The second day in Farbridge almost felt like it belonged to someone else's life.
Morning: fence work, splinters, sweat, Hale yelling at a boy who kept trying to ride a goat.
Afternoon: Lysa helping at the well, showing Sia how to braid rope with quick, neat fingers.
Evening: stew again, different flavor, a story from an old man about a river spirit that stole boots.
Kairn let it soak in.
He didn't trust it.
He still let it in.
His Brand stayed quiet most of the time, a low hum under his ribs. The dragon watched the new sky, amused. The engine dozed, occasionally murmuring about "small doors" it could taste in the hills. The Null rings sat still.
On the third night, everything shifted.
It started small.
A headache, right behind his ash eye, as he lay on the pallet staring at the ceiling.
He'd had headaches before.
This one came with a familiar taste.
Cold.
Chain-cold.
He sat up.
Lysa stirred, hair a tangle, eyes bleary.
"What?" she mumbled.
"Something tugged," he said.
Her back straightened at once.
"King?" she asked.
He reached for **Web Map**, careful, testing.
The local lines unfolded.
Most were the same as before—river, hills, town, distant keep.
But now, at the very edge of his sense, there was a new thread. Thin. Faint. Wrong.
It wasn't the King's full web.
More like a stray strand someone had tossed across a boundary.
His stomach dropped.
"He sniffed us," Kairn said quietly. "Or the engine. Or the hole we made. There's a line. Small. But it's his."
Lysa's jaw clenched.
"How close?" she asked.
"Far," he said. "For now. But he didn't have any line here yesterday. Now he does."
Fen's voice came from the doorway, where he'd been leaning just out of sight.
"I was hoping you were wrong," he said. "You're never wrong about this part."
"You could start believing me when I say 'eat' instead," Kairn said.
Fen snorted.
"So," he said. "Our vacation is officially on a timer."
"Yes," Kairn said.
Lysa rubbed her face.
"How long?" she asked.
He wished he had a number.
The thread was thin.
No relays here.
No Choir.
No Maereth.
The King would have to build his way in slowly, like roots pushing through stone.
"Not days," Kairn said. "Weeks. Maybe more. Enough that he can't just slap a hand down tomorrow."
"Unless he finds a shortcut," Fen said.
"Unless," Kairn agreed.
Lysa swung her legs off the bed.
"We should tell Hale," she said.
Kairn hesitated.
"Tell her what?" he asked.
"That there's trouble coming," she said. "That we brought it. That she has time to decide what to do about that."
Fen winced.
"She'll throw us out," he said.
"Maybe," Lysa said. "Maybe she won't. But if we stay and say nothing, and something breaks over this town's head because of us… I won't live with that."
Kairn looked at her.
At Fen.
At the dark ceiling.
He thought of the mine.
Of a town that had never had a choice.
He nodded.
"Morning," he said. "We do the work she asked. Then we talk."
He didn't sleep much after that.
Neither did the dragon.
The thread at the edge of his sense stayed thin, but each time he checked, it was there.
Real.
Morning came.
Sun.
Bread.
Fence.
He hammered, lifted, braced, all with one part of his mind on a line only he could see.
At midday, Hale came by to check the work.
She squinted at the new posts, nodded once, and turned to bark at someone lugging a beam the wrong way.
Kairn stepped toward her.
"Warden," he said.
She glanced up.
"Problem?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
She read his face.
"Walk," she said.
They left the fence line, heading toward the edge of town where the fields began. Lysa and Fen fell in on either side without being asked.
Hale didn't speak until they were away from easy ears.
"Say it," she said.
Kairn inhaled.
"When we came," he said, "the sky here was clean of the thing we ran from. His lines. His… web. That's changed. There's a thread now. Faint. Far. But his."
Her jaw tightened.
"Your war followed you," she said.
"He's not here," Kairn said quickly. "Not like we knew him. No armies. No towers. Just… a hand, reaching. It will take time for him to push more in. But he started."
"How?" she asked.
"The hole we tore," Lysa said. "The bite. The engine. We shook his net. He's looking for what shook it. Sooner or later, he was going to sniff this side."
Hale stopped.
She turned to face them fully.
Her eyes were very sharp.
"Does he know about this town?" she asked. "These people?"
"Not yet," Kairn said. "He just knows there's an 'elsewhere' his song doesn't cover and that something… not his… moved there. Us. The engine. He'll feel around. Probe. Maybe he grabs some poor place on a different edge first. Maybe not."
She was silent for a long moment.
"You could have left," she said quietly. "Without saying anything."
"We've seen what happens when people don't know what's coming," Lysa said. "We're tired of that."
Hale's mouth twitched.
"Lucky me," she said. "I get the honest ones."
She looked out over her fields, her town, the river.
"You plan to stay?" she asked.
"For a bit," Kairn said. "Long enough to get our feet under us. Learn this sky. Then we move on. We can't anchor him here. If he wants us, better he chase us than sit his hand on your roof."
"And if he finds you faster than you move?" she asked.
