The training yard looked like itself until you noticed the changes.
The mirrored panels along the walls had been tilted a hair. Chalk marks chalked nothing, then were wiped away, then appeared again in new places that made sense only if you'd seen Fenn plan a street fight. Extra lantern cradles stood ready at knee height around the second ring. Above, on the catwalk, two Wardens waited with coils of Radiance Bind, light-strands wound on spools like fishing line.
Trainees had been cleared out with the lie that drills had moved to another hall. The yard breathed a steady, expectant glow.
Luth Orain stood by the gate with his hands behind his back like a headmaster before a test. "They said third bell," he murmured. "They'll arrive before it to feel clever."
"Let them," Fenn said. "We'll still be here."
Selra tapped her stack of thin mirrors, each dusted with trace. "Our decoy's prettier than the real thing," she told Kaelen.
"Good," Kaelen said. "Maybe it gets a better contract."
He wasn't in the ring. Aethryn had stationed him just inside the arch, behind a waist-high barrier of latticework and iron. Close enough to move on Fenn's word. Far enough to make Luth believe in rules.
Aethryn wrapped the dampening cloth tighter under Kaelen's chain. "You say it if your ribs won't," he said.
"Enough," Kaelen said.
"Again."
"Enough."
Third bell rang; the yard took the sound and set it along the walls.
An oil wagon rattled through the gate. Two men in maintenance gray hopped down, caps low, hands clean. A wood crate sat in the wagon's bed, a coffin-size box painted dull black and bolted at the corners. Its seams were too neat.
"Delivery for the yard," one called. "Replacement lenses. Someone signed."
"No one signs lenses at third bell," Fenn said. "Park it there."
They parked. Their shoulders eased in that way shoulders do when a map starts matching the ground. The nearer man's fingers brushed the crate's latch and lingered there like a promise.
Selra's decoy stepped out on cue.
It wasn't a person. It was trick-light braided and pinned to the memory of a stance. Selra had built it in the corridor and guided it with her lantern: Kaelen's height, his clipped chain, the tilt of his head when he watched without seeming to. It didn't breathe. It didn't need to. It walked to the second ring, set its feet, and looked like bait.
The nearer man smiled a professional smile and snapped the latch.
The lid flipped. Darkness rose.
It wasn't the Gloom. It had been made in a room with lamps and patience. Matte panels lined the inside, each one swallowing glow. Mirrors hid under the lip to bend any stray light back inside. When the lid opened, a hinge deployed a black hood like a frog's throat. The thing lunged forward, hungry to box whatever stood at arm's length.
It swallowed Selra's decoy.
The hood slammed down and sealed with a hiss. The box shook once, as if disappointed by the lack of weight, then began to drink. The yard's light pulled toward it, subtle, then not. Shadows lengthened at the edges.
"Now," Fenn said.
Four things happened cleanly:
— From the catwalk, the Wardens threw Radiance Bind. Light-strands fell in tidy loops and cinched wrists, elbows, ankles. The two "maintenance" men went down with the rope's shocked grunt.
— Vorrik's beam snapped like a hinge and cut the wagon's axle. The wheels clattered in place. No one drove away.
— Jore vaulted the crate and pinned the hood with his full weight while Selra slid a mirror under the seam to keep the lock from biting.
— Kaelen didn't move.
"Hold the ring," Fenn told him, as if he'd started to. "Not a step."
Two more men flowed through the gate in House guard livery and made the mistake of believing their coats made them clever. The nearest flipped a small belt from under his cloak, brass spine, thumb-wide mirrors, and slapped it to the crate. The mirrors brightened, sipped, and the box drank faster.
Aethryn's lantern went to blue-white for a heartbeat. "Belts!" he called.
"Take them," Fenn snapped.
Selra slid and sliced. Her thread kissed the belt's spine; trace powder woke and painted its mirrors milk. The man tried to run; Vorrik's tidy line sheared the belt free and nailed it to the floor.
The box shuddered and shifted on its bolt feet as if trying to lean toward Kaelen's spot by the arch. It couldn't see him. He felt it see him anyway.
He breathed. Four in. Two hold. Four out. "Enough," he said, and made the word a wall.
Luth flicked his fingers once. The Wardens on the catwalk adjusted the mirrored panels by a hair. Light stopped feeding the box in straight lines. It came in crooked, broke, and fed back on itself. The yard brightened, just enough to step without wondering where your feet were.
"Open it," Fenn told Jore.
Jore lifted the hood a palm's width. Cold sighed. Empty black. He let it drop again. "There's no one," he said.
