A week after the mountain lit like a beacon, dawn came in thin layers of cold and pale blue. The air held the clean taste of new mana: sharp, bright, and restless. The old stone terraces below the cliff had been cleared and swept. Ropes and lantern lines crisscrossed from tower to tower. At the lowest terrace, a dozen clan sentries changed shift while mist unrolled across the ravine.
Inside the cliff, the city of the Kaelen-Selina clan—hidden for centuries and torn back into the world—was awake. Water channels sang through their carved gutters. Brass bells clicked softly in the draft at crossroads. The clan's banners hung above an open square, their threads refitted from storage and catching this new world's light. Refugees filled the lower levels: street families from the valley, a transport driver who had abandoned his lorry when the road buckled into steps, three nurses who had walked up with nothing but their hands and their IDs, a grandmother whose garden had been replaced overnight by black bamboo and bright stones that hummed to the touch.
Everything looked steady from a distance. Up close, you could feel the strain in every anchored line and in every breath.
Mira stood barefoot on heated slate in a training hall near the inner gate. The slate kept the room warm and her hands steady. Thin seals had been painted on the floor around her, each one a tidy circle marked with simple numbers and rules. Kael had drawn them himself before dawn, using a brush and a string tied to a peg—one circle for the smallest effort, one for breath only, one for power moved like water in a pipe, one for flame that must not touch anything.
Her hair was snow-white now, clipped clean at her shoulders. Her skin held the same pallor as first light on snow, and under it, a faint glow moved when she breathed. Her eyelashes were white; when she blinked, the motion looked unearthly and very human at the same time. She wore loose white training clothes with ties at wrist and ankle. A plain cord bound the top. No jewelry. No ornaments. The body was enough.
Kael stood two paces in front of her. He had stripped down to a black training shirt and loose trousers. His coat and knives lay on a bench with his bracelets and a cloth-wrapped packet of herbs. His voice stayed low and steady.
"Again. Slow intake. Count to four. Hold for two. Exhale to six. Keep your right hand inside circle two. Keep your left hand free. Do not open your palm unless I say."
Mira nodded once. "Understood."
"Begin."
She drew breath. The glow under her skin answered. On the first day it had leaped like a wild thing at any command. Now it listened more often than not. Her fingers trembled; she steadied them. She followed the numbers. One. Two. Three. Four. Hold. One. Two. Exhale to six. The glow dimmed to a thread and gathered in her right palm. The painted ring around her little circle shivered and then held.
"Good," Kael said. "Again. Do not look at my face. Keep your focus on your palm. You are not trying to form fire. You are only moving heat."
She followed. The warmth rose. It tried to climb her wrist; she pressed it back down with breath and will. The motion made the nearest lantern pop and flare. Kael did not move. He watched her hands, not her eyes.
"Talk me through it," he said.
"It wants to spread," she answered. "I am keeping it small. I am telling it to stay with my pulse. It listens, and then it wants more. The circle on the floor helps. The lines remind me to keep it narrow."
"What happens if you look at me?"
"It changes," she said. "It answers your voice faster. It reaches."
"Keep your eyes on the floor," he said. "Do not reach for me. Reach for the line. Hold the shape. Again."
She obeyed. Sweat broke across her forehead and along her spine. Heat gathered in her palm in a condensed sphere, bright as a coal. It pulsed once, twice. On the third beat, the flame tried to flower. She forced the sphere to flatten to a coin. The light bled white. The air turned thin.
Kael lifted a hand. "Stop."
She closed her fist. The coin of heat collapsed and went out. The echo of it ran down her arm to the elbow. She shook her hand once to reclaim her nerves.
Kael stepped closer. "Pain?"
"Stinging," she said. "Not enough to worry me."
"Blurring?"
"No," she said. "I can tell where you are. I can hear your steps. I can smell the resin on the door and the oil on your wrist guard." She swallowed. "It's all very clear."
He watched her a moment longer. "Good. Sit. Sip."
She obeyed. He poured warm water from a little iron kettle into a shallow stone cup and passed it to her with both hands. She sipped and handed it back.
"I want to try circle three," she said.
"Not yet," he said.
"I can do it."
"You will. Not now."
She exhaled and let it go. He was not arguing to win; he was keeping to a schedule he had made for her body. When he set a schedule, he rarely moved it by a day.
He picked up a cloth and wiped the sweat from her hairline with an easy, practiced hand. "We are done with heat for now. We'll test control of sound."
"My hearing?" she asked.