"Then we try to meet him away from people who didn't ask for it," he said.
She studied his face.
"You're used to carrying other people's fires," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Well," she said. "You're not just dropping this one at my door and running. You told me. That's more courtesy than some of our own give when they bring trouble home."
She sighed, long and slow.
"I can't plan for a god-war," she said. "I can patch fences and chase wolves and keep bandits off the road. That's my scale. But I can plan for leaving. If the sky starts to crack, these people will move. I'll make sure of it."
Kairn blinked.
"You'd abandon the town?" he asked.
"I'd move the town," she said grimly. "We're people, not stones. Stones stay. People walk. This place is home, but home is not walls. It's who's inside them."
Lysa's eyes softened.
"That's… more than most Wardens we knew," she said.
Hale shrugged, almost embarrassed.
"Don't put me on any old songs yet," she said. "I haven't done it. I've just thought about it. Thought is cheap."
"Where would you go?" Kairn asked.
"North," she said immediately. "Toward the Roadkeeper halls. More bodies, more blades, more old wards. If what you're talking about is half true, they'll need to know too." She paused. "You'd be welcome to walk that road with us. If we get there before your ghost king's fingers do."
Kairn's Brand pulsed.
"The more bodies around us when he probes, the more people he can grab," he said. "I'm not sure being in a crowd is safer."
"Fair," she said. "We'll see. This is all if. For now, we mend fences and watch the sky. You watch your lines. You tell me if that thread gets thicker."
"I will," he said.
She nodded once.
"Good," she said. "Now go pretend you're normal for a few hours. It helps."
They did.
Or tried.
Afternoon was hauling and hammering again.
Kairn's body settled into the rhythm, but the knowledge of that thread sat behind his eyes.
At dusk, he went up the hill behind the town alone, under the excuse of checking the finished fence line.
Lysa didn't stop him.
Fen just said, "Yell if something tries to eat you."
He climbed until Farbridge lay below, a cluster of warm lights against the darkening valley.
The sky overhead was clear.
Stars, new and unfamiliar, pricked the blue.
No comet.
No ash veil.
He reached for the **Web Map** one more time.
The local lines unfolded.
The thin new thread at the edge was still there.
Faint.
It hadn't thickened since morning.
But it hadn't gone.
The King was patient.
Kairn felt his attention, far, far away, brush the place where the engine now sat inside him.
The engine hummed, small and smug.
"You let him sniff," Kairn said.
"I shook his web," it said. "He could not help but feel. That is his flaw. He must know every tug. He cannot leave anything alone."
"Same as you," Kairn said.
"Same as you," it corrected.
He couldn't argue.
He thought of the mine. The grave. The preacher. Maereth. The sideways. The town below.
He thought of this arc of his story—the chain-breaking, the dragon-binding, the null-biting, the sideways leap.
He knew it couldn't end with him sitting on a hill, watching birds.
It had to end with a choice.
He had one.
He could stay until the thread grew. Until the King's hand tested this sky. Meet it here. In front of these people. Turn Farbridge into the first battlefield of a war it didn't ask for.
Or he could leave before that happened.
Carry the thread with him.
Pull the fight further, somewhere with fewer warm lights below.
He heard the town sounds—distant laughter, a dog barking, the creak of a door.
He heard Lysa's laugh from earlier when Sia had dropped a bucket in the well.
He heard Tam snore.
He knew his answer.
Lysa found him there, of course.
She came up the hill, footsteps light, and stopped at his shoulder.
"You've made a face," she said.
"I have several," he said. "Which one?"
"The 'I decided something terrible' one," she said. "You wear it a lot."
He huffed.
"We can't stay," he said.
"I know," she said.
He blinked.
"You do?" he asked.
She nodded, eyes on the town.
"We've never been allowed to keep the quiet bits," she said. "We got a taste. That's more than we had. But if we stay, this becomes one more place the King breaks. I don't want to hear people here cursing our names twenty years from now."
He looked at her.
"Road north," he said. "With them or without?"
"With, if they move," she said. "Without, if they don't. We can't drag them. But we can walk the way trouble is going and try to meet it before it hits their front gate."
He smiled, small.
"Always walking toward the teeth," he said.
"Better than waiting with your back turned," she said.
He turned his gaze from the town to the horizon.
In the far distance, under the new stars, something glimmered—faint, like a reflection. A keep, maybe. A tower. A door.
The engine hummed, interested.
"Next arc," he murmured.
"What?" Lysa asked.
"Nothing," he said. "Just… thinking in chapters."
She snorted.
"Don't get too clever," she said. "You'll trip."
He chuckled.
He let the **Web Map** fade, the thread at the edge flicker out of his immediate view.
He would watch it.
He would leave before it grew.
For now, he stood on a hill above a town that did not know it was part of a bigger story yet, with a girl whose beat had saved his mind more times than he could count, under a sky that had never heard the King's song.
The arc that had begun in a mine and a tower and a dragon's valley was almost done.
One chapter left to close it.
Then the war would widen.