"They don't care," Fenn said. "They came for the habit."
A helper tried to dart past the gate with a coil of wire. Aethryn didn't raise his lantern. He stepped into the boy's path and looked at him until the boy remembered other choices. The wire clattered. The boy's knees followed.
Fenn crouched at the crate's seam. "We can't just weld it shut," she said. "It'll chew."
Luth's gaze went distant the way it did when he was counting columns most people didn't see. "We don't weld," he said. "We starve."
He tipped his chin at Kaelen. "Your part."
"Rule one," Aethryn said without looking at him. "You move when she says."
Fenn didn't make them wait. "Kaelen. Seams only. Short. No flood. On my count."
He climbed the lip and set his palm where Selra's mirror held the lock from closing. The dampening wrap bit his wrist. Ashveil warmed.
"One," Fenn said. "Two. Now."
He pressed a pulse into the first seam, not a blade, heat shaped to a line. The matte panel tried to drink it. He starved it instead. Where the pulse touched, the black turned dull, then brittle. Selra slipped the mirror another inch. He moved to the next seam.
The box bucked. The late helper chose unwisely and grabbed for a belt someone had dropped. Vorrik's beam shaved the clasp off his fingers a hair shy of skin.
"Enough," Kaelen said, more to himself than to light. He heard Aethryn say it too, low, a metronome.
The yard dimmed a fraction as the box drank and the panels fed it back. Luth lifted two fingers. Radiance Bind dropped again from above and stitched a tight grid over the crate, light-lines that tightened when the box pushed.
"Two more," Fenn said. "Then we turn it off."
Kaelen touched the third seam. The box slowed. He touched the fourth. The hood sagged, not shut, tired. He pulled back, chest burning, hands hot under the skin.
Fenn slid a wedge of metal into the crack. Jore leaned. The hood jumped and stuck. The box sulked, if boxes do that.
"Bind it," Fenn said. Light-strands bit and held. The yard stopped dimming. Lanterns remembered how to be generous.
It should have felt like done. It didn't.
Selra's decoy still stood at the ring, perfect as a photograph that no longer applied to this moment. She let it dissolve with a flick. The second it vanished, the captured belt on the stones twitched and spat a slip, as if disappointed by the lack of a silhouette to swallow.
Fenn stooped and caught the paper before it ate itself. She read, eyes going knife-thin. "Plan Glass Coffin failed. Shift to Coffin Two. Empty light."
Luth's jaw worked once. "Brace," he said.
The yard's glow flickered, just once, like a giant had exhaled. Then the mirror under the crate cracked by itself, a hair's width line that swallowed reflection instead of showing it.
A low hum moved under the floor.
Fenn didn't waste air. "Positions. Hold the ring. This is where they've been trying to get us."
"Positions. Hold the ring."
The command snapped the room back into work. Wardens filled their marks. The catwalks brightened. The mirrored panels tilted again by fractions you felt in your teeth.
The hum under the floor deepened. The cracked mirror under the crate went black, not with Gloom, there was no cold, but with absence. The light above it refused to bounce. It fell in and didn't return.
"Floor slit," Selra said, tight. "They hid a mouth in the yard."
"Not a mouth," the archivist's voice said from the arch; she'd arrived without being asked and hated that she had. "A sink."
"Turn it off," Fenn said.
"If I could," the archivist said, "I'd be lazier for a living."
The black widened along the crack like ink spilled on wet stone. It touched the crate's edge and the crate leaned, eager. Radiance Bind groaned and held.
Luth didn't raise his voice. "We built this yard to teach light to stand. Make it do that."
"Dome," Fenn snapped.
Lanterns opened. The Beacon formation rose, thin at first, then thick as Wardens and trainees standing in for Wardens grabbed their marks and made a roof. Kaelen slipped to Selra's side on the second ring and set his light to meet hers seam for seam.
"Count," Aethryn called.
Kaelen counted. Four in. Two hold. Four out. He thought of corners. He thought of stop.
The dome settled. The sink kept eating. It wasn't dramatic. The yard just got quieter, the way rooms do before bad news arrives. The black reached toward the crate like a tongue. If it took the crate, it would take the box, and if it took the box, it might remember why it had been made.
"Bind that corner," Fenn told the catwalk. Strands dropped, stitching the crate to anchor points sunk into the floor two lifetimes ago by men who had loved geometry more than sleep.
Jore slid another wedge into the hood. "We could flip it," he said through his teeth. "Turn the box away from the crack."
Luth shook his head. "If it tips into the sink, it learns to bite."