"Your hearing is too strong," he said. "You pick up voices three courts away. That is useful if you can turn it down and choose. It is harmful if it drags you. We teach it to obey."
He moved to a corded curtain and drew it across the far wall to dull the echo. Then he went to the corner and lifted a lid from a wooden case. Inside lay small metal chimes of different sizes and two thin bowls. He set one bowl at the edge of circle one and the other at the edge of circle four.
"Close your eyes," he said. "Tell me which bowl I touch."
He stepped lightly. She followed the air. He tapped the left bowl with a twig. She pointed. "Left."
"Again."
He crossed his steps to break a pattern and rapped the right bowl. "Right," she said.
"Again."
He moved without rhythm and tapped both bowls in sequence, soft and softer. A thread of white light moved down Mira's neck as her senses adjusted. She raised one hand. "Both," she said. "First left, then right."
"Last one."
He touched neither bowl. He stepped backward to the wall and stood still. She frowned. "None."
He set the twig down. "Good. Open."
Her eyes slid open. They were pale as spring water, but there was a light inside them that had not been there when she lived in her city flat. That light made some clan elders bow when she passed in the corridor and made some look away and gulp air as if a cold wind had stepped into the room. Kael treated the light like weather: he respected it and planned around it, and he did not tell it what to be.
Selina entered the hall without fanfare. She wore steel-grey robes with a narrow black belt and a rolled map under one arm. A short blade sat at her hip. Her hair had been braided and coiled at the nape of her neck. The braid looked tighter when mornings were bad. Today it was tight.
"Envoys are at the North Gate," she said. "They are from the Silver Crescent Sect. They came with a white flag and two gifts. One gift is food. The other is information."
Kael set the bowls back in their case. "Their leader?"
"Elder Jian," Selina said. "He says he remembers us from before the fall."
"Do you?" Mira asked.
"I remember the sect," Selina answered. "I do not know this elder. He says his mother served with us once. We will test that claim."
Mira nodded. "Do you need me there?"
"Not yet," Selina said. "They will ask to see you. We will refuse for today."
Mira folded her hands on her knees. "All right."
Selina looked her over once. "How is your control?"
"Better," Mira said. "I can hold heat to a coin for seven breaths. Sound obeys me if I focus. My sight is the same—blurry, but my other senses cover it."
Selina crossed the floor, leaned down, and cupped Mira's face with careful hands. She checked the pulse at her neck and then the warmth under her skin. "You are steady," she said. "That helps me with envoys."
"Use me if you need to," Mira said. "Say I will be seen only by those who have earned it. The truth matters more than ceremony right now."
Selina let her hands fall. "I will say it."
Kael slid into his coat and buckled one knife at his back and one at his thigh. He wrapped the leather bracelet around his wrist without looking at it. The motion was older than this life. "I will walk with you," he told Selina.
Selina gestured to the door. "Come."
They left Mira with two guards outside the training hall: a quiet woman named Sori and a younger man named Anik, both sworn to the inner court this week. Sori checked Mira's posture and adjusted the tie at her sleeve so it wouldn't catch on anything.
"If anyone tries to see me," Mira said, "ask their name twice."
Sori nodded. "Yes, my lady."
"Don't call me that here," Mira said.
"Understood," Sori said. "I will use 'Mira' in private and titles outside. Politely."
"Thank you."
Sori took up a post by the door. Anik lingered near the corner. When the room settled again, Mira closed her eyes and resumed the hearing exercise on her own: she tracked the footsteps in the corridor, the creak of a wheel three levels down, and the drag in Anik's breath that meant he was still recovering from a wound that wanted more rest than he would admit.
Selina and Kael crossed two courts and a bridge to the North Gate. The mountain wall there had opened cleanly with the city's return, and an ancient gatehouse had slid back into place with hooks and teeth that still fit after an age. Two banners hung above the entry—one theirs, one blank for negotiators. The Silver Crescent flag was tied to a spear and planted on a line twenty paces off. The envoys stood behind it, six in grey and white with silver threads along their cuffs. They had the look of people who had slept dressed.
Elder Jian stepped forward, bowing at the waist. He was tall and narrow, with silver hair caught at his nape in a simple clasp. A young woman carried a wooden chest behind him, and another youth carried a jar and a wrapped parcel.
"Elder Jian," Selina said. She bowed precisely. "You come with a white flag. We mark that."
"Lady Selina," he said. "Lord Kael." He looked from one to the other and corrected himself without offense. "Leaders of the Hidden City. I bring respect. I bring proof that we are not enemies."
"What proof?" Selina asked.
