They look like some sort of auto fill tool's (i.e. Photoshop Content Aware tool) artifacts to me. Especially since on p. 20 where the magic effect around the book is a bit messed up where the text got masked off. That and on some pages the raw source watermark at the corners of pages where some were only partly masked off or left as is which could be the source of the red artifacts since they look like a similar shade of red.There are some red marks on some of the pages, I wonder what they are. Dirty scanners maybe?
Double red herring?Thanks for the TL.
Still weird they allowed outsiders to see underground archives.
The priest is the red herring and the masked people rear their ugly head again later in this still ongoing arc.