Gavril's breath fogged in front of him as he limped through the street, one hand pressed against his ribs, axes hanging low in the other.
The twin's blood was already drying on the steel.
He didn't look back toward the granary.
He knew what lay there. A caved-in skull. A missing arm. A patch of snow kicked apart like an animal killing ground.
"Good. Stay dead, you bastard."
The wind knifed through the alley, dragging loose snow in thin ribbons. Somewhere far off, metal rang on stone.
Men shouted.
Then, like the sky itself flinched, a flare of orange lit the low clouds for a heartbeat.
Gavril stopped.
It was too bright, too focused. A single column, gone as quickly as it came.
He narrowed his eyes at the glowing afterimage in the sky.
"That," he muttered, "was not an explosion."
Bootsteps crunched behind him.
Tannic and Corren emerged from the side, bows and blades ready, breath coming hard. Liran slipped in beside them a moment later, cloak dusted with frost, eyes still scanning.
Corren squinted up. "You see that too?"
"Hard to miss," Gavril said. "Sky doesn't just decide to burn in one spot."
"Could be them," Liran said. "Kaavi. Joren. Someone lighting a signal."
Tannic shook his head. "That wasn't a signal, that was… concentrated. Too clean. Maybe a mage."
Gavril flexed his fingers around his axe hafts. His chest flared with pain. He ignored it.
"A mage that strong shows up in this mess," he said.
"We either need them on our side, or we need them dead. Either way, we're going there."
Corren glanced toward the inner streets. "What about the Baron's line?"
Gavril said flatly. "We're not going back through that courtyard right now. Let's regroup with other than we decide our next move."
He pointed in the direction of the old forge and granary district. "They are somewhere down there. That light came from the same quarter. I do not think that's a coincidence."
Liran frowned. "You really think they crossed paths that fast?"
"I think," Gavril replied, "that trouble finds Kaavi and the boy like a drunk finds a ditch."
He set off toward where the sky had flared, boots crunching snow. The others fell in beside him without argument.
Streets Between Battles
They moved through streets that no longer felt like streets.
Shops that had once sold tools and cloth were now blackened mouths. Windows were teeth knocked out. Signs hung by one chain, creaking in the cold.
Here and there, the snow was disturbed where men had fought and died...and then moved again.
A puppet lay slumped against a wall, its head split at a bad angle, tongue out. No blood at the wound, just dark residue and a faint stink of chemicals. Another body lay face-down in the snow several paces away, a soldier, blood still bright around his throat.
Liran's jaw clenched. "Feels wrong moving past them."
Gavril grunted. "You want to start burying people now, we'll still be here come spring."
They cut down a narrow lane, boots slipping on patches of frozen slush. A shutter banged somewhere in the wind. A sign creaked.
Corren lifted a hand. "Skirts of the forge quarter should be up ahead. We swing past the granary?"
"No," Gavril said. "We're not wasting time. Kaavi knows how to find us if he's still in that direction. The light was further south."
They turned...
A pair of puppets shuffled into view at the far end of the street, weapons hanging slack at their sides, heads tilted at the same wrong angle. Behind them, a soldier-puppet stepped over a fallen guard with eerie care, boot planting on the exact patch of stone between bloodstains.
All three heads turned toward them at once.
"Here we go," Liran murmured.
Gavril rolled his shoulders. "Quick. We're not having a conversation with these ones."
They moved with quiet efficiency.
Tannic's first arrow took the lead citizen puppet through the side of the neck. The head didn't jerk. The legs just folded, the body tipping sideways into the snow.
Corren advanced on the second, blade low, stepping inside its clumsy swing to drive his sword upward beneath the jaw and through the spine. He wrenched free and stepped back before it collapsed.
The soldier-puppet came on without haste, shield lifted.
Liran went left as Gavril went right. The puppet tracked them both with unnatural precision.
"Shield," Gavril said.
He stepped in, drawing its attention, axes raised. The puppet's sword came down in a heavy, controlled cut.
Gavril didn't block it. He angled one axe to divert, letting the sword skate across the metal and bury itself into the cobbles. As the puppet leaned into the jammed blade, Liran slid in from behind and drove his knife between helm and backplate, twisting.
The body sagged.
"Neck," Liran said quietly. "Always the neck."
"Let's hope that rule holds," Gavril replied.
They kept moving.