He gestured to the chest. The young woman set it down and lifted the lid. Inside lay fresh folded papers and older scrolls sealed with wax. Elder Jian lifted a parchment and held it out. "Our records show a pledge made by my sect's third matriarch to your clan's council. She trained on your mountain for two years when she was young. She promised aid if the old city ever walked again. I bring that pledge."
Selina accepted the parchment and passed it to Kael. Kael did not read like a scholar; he read like a scout. His eyes moved fast, and he measured the ink and the hand and the ways the edges had aged. He traced a knife-fast finger along the seal and then nodded to Selina.
"The seal is ours," he said. "The hand is from that time. The pledge is real."
Elder Jian exhaled as if a cord had loosened around his ribs. "Then we begin with truth."
Selina kept her tone even. "Truth is the only way this works. Speak your purpose."
"We seek an alliance," he said openly. "We will not pretend we came for anything else. The Red Veil is on the move. Your beacon shook their faith and brightened it at the same time. They are gathering at the foot of the eastern range. They will test your walls within ten days. We do not want your city to fall. If it does, the region goes dark."
"Your scouts?" Kael asked.
"They watched from the ridge last night," Elder Jian said. "We tracked three columns: cultists in red, mercenaries in black, and beasts that do not belong to this age. There were wagons with cages and carts with drums. We counted more than three hundred in the first wave."
Selina's jaw set. "We will see your counts on our map."
"You may," he said. He lifted a hand. The youth with the jar stepped forward and held it out. "Also this. It is a tribute of thanks. It is not a bribe."
"What is it?" Kael asked.
"Refined moon-salt," Elder Jian said. "For stabilizing wounded meridians. It is scarce. We share it because your beacon steadied the surface winds and saved one of our villages from burning last week. We owe."
Selina looked down at the jar and then back to his face. "We accept the gift. We will test it. If it is clean, we will use it for our injured. If you lied, we will return it to you by hand."
"It is clean," Elder Jian said simply. "You may test me with it."
Selina uncorked the jar, sniffed, and recorked it. "We will not test you like that in the road," she said. "We will test in a clean room with a healer present."
Elder Jian gave a small nod that almost turned into a smile. "Fair."
"What will you ask in return?" Kael said. "Say it plain."
"We ask to share signals and scouts," Elder Jian said. "We ask to send two scholars to copy the old texts in your library. We ask to observe your defenses so we do not stand in your way when we bring troops. We do not ask to see the Lotus."
Selina and Kael did not change expression, but they both noted the final sentence. Elder Jian had brought the right words.
Selina answered, "You may share signals and scouts. You may send one scholar, not two, and that scholar will copy only what we approve and nothing that names our inner work. You may observe from the outer wall. You may not enter the inner courts. We will not discuss the Lotus with envoys today."
"That is acceptable," Elder Jian said without pause. "We will return at noon with our scholar and our maps."
"Bring food for your people," Kael said. "We will not feed an army this week."
"We did not come empty," Elder Jian said. He looked past them to the gate and lowered his voice by a notch. "I will add one more thing. The Red Veil has taken a woman from the valley. She tried to stop them from marching when your beacon lit the sky. They call her a traitor. They will hold a punishment rite at the Baron's Bridge in two days. The name they used was Nora Clegg."
Selina went still. Kael's hand flexed once on his belt. He did not look at Selina.
"Are you certain?" she asked.
"I am," he said. "My scouts heard it. They marked it twice."
Selina's mouth tightened. "We will verify. Thank you."
He bowed. "We will return at noon."
The envoys withdrew. Selina did not speak until their flag slipped out of sight down the stones. Then she turned to Kael.
"We cannot split to rescue her," Kael said first. "Not now."
Selina's answer came after a long breath. "I know."
Kael studied her face. "If we go, we take twenty. If we lose even three at the bridge, the east wall weakens. We are not ready for a breach, and you know they will test us there first."
Selina looked at the jar of moon-salt in her hand as if it weighed more than glass. "We will gather facts by noon. If the time shifts or the place moves, we can act later. If it does not move…"
"We still might not go," he said quietly.
"I know," she said again, and it cost her to say it. She set the jar in a guard's hands and stood very straight. "Let's inform the council. Then I want to see Mira."
They crossed back through the courts and found Mira waiting with Sori and Anik at the training hall threshold. Mira had a towel over her shoulders and a second cup of water in her hand. She saw their faces and set the cup down without drinking.
"Tell me," she said.
