"Anchor," the rest echoed, and only then did they begin to eat.
Not speaking first. Not because they feared the words—because warmth demanded its due.
Komus poked a strand of the Lumenstrand Nest. "If this crawls, I'm leaving."
"It won't," Niraí said, already stealing one of his rolls. "Probably."
Cree blew across their tisane, the rim glittering. "It smells like sleep learned manners."
"Veilquell," Gemma said, setting a fresh basket down. "Quiet hearts. No excuses."
Zcain broke a Gloamfold roll with his thumbs, steam curling against the light. "Tragedy pairs well with bread," he murmured.
"Everything pairs well with bread," Rnarah said through her thin veil, eyes smiling. She touched the back of his hand—the smallest anchor in a world that tilted too easily.
They passed bowls. Daviyi salted the bramwing like a ritual. Hydeius ate without looking up, precise, as if chewing were a vow he could keep.
Ayla lifted a strand of the glowing Lumenstrand Nest, letting it coil around her fork. The scent hit first—sweet salt and warm starch, laced with something floral. Her breath caught.
It reminded her of something—saffron and starlight—she couldn't name. Only that someone used to make it for her. Maybe a grandmother. Maybe herself, in a different life.
She chewed slowly, like trying to translate a forgotten lullaby.
Qaritas tasted the herb heat and something unclenched in him he hadn't noticed was clenched.
Only when Gemma thumped the table with the heel of her cane—once: now—did voices turn.
"Why us?" Qaritas's tone was even. It still made the lanterns seem to lean. "Ecayrous asked us to kill a Fragment. Why Eirisa? Why have us do it?"
Zcain didn't answer immediately. He dabbed a bit of glaze from Rnarah's lip with a thumb and pretended that was what he'd been thinking about. Then he lifted his gaze, and the room remembered it was a blade.
A flicker ran down the length of the table—Cree's wrist flame dimmed slightly. Daviyi's jaw ticked, stone-still.
"Because he cannot be seen to do it himself," Zcain said at last. "Politics. Theology. The spectacle of mercy."
He picked up his spoon. Stirred nothing. Set it down again.
"He calls himself Eon's successor. If he murders a Fragment openly, he becomes the heresy he's weaponized."
Niraí's gaze cut toward him—sharp, skeptical. Her fingers curled around her cup like it might steady something.
Zcain's mouth tightened. "And there is… another constraint. If he engages directly, he risks waking bindings even he doesn't control."
Silence again. Longer this time. Even the boneglass lanterns seemed to dim slightly.
Daviyi's voice broke the hush, low and bitter. "So he outsources sacrilege."
"He prefers proxies," Zcain said. "If we kill Eirisa, he consolidates power without the stain."
Niraí muttered, "He's dangerous."
"That's not a reminder," Komus said. "It's weather."
The flames leaned again. Not from heat—from tension.
Zcain looked down the table to Cree and Hydeius. His voice gentled—not softer. Truer.
"You two… don't remember your children. Not fully. But you do remember the battle with Eirisa."
Cree's flame guttered low. Hydeius didn't nod. Didn't speak.
"Fragments of it," Cree said at last.
"We thought we killed her," Hydeius said.
For a flicker of a second, the room disappeared.
Cree's breath caught—not in grief, but in the absence of it. A hollow where memory should live. There had been small hands, once—grasping their sleeve, tugging at fire like it was a game. But no name. No face. Only ache.
Hydeius stared at his fingers, flexing them like he could reconstruct what they once held. Something warm. A laugh caught in amber. Gone.
Neither spoke. But between them, something ancient and unremembered passed like a shadow.
The silence between them pressed in—familiar, like a pause they'd stood in before and never quite left.
Zcain's voice followed—lower. Careful.
"You almost did. You tore through her with everything you had. Hydeius, you burned her soul in devoured ash. Cree, you brought heaven and hellfire together. And when she fell, we believed it was over."
A hush again. The lanterns hummed, as if listening.
"It wasn't you who killed her," Zcain continued. "It was Hrolyn—through Aun'darion. He doesn't kill a fragment lightly, but he knew the Fragments weren't finished. So Hrolyn and Ecayrous made a deal to protect you—the originals. In exchange, your children were sacrificed. He even sealed your memories so you could keep breathing."
