The city of Scriptos was a vertical labyrinth built atop the Great Ink-Well, a bottomless sea of black fluid from which all life emerged. The rich lived in the "Upper Case," where houses were built from elegant, soaring "Pledges" and "Oaths" that sparkled like marble. Elian, however, lived in the Footnotes.
Elian's workshop was a silent sanctuary. While the world outside was a constant roar of bartering and boasting, he spent his days "harvesting" the air. He used a Vibration Compass to find pockets of silence where people had been too afraid or too shy to speak. From these pockets, he extracted "Essence." He wasn't just a builder; he was a scavenger of the soul. He once built a sanctuary for the dying out of the "Final Breaths" of poets—a structure so peaceful that anyone who entered forgot the meaning of fear.