Selina did not cushion the facts. "Envoys from the Silver Crescent Sect came to ask for an alliance. Their seal checks out. They brought moon-salt and good intelligence. The Red Veil is forming at the foot of the range and is ten days from testing our walls. Their scout reports also say Nora has been taken. The cult plans to punish her at the Baron's Bridge in two days."
Mira's hands closed on the towel. "Is the report trustworthy?"
"We believe so," Selina said. "We will verify by noon."
"Can we reach the bridge by then?" Mira asked.
"By road, yes," Kael said. "By ridge, also yes. But this is not a single guard and a post. The Red Veil will stage it as a warning. They will have archers on the slopes and men with hooks under the bridge. They know we are near. They will expect anger."
"Do you plan to go?" Mira asked, looking from one to the other.
"We plan to defend the mountain first," Kael said. "We cannot trade twenty lives for one this week."
Mira absorbed that answer without flinching. "I understand the calculation. I do not like it. But I understand."
Selina reached out and rested a hand on Mira's arm. "If there is a window that does not cost the wall, we will take it. We will watch, and we will decide with clear numbers, not with panic."
"Then show me the map," Mira said.
They walked together to the council court. The council had been reassembled in a high chamber with open light wells and a table cut from the same stone as the mountain. On its surface, Selina's map team had sketched the ridge lines and the valley roads in charcoal. Red pegs marked threats. White pegs marked allied scouts. Blue pegs marked water points and way stations that still held.
Mira stood with her palms on the table's edge and listened as Selina laid out their current positions and their gaps. When Selina set a red peg at the eastern road and a second at the lower pass, Mira reached and touched the lower peg.
"This one moves," Mira said.
Selina looked at her. "How do you know?"
"I can hear the drums from here," Mira said. "They are out of time and very far away. The echo moves left to right as if along a road. The sound is faint, but it is there. It was not there yesterday."
Kael lifted his chin toward a runner at the door. "Send a hawk to Ridge Four. Ask for a drum report. Use code three."
The runner nodded and sprinted out. Mira continued.
"I also smell wood smoke on the northern wind. Not pine. Something more bitter. And I feel pressure in my chest when the wind swings. That is new."
Kael studied her like a man learning his first instrument. "You are picking up strain at the north wall."
"Yes," she said. "It feels like a chord pulled too tight. I can ease it if I sit near the pillar for ten minutes."
"We will do that after council," he said.
Selina pointed to two blue pegs. "These springs dropped pressure today. We may need to ration water in the lower terraces."
Mira moved her palm. "Leave the upper flow alone. The lower channels leak near Gate Three. I can hear the water quicken and slow where it should not. Someone needs to walk the trench and pack the gap."
Kael called for Sori. "Take four and fix Gate Three's channel. Use clay, not plank. The wood will warp in this air."
Sori bowed and left.
Selina dropped the moon-salt jar on the table. "Silver Crescent says this is clean. I want it tested before noon."
A healer stepped forward. "I will test two grains on my own arm. If it does not burn or numb, I will take a grain to a small cut and track pulse."
"Good," Selina said.
"Envoys return at noon," Kael added. "They want to send a scholar to copy texts. I said one. I want that scholar watched by two of ours and a recorder in the room."
"Done," Selina said. She set down a smaller slate and wrote: noon parley, scholar, outer wall only.
They worked the list until the chimes marked the half hour. When the immediate tasks were set, Selina dismissed all but the inner circle. Only Kael, Mira, and two elder watch-captains remained.
Selina looked at Mira and did not hide the subject. "We should decide how much of you we show our allies and when."
Mira stood very still. "What will showing me buy us?"
"Fear in our enemies," one watch-captain said. "Confidence in our people."
"Greed in everyone else," the other watch-captain said.
Selina nodded once. "Both."
Mira flexed her fingers on the stone. The glow under her skin shifted and calmed. "I will not be a banner held up because it looks convincing."
"No," Kael said. "We will not use you like a standard. We will use you like a person who can help where help makes a difference."
"Then I will meet only those who accept rules," Mira said. "Elder Jian may see me when he earns it. His scholar will not. Our people may see me when I walk to the north pillar to ease the strain. They will be told to keep distance and not to touch me unless I fall."
Selina's mouth softened. "Those terms are clear. I will write them into the day order."
A bell rang at the outer court: the parley bell. Noon approached. Selina rolled her shoulders once and gathered her map case.
"I will go," she said. "Kael—"
"I'll take Mira to the north pillar," he said. "We will be quick. Sori will post four at the crossing."
