Before the retainer can press any further for a missing blade tally, a stern magistrate cuts through the dim, damp courtyard, summoning Ryan directly to verify vintage indigo dye ledgers under candlelight before the dusk curfew fully locks the district. The official slams a heavy, ink-stained ledger onto a low trestle table, treating the faded blue fabric swatches and cross-referenced fiber tallies with the unyielding, high-stakes gravity of an urgent end-of-quarter inventory audit.
Ryan lets out a quiet, soul-weary exhale—the exact, hollow sigh he typically reserved for an afternoon vendor delivery missing half its seasonal stock. Adjusting the heavy canvas strap of his messenger bag, he steps up to the flickering tallow candle, squinting at the archaic columns of pigment costs and vat allocations. With the deadpan diplomacy of an exhausted marketing coordinator handling a rogue supplier invoice, he reaches for his mundane plastic ballpoint pen, fully prepared to treat centuries-old textile discrepancies with the same clinical, process-driven detachment he brought to every corporate desk job he had ever survived.