Transcript

1: Colin Hedgeworth, in his familiar avian disguise from previous issues, looks over his shoulder amid columns of wood and stone.

Julia (narrating): Property deeds and surviving newspaper articles indicate that the library was purchased and renovated in the 1850’s by a Mr. Dahl, though one letter I’ve found in the Cairo Police archives suggests this was a pseudonym for Colin Hedgeworth, a businessman implicated in a mine collapse in the American Southwest.

2: Hedgeworth walks through the construction of the Cairo library. Ancient stone columns and shelves are being covered or replaced.

3: A short, male sand piper, the ancient lizard’s avian disguise, waves Hedgeworth over.

4: One of the stone tiles that line the ground has been uprooted and slid away. Beneath it lies the entrance to a long spiral staircase.

Julia: I find it highly unlikely that the property the library stood on, which happens to contain the only known original entrance to these underground ruins, was purchased and renovated by sheer coincidence.