They split at the court. Selina moved toward the gate with two aides. Kael walked with Mira through a back stair and out onto a narrow ledge. The wind came up the stone there with a clean edge. Mira inhaled and set her hands against the pillar's surface. The pillar itself was older than their city; it had been bound into the mountain to hold the upper galleries in place. Now it thrummed like a plucked string.
"Tell me what you do," Kael said, standing behind her, close enough to catch her if her legs gave.
"I ask it to let go," she said simply. "It is holding too hard because everything has shifted. It is afraid to fall. I tell it that it will not fall. Then I give it a little of my heat so that the bonds soften. Then I pull the heat back, so I do not melt the binding."
"Do it," he said.
She laid her cheek to the stone and closed her eyes. The glow inside her chest ran down her arms and into her palms. The stone answered with a long, low sound, almost too deep to hear. The pressure in the air changed. Kael felt his neck hairs lift. He watched her shoulders. Her breath stayed even. Ten heartbeats. Twenty. Thirty. She lifted her hands.
"Done," she said. "It is easier."
"Can you do the same for people?" he asked.
"I do not know," she said. "I can try."
"We will test when we find the right case."
They returned to the inner halls before the parley bell ran out. On the way, a group of refugees waited at the path edge to let them pass. A man with a bandaged wrist kept his eyes down and then, as they drew level, looked up and met Mira's gaze. He froze with shock at her appearance and stepped back against the wall. His mouth opened. He caught himself, pressed his lips tight, and bowed awkwardly.
"I am not here to make you afraid," Mira said. Her tone was plain. "I am here to do work."
The man nodded too fast. "Yes, miss. Sorry. You look… I have not seen hair like that. Or… the light."
"I know," she said. "Keep walking. There is hot soup three courts down. Do not miss it."
He ducked his head again and hustled on. When they were alone on the path again, Kael spoke.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes," she said. "I would prefer not to make people flinch. But we do not get to choose everything."
"No," he said. "We do not."
They reached the terrace above the gate just as the envoys reappeared. Selina had already taken her place on the wall with three councilors. Elder Jian stood below with his scholar: a woman in her thirties with an ink-stained thumb and a rolled cloth bundle that likely held brushes. The formal exchange went cleanly. Selina accepted a copy of their map and sent her own runner with a letter that set the terms for the scholar. Elder Jian read the letter, nodded, and handed the scholar up along the steps. Two of Selina's people escorted her to the library.
When the parley ended, Elder Jian looked up as if to speak further. He stopped when he saw Mira high on the terrace with Kael. He lowered his head and did not call out to her. That choice put three small black stones in his favor in Selina's ledger.
The envoy party withdrew. Selina came up the inner steps to the terrace and joined them.
"They accepted our terms," she said. "Their scholar will copy song records, not inner manuals. I also pressed them for a clearer number on the Red Veil. They are scared enough to be honest. The cult has more than three hundred in the first wave, as he said. They also have something else."
"What?" Kael asked.
"An altar platform they call a 'moving mouth,'" Selina said. "It churns air above it when they pull the cover away. They use it to throw people off balance. It may be a broken relic. It may be made from pieces of one. Either way, our people should tie themselves to something if it starts."
Kael grimaced. "We will prepare anchors on the outer walk."
Selina looked beyond the gate. Clouds had built into a low, bright ceiling. "There is more. The sect told me in private that a city two days west saw men in blue and gold walk out of a crack in the air, kneel on the plaza, and start building stones into walls. They called themselves the Crown of Nine Rivers. Another group appeared in the south marsh and lit the reeds on purpose to mark territory. The world is splitting into zones."
Mira listened and showed no fear, only attention. "How many of those groups will be hostile?"
"Enough," Selina said. "Some will ignore us. Some will test us. We should assume the Red Veil will try to absorb every frightened group they can reach."
"Then we need a message for people who aren't sure who to trust," Mira said. "Not a speech. A rule."
"Say it," Kael said.
"We protect those who stand under our roof and do not harm our own," she said. "We trade fairly. We do not kneel to those who bleed us. We do not let anyone take children. We share water. We keep our word."
Selina gave a short nod. "I'll have it posted and spoken in the lower courts. People need clear lines."
A courier ran up the steps and bowed. "Message from Ridge Four. Drum report confirms a column on the lower road. Rhythm slow, uneven. The Red Veil is moving livestock and steel cages. Estimate: one hundred and fifty, two miles east of the Baron's Bridge."
Selina's face went set and cold. "Noted."
"Also," the courier added, "a small group in red torches moved into the shadow of Ghost Pine, one mile from the bridge. They set a post. They did not light a signal."
Kael's jaw worked once. "They are setting a stage."
