Aurix didn't wake all at once.
It stirred.
Fires were fed instead of lit. Watch rotations changed without ceremony. The hum of the walls shifted as guards traded places and eyes followed patterns they'd memorized long ago.
Nothing here relied on routine.
Routine got people killed.
I stood near the inner wall when Celest found me again.
She didn't announce herself. Didn't need to.
"You don't pace like the others," she said.
"I don't know the rhythm yet."
She studied me for a moment, then nodded as if that answered something.
"Come," she said. "There are things you should hear. Not explanations. Context."
I followed.
She led me higher this time, up a narrow stair welded into the wall's interior. The vantage point overlooked most of Aurix, a mess of overlapping roofs, cables, and scaffolded walkways.
From up here, the city looked fragile.
From up here, it looked alive.
"I keep Aurix quiet," Celest said. "Not safe. Quiet."
I didn't interrupt.
"Signals don't linger. Patrols don't repeat patterns. Movement is intentional. Even our mistakes are deliberate."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is," she replied. "That's why it works."
She rested a hand on the railing, eyes scanning the horizon beyond the fields.
"The Dracus don't hunt what doesn't echo," she continued. "They chase certainty. Beacons. Systems that talk back when probed."
"And Aurix doesn't?"
She glanced at me.
"Aurix pretends it barely exists."
I felt it then, faint but present. A dull pressure in the air around her, like the world acknowledged her without bending to it.
Interlogue.
But restrained. Disciplined.
"You're off-grid," I said.
Her mouth curved slightly. "That word's been passed around too easily."
"Someone did it," I said instead.
"Yes."
She didn't elaborate.
We stood in silence for a moment longer before she spoke again.
"There's a woman beneath the world," Celest said. "She makes ghosts."
I looked at her.
"She severs tethers," Celest continued. "Blinds watchers. Breaks patterns that aren't supposed to break. People think she's a myth."
"She's not."
"No," Celest agreed. "She's careful."
That was all she said about Morgan.
No name.
No direction.
Just weight.
"You were tested because of her," Celest went on. "Not by me. By the systems that couldn't make sense of you."
"They failed."
"They hesitated," she corrected. "That's worse."
She turned to face me fully now.
"There are rumors," she said. "Fragments. Stories that don't line up."
"About me?"
She nodded. "A man who doesn't register. Who survives zones that erase squads. Who leaves places quieter than he found them."
I didn't respond.
"I've heard others too," she said. "A woman named Kali, holding Herra together with patience instead of force."
That caught my attention.
"She doesn't rule," Celest continued. "She stabilizes. Different skill. Same cost."
Celest's gaze shifted inward, thoughtful.
"And recently," she added, "two names keep surfacing together. Violet. Scarlett."
I stiffened before I could stop myself.
Celest noticed.
"They move through danger instead of around it," she said. "Pull people out. Leave gaps where Dracus expect corpses. They haven't found each other yet."
She studied my reaction.
"People like that don't last long," she said quietly. "Unless something changes."
The wind shifted. Carries of distant ash brushed the fields beyond Aurix's walls.
"Things are moving," Celest said. "Not close yet. But wrong."
"Dracus?"
"Eventually," she said. "But not the kind we've bled before."
I felt it then. That subtle tightening in my chest. Not the thing inside me.
Anticipation.
"We can't fight what's coming," she continued. "Not directly. Not cleanly."
"But you're still here," I said.
"Yes," she replied. "Because running invites pursuit."
She looked at me, really looked this time.
"You don't belong to Aurix," she said. "But you don't belong to the things coming either."
"I don't belong anywhere."
Celest nodded. "That's what makes you dangerous."
Below us, Aurix continued its quiet motion. Guards shifted. Fires burned low. Life persisted.
"For the next few days," Celest said, "you watch. You listen. You do nothing reckless."
"That won't last."
"No," she agreed. "But it will have to start that way."
She turned back toward the stairs.
"When the ground begins to tremble," she said over her shoulder, "you'll know it wasn't meant for us."
"And when that happens?"
Celest paused.
"Then we see how far legends stretch before they break."
She left me alone with the city and the horizon.
I stayed there longer than I meant to.
Because somewhere beyond Aurix, something vast was shifting.
And for the first time since the Mortar Zone…
I wasn't the only one who felt it coming.