Salah Begins the VQU Intake

The caravan made it back to VQU battered, emptied, and carrying more consequences than fuel. Aleklot's Rest was behind them, but the mission was not finished just because the road ended. The campus received My Alchemical Romance through process: personnel confirmation, incident summaries, and declarations of which recovered items belonged to QUEST, VQU, or the party's own increasingly complicated pockets. Salah, X's assigned clerk, began the intake. The Lawful receipt helped, but it did not settle the larger question. QUEST had sent the party after artifacts, and VQU had institutional reasons to care about recovered magic. Tax-credit logic and item valuation belonged above Salah's level, which meant the party would need to discuss the real outcomes with X. That mattered because the institution did not only see magic items as gear. X valued them through a formula tied to void crystals and energy creation. What the party thought of as loot could become fuel, leverage, or proof of loyalty once the meeting began. The dragon dungeon was over. The accountability phase had started.