🖨️ Level B1: The Steam & Ink Intake
Bypassing the high municipal desks, you step behind the Tithing Well and push past a heavy, rust-spotted grate. The low, tectonic rumble of the printing presses vibrates straight up through the soles of your boots, humming an uneven rhythm that sets your teeth on edge.
🚪 The First False Threshold
The hallway straightens out, lined with locked iron filing doors labeled with prior nomenclatures that have been crossed out by the Under-Secretary. At the end of the passage sits a massive slatted wood door.
🦡 The Mustelid Checkpoint
The stairs dump you directly into a dead-end stone corridor lit by a single, flickering lanternmoss jar. Sitting squarely on top of an upside-down travel trunk is a lone Misdeed Ferret wearing a tiny, high-visibility vest.
The ferret watches you with absolute, unblinking administrative suspicion. He doesn't move. He doesn't bite. He just sits on a stack of heavily stained vellum papers, his left paw resting lazily on an official Office of Mustelid Oversight logbook.
If you look carefully behind his trunk, there is a tiny, hidden gap in the stone masonry—just wide enough to slide through if you don't breathe too heavily.