Mira spoke. "If they plan a punishment rite in two days, they will start building the frame now. They will want a platform. They will want light. They will want drums. The crowd will come because they are afraid to stay away."
Selina's hands had gone still at her sides. "We will not debate this again now. We have a city to secure."
"I am not asking you to debate it," Mira said softly. "I am telling you that whether we go or not, I will feel it. I would rather do something with that feeling than lie in a bed while it happens."
Selina shut her eyes and then opened them. The decision had not changed, but it hurt her to keep it. "We will pick the moment that costs us least. Not before."
"Understood," Mira said.
They did not speak of it again that hour. Work moved forward. The scholar was placed in a copy room with two watchers and a tea tray she could not spill without scalding herself. The moon-salt tested clean. A group of villagers arrived at the gate with three carts of dried corn and a letter from their headman. The letter offered food in exchange for protection for two elderly men and one boy who could read but could not lift. Selina signed the letter and sent back six guards to escort the elders up.
News also came that the Red Veil had tried to push a scouting pair through the lower brush and had lost one to a rockfall when the cliff shifted. The second scout had limped back down the road. Kael did not celebrate. He sent two of his own watchers to check whether the rockfall had left a climbable path that could be used later against them.
In midafternoon, Mira led a small team to the infirmary. The room had been a musician's hall once and now was a clean white place with painted lines for triage. Three stretchers lay by the right wall. On one lay a boy of thirteen with a broken arm that had set badly the day before he reached the mountain. On the next lay an older woman with a wound in her calf from a wolf that was not a wolf anymore. The third held a man with a fever that shook him and then passed like a tide.
The healers stepped aside when Mira entered. Their leader—a middle-aged woman named Sian with calm hands and a voice that could cut through panic—nodded to her. "We can manage wounds," Sian said. "We cannot manage meridian storms yet. Your presence changes everything. I will tell you if I think you should stop."
"Tell me who to start with," Mira said.
Sian pointed to the boy. "Him. He cries when his mother leaves the room and he tries not to show it."
Mira stood beside the stretcher and spoke to the boy first. "What is your name?"
"Ben," he said, rapids in his voice from holding tears that had not fallen.
"I am Mira," she said. "Your arm will be warm for a minute. It may hurt for ten heartbeats, and then it will be better. If I need to stop, I will stop. If you need me to stop, say it. All right?"
"All right," he said, trying to be brave and mostly succeeding.
She placed her hands on either side of the cast and let a thin thread of heat move through the fractured bone. She did not pour. She threaded. The glow ran along the splintered edges and asked them to soften and lean. They obeyed. The boy's breath caught once. He grabbed the edge of the blanket and then loosened his grip. She drew the heat back, counted three, and withdrew her hands.
"Move your fingers," she said.
He moved them and blinked at the feeling. "It doesn't stab now. It just aches."
"Good," she said. "Aches are normal. Stabbing is not. Rest and keep the sling on."
She moved to the woman with the calf wound. The flesh had turned angry around the edges. Mira put her palm above the skin and tasted the wrongness in the air: old saliva and sickness. She sent the heat in like a light along a corridor, not boiling water, not a blast, just warmth with rules. The fever under the bite lines shifted and dimmed. The woman exhaled deeply and fell asleep.
The man with the fever took longer. When the heat moved too fast, his body tried to climb after it with old habits. Mira slowed and steadied. She let her hands cool when his temperature climbed; then she warmed them again and pulled the fever down like a curtain. When she finished, her own legs felt hollow. Sian gave her a chair and a cup of warm broth.
"You do not heal by burning," Sian said, watching her face. "You heal by asking. Remember that."
"I will," Mia said. "Thank you."
When she had rested long enough for her hands to stop shaking, she returned to the training hall. Kael was waiting with a staff and a plain request.
"Learn to block," he said. "If you can hold a line of heat, you can hold a line of wood."
They worked for an hour on basic form. He corrected her stance with a touch at the hip or a press at the shoulder. He made her step back through a doorway and forward again with control. He had her lift the staff to guard, lower it to strike, but not strike hard. She did not look like a warrior. She looked like a figure made for altars and dreams. When the staff met his with the right sound, he nodded once.
"This is not for show," he said. "This is so you do not need me in your pocket every time someone reaches for you."
"I know," she said. "I use you when I need you, not as a habit."
"Good," he said.
Later, as the sun slid along the outer wall and turned the peaks the color of old silver, the day's last courier came to the terrace with a sealed tube and a face that would not hide strain.