"Better idea?" Vorrik asked, voice even, eyes bright.
"Yes," Luth said, and gave it without drama. "Starve it from the other side. We don't feed it light. We take it away."
The archivist threw him a look that meant he was stepping into her job. He didn't care. "Blackwrap," she called up to the catwalk. A Warden hauled a roll from a wall locker and tossed it down, cloth as dull as the box, heavy, woven with something that hated reflection.
"Kaelen," Fenn said. "You and Selra. Short flares, seams only. We're going to blanket this coffin and make it choke on itself."
Selra's eyes flashed. "Like tucking in a bad child."
"Like smothering a habit," Fenn said.
They moved on the count. Selra threaded light under the edge to lift; Kaelen burned seams brittle in quick, mean pulses; Jore hauled the blackwrap up and over like a fisherman hurling net. The cloth dropped, swallowed the box, and deadened the yard's glow around it. For a breath the hum under the floor grew satisfied.
Then it didn't. The cloth took the box's thirst and gave it nothing. The Radiance Bind lines tightened. The crate stopped leaning.
"Hold," Fenn said, softer now. "Good."
A belt on the stones twitched again. A slip spat and writhed like something that hated sentences. Selra stomped it flat and used the toe of her boot to push it toward the archivist. The woman pinned it with a jar lid and read.
"Abort yard," she said. "Extract target via Glass Coffin Three. From above."
They all looked up.
The slits high in the walls were vents, meant to let heat out and bring cooler air in. Tonight, one of them blinked.
"Catwalk," Fenn snapped.
A hooded shape unfolded from the slit, small, fast, tied to a rope that had been painted to look like shadow. They didn't have a ledger; they had a bag. A simple cloth sack with a mouth they'd lined with matte, sewn with mirror teeth.
They dropped for Kaelen.
He didn't flare. He stepped where he was standing in his head: one pace left, one back, Ashveil up not as a weapon but as a wall. The bag came down and met the cage. It clamped, found metal, and tried to be satisfied. Kaelen pulsed, not a flood, not even a hot, just enough to make the bag say stop. It did. The rope jerked. The hood swung and hit the dome they couldn't see. Their head rang like a bell and they dropped, limp.
Selra hauled the rope in and tied three knots that promised to be permanent.
"Enough," Kaelen told the part of him that wanted to chase the crack in the floor and un-invent it. He said it again because sometimes once doesn't count.
The hum lessened. The black along the crack stayed black but didn't widen. The wrapped box twitched twice like a sulking animal and then went still. Above, the vent slit narrowed, embarrassed it had admitted a stranger.
Fenn took stock like she always did. "Two belts. One bag. One box. Four runners. One brave idiot from a vent. Any I missed?"
"The ledger itself," the archivist said. "But teeth are good. Teeth tell you what the mouth eats."
Luth stepped into the ring, which he rarely did in public. He looked at Kaelen first, and not because Kaelen wanted him to. "You held," he said.
"I stopped," Kaelen said.
"Better," Luth said. He turned to Fenn. "No one in or out of this yard without your stamp. We take the crate apart in pieces I can count. We find out where the sink lives and whether my floors signed up for it."
"They didn't," the archivist said.
"Then we evict it," Luth said.
Vorrik squatted by the captured belt, eyes tracing its spine. "If these are teeth," he said, "maybe they chew both ways."
Selra grinned at him. "Look at you, thinking crooked."
She dusted trace powder across the belt's mirrors. "Wake up," she told it, bright as a liar. A slip coughed out, reluctant. She didn't touch it. She leaned and blew; the letters showed.
—
Ledger status: compromised.
Fallback: Heart routes only.
Note: boy adapts. Increase reward.
—
Kaelen stared at the word Heart until the letters wanted to become something else. Fenn took the slip and held it to the archivist's lamp. Trace glowed milk. Real.
Aethryn's hand found Kaelen's shoulder and set there without weight. "You hear that?"
"Heart," Kaelen said.
"Good," Aethryn said. "Now hear the part that matters."
Kaelen waited.
"You adapted," Aethryn said. "Do it again."
Luth's voice cut across the ring, hard and calm. "We're done letting the ledger choose doors. It wants Heart routes? Fine. We close hands on a route."
He lifted his chin toward the East Annex, where plans slept with knives. "We go to its mouth tonight."
The yard held its breath. The wrapped box didn't move. The crack in the floor waited like a bad thought you'd decided not to think right now.
Kaelen set his palm on Ashveil's warm cage and felt the lantern lean and then settle, obedient for once.
"Enough," he whispered, and meant for now.