold to the touch, the color of a held breath. Drew them into wire and wound it along the Swiftcatch, then set Swiftstep Runes, as many as there are scales, down the whole length. Quicksilver. It is fragile and I love it. It cannot carry much. It never needed to. Whatever bites is already on the line.

[a tea stain has bled through the page]