The flare point was closer now. Even in the grey daylight, Gavril could feel a faint warmth in the air ahead…the way smoke shifted strangely, the smell of something burned completely.
Fire that had chosen what to burn.
The Burned Arch
They reached the southern edge, where the buildings sat lower. An old retaining wall had crumbled here, spilling stone into the street decades before anyone present had been born.
Under that collapse, a gap yawned.
A low arch of stone, half-choked with rubble, the snow around its base burned clean. No soot. No scattered charred timber. Just rock baked to a darker shade and a few piles of grey ash that might once have been something else.
Tannic squatted near the edge.
"Heat did this," he said. "Focused. Not a spreading blaze. No scorch on the upper wall."
Corren shoved his hands into his cloak to fight the cold. "So, we're going underground now, too?"
"Apparently," Gavril said.
Liran scanned the roofs. "No movement up top. If there's a mage, they're below."
Gavril stepped up to the arch, put a hand to the stone and ducked to look inside. A narrow tunnel stretched away, its ceiling low enough that even he would need to keep his head down. The floor descended slightly, ice slicking the centre where trickling meltwater had frozen.
He could see nothing beyond the first ten paces.
Just darkness and cold.
Faintly, from farther ahead, they could hear… something.
Metal.
A clash, distant and quickly cut.
Gavril's grip tightened on his axes.
"Is that the mage?" Corren asked.
Gavril didn't answer.
They rounded a bend. The tunnel widened again, then dipped into a broad chamber.
Snow hadn't reached here. The ground was hard stone, scarred by old channels now long dry. Thick pillars of brick and rock supported the ceiling, forming a forest of square columns. Iron chains hung in slack loops from a rusted gantry overhead, swaying just barely with some movement of air.
"Now this," Liran said under his breath, "feels like a place perfect for doing something shady."
Light flickered across one of the far pillars. Not torchlight. A warm orange, moving and tightening, then fading.
Someone shifted between shadows to their left.
Hands went to weapons.
A figure stepped out from behind a column, cloak trailing.
Kaavi.
Snow still dusted his shoulders, but his hair was damp at the edges now, as if he had run hard through the tunnels. At his side, Veyl emerged, blades drawn, eyes sharp even in the low light.
Gavril let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.
"About time," he said.
Veyl's gaze flicked over Gavril… blood, the way he held himself...and one eyebrow rose.
"What happened to you?" Veyl asked.
"He picked a fight with a door and lost." Said Tannic with a smile on his face.
"Door's worse off than I am," Gavril said. He jerked his chin. "And you?"
"I am just tired," Veyl replied.
Tannic gestured toward the ceiling. "We saw your fireworks" he said to Kaavi. "The sky lit up from this direction. Figured either you found a new trick, or someone joined the party."
Kaavi's gaze went past them, toward the far side of the chamber, where the tunnel continued and curved out of sight.
"You saw the light?"
"All of us," Gavril said. "Bright enough to shame a signal flare."
"Mage," Kaavi said simply.
Gavril noticed Viktor was not with Kaavi and asked. "Where's Viktor?"
Kaavi didn't answer immediately. His jaw set with a tension the Hallow Swords weren't used to seeing on him.
Gavril pressed, stepping closer. "Kaavi… where is the boy?"
Kaavi's voice was calm ... too calm.
"He was on the rooftop with Veyl. Then the enemy shifted, suddenly…"
Veyl's jaw tightened. "I lost sight of him for a moment. That was enough."
Veyl added quietly, "Their formation collapsed around the forge at the exact moment we approached. It wasn't random. It was arranged."
Gavril's eyes hardened. "Meaning?"
Kaavi exhaled a thin cloud of frost.
"Meaning we were drawn away. Someone wanted my focus split ... and Viktor isolated."
The words hit like a hammer. Even Tannic's expression sharpened.
"You're telling me," Gavril said, "that this whole mess ... the forge, the courtyard ... was a trap to get to Viktor?"
"Not the whole mess," Kaavi replied. "But parts of it. Someone knew exactly where we would enter and when."
Corren muttered, "they're after the boy?"
Kaavi nodded once.
"They are. Which is why every moment we're standing here is one moment too long."
Liran asked, "Do we know who reached him?"
Kaavi glanced down the tunnel where faint warmth still lingered.
"No. But something ... someone ... stopped the puppets. And the light you saw…"
Gavril's grip tightened around his axes.
"Then we follow the fire."