Archiva Reservata

There exists no civil record of the boy who would become Paladin #3113. The municipal census of   for the year 10[██] lists, on the page corresponding to the western quarter, an unbroken row of names struck through in red. Among them: «Germain. M. Guilloux. Age 17. Catechist's apprentice. — STATUS: ☩.»

On the morning of the   incident the western quarter ceased to exist. A column of investigators of the Order, attached to the regional expedition led by then-Paladin #717, recovered seventeen individuals from the rubble across three days of excavation. Sixteen succumbed in the days that followed. The seventeenth, the last name on the excavation list, was the boy. Among those whose names do not appear on any survivor record are Aurélien Ménard and Léa Guilloux. The archivist notes only that the boy carries both surnames.

When he was lifted out of the cellar of what had been the parish house, the rescuers reported that the boy's back showed no visible wound, but that the air around his shoulders held an unmistakable warmth, a kind of «pressure» in the words of Custodios #343 and #345, that none of them could account for. Within the hour, the first feather had emerged.

He was inducted into the novitiate fourteen days later under the patronage of #717. The investiture rites that followed are described in [Archive II].

By precedent of the Order, the rite of investiture for a novice of confirmed Alati lineage is to be conducted within the inner cloister of «La corona y la raíz», under the supervision of a Cardinal-appointed Legato of the first generation. In Germain's case the supervising Legato was #6 (Memory & Concordance), assisted by the chirurgical division of Legates of Forge #6.

The rite consists of three concurrent procedures. First: the aetherial consecration of the candidate's blood, drawn in fixed measure at intervals across three full days, returned to the candidate's circulation after the rite. Second: the affixing of the sacred injector to the inner left forearm, by which the sacred blood may be redeployed at will. Third: the unfolding (never the «creation») of the wings, an act performed by the candidate himself once the second procedure has set.

It is recorded that Germain bore the three procedures in complete silence. The Legato in attendance entered into the margin of the rite-book the observation that «the boy speaks only when he has examined the matter for a full minute by the wall-clock». The marginal note has not been struck out.

From this point Germain bears the title of Paladin, generation XXXI, Custodes Puritatis. The wings unfold to a maximum span of   meters tip to tip; their plumage is, per the rite-book, «of the colour of a thing seen at dawn through smoke».

[The body of this archive entry is REDACTED in its entirety by direct order of the High Council, dated  . The conclusions and recommendations sections of the operation report are preserved verbatim in Archive Appendix B. The descriptive section appears in the present file as a single span of solid black some 1.8 meters in length when the dossier is rolled out flat.]

Of the matter the present archivist may write only the following, drawn from records that survive elsewhere: that Paladin #3113 served as co-operation lead together with Paladin #3666; that some forty Custodios fell during the operation; that the Alati population remaining on the island at the time of the operation perished in its entirety; that the principal hostile entity is filed as INVECO-002-V; that the operation report was approved by His Holiness the Draconic Hierophant in person, and signed «GERMAIN MÉNARD GUILLOUX #3113» in a hand the archivist notes is uncharacteristically firm.

On the question of why the descriptive body was redacted, this archivist offers no opinion.

In the absence of any descriptive record from INVECO-002-V, what survives in accessible files amounts to three registry codes (and three Anathema classifications) appended to the conclusions section of a document approved by the Draconic Hierophant. As of this writing, all three individuals remain at large. It is the private opinion of this archivist that they will never be found by anyone who does not first earn the introduction.

The most proximate witness on record is Paladin #3666, listed in the operation file as co-operation lead and the only other Custodes present throughout the full engagement. This archivist has requested an interview with #3666 no fewer than four times. On the first occasion the reply was a single marginal note: «Ask #3113.» On the second: «Ask #3113.» On the third occasion no reply arrived. This entry therefore exists without corroboration, as does this archivist's suspicion that the silence of two men covering for each other is the loudest testimony in the file.

Of the three entities the conclusions classify as VA-N-002-V, VA-N-003-V, and COREHE-005-V, registered respectively as entities of vampiric classification and as a mortal in possession of a sacred artefact. This archivist records only what the conclusions declare: Exterminatus orders were filed, and #3113 signed the document himself. He has not spoken their names aloud in any venue where a Legado of this section could hear it. This, in this archivist's view, is not indifference.