I have the charred transcript in my inventory and talk to Verus. He says out loud "So you have something for me?"; but no dialogue options are displayed (Except "Cancel"). I think I need to AddTopic but I have no idea what topic. Thank you for your help.

The only suggeston I can give you is to open LS with the CS and check the quest stage. Use that data to advance the quest.

It was so long ago I played Lost Spires so I'm no help on details, but have you checked if your issue is covered by http://www.lostspires.com/pages/faqs.htm?