"Message," he said to Selina. "From our watcher in the lower town. He crawled under a cart to hear it."
Selina cracked the seal and read. Her mouth tightened. She passed the message to Kael and then to Mira.
It said: Red Veil will hang Nora Clegg at sunset tomorrow, not two days. They moved the hour. They also moved the site to the Old Red Quarry beyond the Baron's Bridge, inside the circle of stones. They announced it in the market to draw a crowd. Arthur Halden's carriage arrived at dusk. Doctor Harland sits with him. Both will attend.
No one spoke for a full breath.
Kael set the tube on the table. "They are forcing the pace."
Selina's eyes were hard as glass. "Arthur wants to watch. Harland wants to prove he still has value. The Red Veil wants to bait us into a mistake."
Mira's voice stayed low but clear. "They will not hang her if the circle is a ritual ground. They will cut her and bleed her into a bowl. They will call that justice."
Kael looked at the map and measured distances without touching any peg. "We cannot empty this mountain to run at them. But the quarry sits in a gully that a small team can reach from the west ridge without crossing the road. If we move at moonrise with six and a rope team, we can cut three posts, collapse one corner of the circle, and lift two people out. We cannot save them if the cult has fifty archers on the rim. If they do, we do not go in. We need eyes and a sound count."
Selina's jaw worked. "You are not wrong. We cannot spend the wall. But I will not sleep if we do nothing."
Mira's answer was steady. "I will not be the weight that keeps us here. If you can move, move."
Kael met Selina's gaze over the table. Rules guided them both. Affection complicated those rules now, and duty cut through affection like a road through grass.
"Send two to the west ridge," Kael said. "Make them smart and quiet. Tell them to count torches and take positions in the dark that are not obvious. If the archers number more than twenty, we stand down. If they number fewer than ten, we may have a window. If Arthur stands at the rim, we do not go for him. We go for the bound and the nearest guard."
Selina did not blink. "I will pick the two. They will send a hawk by the third hour of night. If the news is bad, we still keep a team ready to answer if a surprise opens. If the news is mixed, we will argue for ten minutes and then move anyway."
Mira lifted her chin. "If you go, I want to listen from the ridge and speak to you through the wind if I can."
"You cannot come close," Kael said.
"I will not," she said. "I will sit at the west lip and tell you where weight shifts. I can hear chain, rope, and breath. I can taste the oil on torches from fifty paces."
Selina exhaled. "All right. But you go nowhere without four and you do not stand near the drop."
"I agree," Mira said.
They set the hour. They set the names. They signed the orders. The council dismissed. As the light fell, small lamps woke along the galleries. A group of children carried blankets to their sleeping place in an old storeroom and waved at the guards who had become familiar in a week. The soup line shortened. The washroom filled and then emptied. A man on the lower terrace began to sing an old road song without accompaniment, plain and steady, and a few voices joined him.
In a room below the city, Nora Clegg sat on a stone floor with her hands tied in front of her and her cheek swollen where a guard's ring had caught her. A Red Veil officer stood outside the bars, reading a paper by the light of a hanging lamp.
"I told you the same thing yesterday," Nora said. "You can drag me or call me names, but I won't tell you where they went. I don't know it. They moved her. I saw the car. That's all."
"You were with them," the officer said without looking up.
"I was watching them," she said. "You know who I am. I already told Arthur. I did what he paid me to do. You caught me because I tried to stop the crowd from moving, and I would do it again. Hang me tomorrow if you want. I'm done with this."
The officer folded the paper. "You call yourself faithful and you work for anyone with a wallet."
"I called myself useful," she said. "Not faithful."
"You will call yourself dead if you keep that tone," he said.
"I know," she said. "Shut the door. I want to sleep. I won't be charming for the crowd if I'm tired."
He stared at her as if he had never heard a prisoner say that in a normal voice. He closed the door. The lamp flickered. Nora leaned her head back against the cool stone and spoke to the ceiling like a person who had started to change her mind about a lot of things and had no time left to sort it.
"Kael," she whispered, though no one was there to hear. "Selina. If you come, be fast. If you don't, finish the job you started and don't waste people on me. Get the girl out of here and make this cult choke."
Above, in the city, Selina checked the lists again and again and went to Mira's chamber with a bowl of clear broth.
"Eat," she said. "You need the strength."
Mira took the bowl. "What do you need from me before you go?"
"Three things," Selina said. "Stay in the inner court until we send word. If you must leave, take four and keep to the stone path. And if you feel the wall change too fast, sit and call to me. I am not too proud to turn back."