The flame around Cree's wrist died with a hiss. Their spoon trembled against the plate but didn't fall.
Zcain's eyes shifted to Qaritas. "Except you, Shadowborn. You were unexpected."
The room stilled as if the inn itself were listening.
Rnarah's hand found the edge of her veil, pinched it lightly, the way you hold back a storm. "Eat," she said quietly, to no one in particular and everyone at once. "You will need the strength."
Gemma seized the cue. "Bramwing 'round again. And don't be stingy with the obsidian honey. Sweets stiffen spines."
Plates moved; the world remembered spoons.
Ayla broke the silence with a small, dangerous calm. "And if we refuse?"
Zcain held her gaze. "Then he finds other proxies. Or he goads Eirisa into striking you first and calls his response righteous." A breath. "He will not stain his hands if he can stain yours."
Niraí's voice cut through the quiet. "And if we fail?"
Zcain's spoon stilled. "Then the world doesn't burn," he said softly. "It rots. Slowly. Quietly. From the inside out."
The room tensed.
"But you won't fail," he added, almost an afterthought—like a law whispered, not a comfort. "Because Eirisa is not invincible. She's afraid."
Zcain's mouth pulled tight. "She's afraid," he repeated.
Not of death. Not even of the child.
"She knows something. Something Ecayrous buried. Something about the moment the original Eon fell—and what he became after."
Rnarah's veil barely stirred, but her voice was a whisper folded in stone. "He fears what she might remember—and who she might tell before she dies."
That got their attention.
Zcain's gaze flicked to Rnarah, then down to the table, where the violet lanternlight bled across his knuckles. "There's a name she won't speak. Not to us. Not even to Ecayrous. A shadow in her mind that makes her lose language. The one who restored the 1999 dimension and is now under our protection."
A familiar pressure feathered the inside of Qaritas's skull, not a voice so much as a hand testing a door already left ajar.
He knew Ayla could hear them—had been hearing them—since the table was set.
Qaritas didn't glance her way. He let his breath thin, the way you do when a blade passes close.
The thread tightened—and he felt the others it touched: Cree's flame of attention, Daviyi's flint, Hydeius's stone-stillness, Komus's sharp curiosity, Niraí's cool focus.
Ayla answered.
Qaritas's fingers found the table's edge. Respect is a clean blade. Surrender is a hook. He wasn't sure which tugged—only that it tugged true.
Komus leaned forward. "Who?"
"One of ours," Zcain answered. "One of the thirteen. The child we kept unnamed in the records. The Ascendant of the Apocalypse. The one who decides if a world is still worth saving."
"If they're that strong," Qaritas said aloud, the words steadier than his pulse, "why haven't they ended Ecayrous? Why hide them?"
Zcain didn't answer right away. The violet lanternlight bled over his knuckles like ink testing paper. When he spoke, it was a blade wrapped in linen.
"Because the power has a price. When they spend too much of it, they drop into a coma and drown in a world's worst hours—its wars, its atrocities, its cruelties. Their mind is forced to witness and relive; the body tears and mends wrong, over and over. There's no true sleep there, only recurrence. We have searched across ages for a cure. There isn't one."
He set the spoon down without stirring. His voice was quieter now, not softer—resigned.
"So they hunt the worst instead—traffickers, butchers, the architects of ruin—anything that keeps a world from tipping into apocalypse. If a world can be turned, they turn it. If it can't, we relocate the innocent to Taeterra. Mercy, before rot makes more of itself."
Mercy, measured. Not soft—accurate. The word cut true, and Qaritas felt the weight of it settle like steel rather than balm.
His fingers found the table's edge. Power isn't permission, Rnarah had said. He believed it now with something like nausea. The lanterns seemed to lean, listening.
The link shivered.
A flicker passed across Rnarah's veil—not grief, not fear, but something sharper. Her fingers brushed the edge of her cup as if steadying it, though the porcelain did not shake. For an instant, Qaritas thought she might speak, but instead she pressed her lips together, holding whatever truth trembled there like a candle cupped from the wind.
The silence turned thick. No one moved.
"They'll meet us in Taeterra," Zcain said. Hydeius closed his eyes.
Rnarah added quietly, "But that… is tomorrow's adventure."