They began that very night.
Liran and Ashra took shifts—one always watching, one always moving. Dren vanished again, promising to return with a list of names. "Old bones," he called them. "People who once wore the circle, or bent its edges when they thought no one was looking."
Corwin stayed inside, his hands working without pause. He reforged the broken lens with a new housing of alchemically etched brass, each component lined with salt runes and elemental threads. He dug out old tools he'd hidden beneath the floor years ago—things left behind by his father. A box of etched stones. A vial of quicksilver with gold flecks dancing inside. A locket sealed with five locks.
And then, one afternoon, the bell above the door chimed.
Not the secret rhythm. Not the familiar knocks. Just a single, deliberate chime.
Ashra froze. Liran stood from his seat at the map table.
Corwin opened the door.
The woman who stood there was in her forties, tall, spare, and wrapped in a slate-gray cloak that looked like it had never once seen dust. Her eyes were violet—a rare trait—and her left hand was missing.
"Corwin Endren," she said.
He nodded, unsure.
"I'm called Hester," she said. "Once of the Leadbound Circle. I heard you're looking for the old blood."
Corwin stepped aside without a word. The others made space.
She walked into the workshop as if she'd lived there all her life.
"I can give you names," she said. "But it comes with a cost. Every one of us the Carrion Order let survive did so for a reason. And none of those reasons were kind."
Liran asked the question they were all thinking. "Why help now?"
She turned. Her missing hand brushed against her side where a weapon might have once hung.
"Because they burned my sister in the Spirelight Trials. For crafting a healing tincture with forbidden glyphs. Because they made me watch."
Corwin swallowed. Then nodded.
"Then help us light a fire they can't put out."
Outside, the clouds broke for a moment, spilling moonlight into the alley.
But deep beneath the city, the Order stirred. The first of the exiles had been found. And with her, a tide long dormant began to turn.