Night held its breath. No wind. No bugs. Even the tiny fire seemed to listen.
Mira had first watch. Kael sat nearby, working a strip of cloth along the notch in his spear. Elira lay with her eyes closed and her body awake.
A thin scrape cut the dark, sharp as a pin on glass.
Kael's head came up. "Left."
Mira pinched out the flame. "I see it."
Something peeled off the black and unfolded into wings. A raven—glossy, deliberate—dropped out of the trees and landed on the rock by Elira's bedroll. A narrow band sat on its leg with a sigil they knew.
Elira pushed up on an elbow. "Sirena."
The bird tilted its head, impatient, and offered a roll of black paper bound with silver wire.
"Careful," Kael said.
"I am," Elira answered, thumb already easing the wire. The seal crumbled like silent ash. She unrolled the page. The letters seemed to carry their own dim light, enough to read without a flame.
"Read," Mira whispered.
Elira read aloud, quiet:
Elira—
He left at night. No orders, no record.
Three days later: reports from a northern import city—a man and shadows like the deep.
Severe damage. Missing people.
Stay away. Do not take the coast road.
I can't say more here.
— S.
Trust what you feel. Don't let it swallow you.
The words sat heavy between them.
Mira let out a breath she'd been holding. "He left. He actually— left."
Kael's jaw worked once. "No orders. No record. That part bothers me more."
Mira tried to aim for lightness and missed. "And 'stay away'—that's her polite way to say we'll do the opposite."
Elira folded the page along its crease, then once more until it fit her palm. "It's a warning," she said. "I'll take it as such."
The raven tapped its band against the rock—one soft click—and waited like it wanted their answer too.
Mira hugged her arms. "Import city means docks, lights at night, too many people to vanish clean. How did this sit three days before it reached her—before it reached us?"
"Because truth walks slower than fear," Kael said.
Elira slid the letter inside her breastplate. The paper cooled against bone. "We go north," she said. "We look first. No heroics."
Mira stared. "Elira—she said stay away. Those are words."
"We won't step into the town," Elira said. "Not yet. High ground only. If we see anyone alive, we help and move. If it's just ruin, we keep our distance."
Kael nodded once. "Scout, not strike."
Mira rubbed her face with both hands. "Great. Sensible disobedience. My favorite kind."
Elira offered the raven a flat palm. "Thank you."
The bird hopped to her wrist, light as breath, then lifted. A hair-thin arc of red traced from its wing into the dark—northward—and faded.
"Not random," Mira whispered.
"It's pointing," Kael said.
"Or warning," Elira said. "Either way, we heard it."
They split the night into short naps—twenty minutes each. Sleep came in pieces. Elira's dream tried to pull her back to the Stair: water over stone, the rule like a bell—If the water speaks in words, go back. In the dream there were no words. Only current.
Graylight nudged the horizon. No birds. Frost on the rope line like a string of small stars.
"Time," Kael said.
They broke camp fast. No fire to hide. Kael lifted the wards he had set and folded the feeling of them back into muscle memory. Mira tested the rings at her wrists—one warm, one cool—finding balance with a small nod. Elira checked Lumeveil by feel. The blade kept its quiet.
"North road," Elira said. "Shadow side if we can. Keep heads low."
They started walking before the sky chose to be morning. The world smelled of cold grass and, faintly, salt. The ground was stiff with frost where the sun hadn't touched it yet.
Mira pulled her collar up. "I hate this kind of quiet."
"The useful kind," Kael said. "It lets you hear what breaks it."
Elira kept her eyes on the edges—ditch, fence line, the places where surprises live. The long slope ahead looked harmless and wasn't.
They reached a low rise and paused. No city yet. Just a darker line on the far horizon where the land might give way to water. The wind brought the taste of salt and something else—old metal, old magic. It passed like a thin blade over the tongue.
Mira stood on her toes, peering. "Nothing to see. I hate that more."
"Nothing to see saved our lives before," Kael said.
"Right. Still hate it," she muttered, then softer: "Sorry. Nerves."
Elira's hand brushed the letter at her chest. She didn't pull it out. She didn't need to. The words were there anyway. Stay away. And also: Trust what you feel.
"What do you feel?" Mira asked, as if she'd heard the thought.
"A pull," Elira said. "Not a command. A direction."
Kael shifted his weight, testing the ground with his heel. "Tracks," he said after a moment. "Cart ruts. Old. And—" He frowned. "Light footprints over them, heading north. Small steps. Children, maybe."
"Evacuees?" Mira asked.
"Or families moving ahead of trouble," he said.
They followed the rise along its back, staying low. Twice Kael stopped them and pointed—torn grass, a dropped strap, a black bead of glass wired to a broken post. Mira held her palm over the bead and hissed through her teeth.
"Spellbreaker glass," she said. "Cracked. It took the first bite of… something. Hours old."
Elira nodded once. "Mark it. Don't touch."
They moved again. The sea-scent grew stronger even though they still couldn't see the water. The wind shifted and brought the hint of smoke that wasn't smoke—the aftertaste of worked magic.
Mira's voice came small. "What if we get there and it's—" She shut her mouth. "No. Don't say it."
Kael didn't. "We will know what it is when we see it. Not before."
Elira kept their rhythm: thirty steps, scan left; thirty steps, scan right. Her shoulders eased by a finger's width. Not peace. Just a pattern to stand inside.
"Break?" Mira asked after a while. "Two minutes. Water."
"Two," Elira said.
They crouched behind a low fold of earth. Kael passed the skin. Mira took a long pull and handed it over with a shaky grin. "We live on bread and rules. Not my dream life."
"Rules keep us breathing," Kael said.
"Some of them," she said.
Elira drank last. The water tasted like iron and sky. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "We move again. One more ridge, then we stop for today."
Mira blinked. "We're not pushing to the coast?"
"Not this condition," Elira said, half-smile, then shook her head. "Not today. We don't walk into a place we'll have to run out of at dusk."
Kael's mouth twitched. "Sense wins a round."
They climbed the next low rise in silence. The horizon stayed stingy. The wind kept its secrets. Somewhere far off, a fox barked twice and then thought better of a third time.
At the top, Elira raised her hand. "Hold. This is our line."
No city. Not yet. Just the long road, the smell of salt, and the feeling that the land ahead had changed its mind about what it wanted to be.
Mira let out a long breath. "Tomorrow, then."
"Tomorrow," Kael said.
Elira touched the letter once through the plate, like a promise to herself more than to Sirena. "We'll look," she said. "We won't let it swallow us."
The wind moved again, a little harder, as if it agreed or didn't. The three of them stood there long enough to learn the shape of the quiet.
Then they turned back from the ridge and began to make a clean camp—high, hidden, and ready for whatever the road would say at dawn.