"I will do all three," Mira said. She finished the broth and set the bowl aside. "Be careful."
Selina's answer came quick, quiet, and real. "I will. And if I am not, Kael will be for both of us."
Kael stood in the doorway, already in dark gear and with rope on his shoulder. His knives sat easy. He watched Mira the way a man watches a fire that he will walk past: not fearfully but with respect and an acceptance that something might change even in the space of a breath.
"We leave at moonrise," he said. "I will send word by hawk if the count is bad. If we go in, I will send three sharp notes on the horn before the pull."
Mira approached him. "I will sit on the west lip and listen. I will carry your notes."
He hesitated, then gave her a small, tired smile that only she saw. "I do not like leaving you here when the ground under everything moves. But I like leaving you near a ritual circle even less."
"I understand," she said. "Come back."
He touched his knuckles to the stone door frame and said it as a promise, not a hope. "I will."
The night came down. Stars cut through the cloudline where the air thinned over the ridge. The moon rose late and with a pale ring. The Red Veil's torches burned in a long row across the lower road. Their drums stumbled and regained rhythm and stumbled again. In the mountain city, the watch changed. On the west lip, four guards set a rope line and a low stool for Mira. She sat with her hands open on her knees and listened to the wind move across the quarry in the dark. When she closed her eyes, she saw nothing but sound. When she opened them, she saw the faintest rim of torchlight where the stones cut the sky.
The world was dividing. In one part, people lined up for soup and held their children tighter when the drums sounded. In another, men in red painted lines on the ground and practiced raising and lowering a rope. In a third, two leaders walked down a goat track with four fighters behind them and a coil of rope on one shoulder, trying to count breaths before the ground tilted.
Mira kept her focus where she could help. She shaped the air in her mouth to carry sound farther without shouting. She spoke over the rope line to the point where she knew Kael would wait before the drop.
"Wind is steady," she said softly. "I hear twelve torches on the rim. I hear six bows creaking. I hear one chain, not rope, to the left. They did not tie the main post yet. Wait for the drum to trip. It will trip because the drummer is tired. Move on the trip."
Her words went out like a clean line. In the dark, Kael lifted a hand in answer she could not see and moved one pace closer to the edge. He waited for the drum to miss. It missed on the next beat. He breathed once and raised his hand.
On the terrace behind Mira, Selina stood with two horn bearers and her own hand on the signal line. Her jaw was set. She would blow the recall if she had to, even if half the court hated her for it in the morning. She watched the stars for a sign that the night would show mercy.
It did not show mercy. It showed the truth. And the truth, for now, was that the seed of war had already been planted in every valley and on every ridge. What people did next would decide whether it grew into a tree that gave shelter or a vine that strangled everything in reach.
The horn waited. The rope lay ready. The city held its breath.
The first hawk dropped from the dark with a message tied to its leg. A guard caught it and ran the tube to Selina. She broke the seal, scanned, and spoke without raising her voice.
"Count is nine archers on the rim," she said. "Two torch bearers. Three priests at the circle. One drum. One chain at the left. The crowd is twenty-five. Arthur stands on the east side, close to the rim. Harland stands two paces behind him. They moved the girl to the center pole."
Mira closed her eyes. She could hear Nora's breathing now. It was steady and sharp at the edges like a person who had tiptoed to the end of patience and refused to beg. Mira opened her eyes and set her palm flat on the stone.
"Now," she said. "Move now."
Selina did not argue. She nodded to the horn bearers. Three sharp notes cut the night—far enough apart to read but close enough to make a line. Below, Kael dropped over the lip with two behind him and slid along a shadow line like a stitch. The rope sang once and then went quiet.
Mira did not pray. She counted. She counted the beats of the drum and the steps of the guards and the gasps in the crowd. She counted the places in the circle where the stones sat loose. She counted the spaces between the archers' breaths. She counted her own heartbeat and kept it steady so that the people on the rope would know the wind stayed the same.
Down in the quarry, someone shouted. A torch fell. The drum stumbled. A rope snapped like a string. The crowd cried out. The priests raised their hands to shout blessings that were not blessings at all.
On the terrace, Selina drew breath to sound the recall if the sound she heard next was the wrong one.
The night held the sound and did not answer yet. It waited to see which way the seed would split its shell.
And in the mountain city above, every sentry stood a little taller, every healer set out another clean cloth, and every refugee who had learned to listen for danger in their sleep opened their eyes and kept still, listening.
What came next would not end the war. It would begin the first fight of it. And everyone on the mountain, from the eldest elder to the last child asleep under a borrowed blanket, knew it.