Chapter 21: Fire in the Fog
Gray light sifted through Thornveil like ash through a sieve, cold enough to bite knuckles and turn breath to ghosts. The fog hung low and thick, pooling in hollows and clinging to roots, the kind of morning where sound didn't travel far unless it wanted to be heard.
They moved light and quiet, no camp talk, no clatter, Hale on point, Elvi fanned left, Lysera a pale line on the right, Noll tucked just behind Hale's shoulder until the first clash, Thorek in the middle where he could crush the skull of anything foolish enough to meet them, Elias dead center with Rook heel close and alert, the wolf's ears swiveling like living compasses.
A week had sanded their edges sharper, the temple was home now and not a ruin, the forge was a heartbeat and not a hazard, and Elias's resonance had settled into something he could trust, a pulse he could tap instead of a flood that drowned him.
He could nudge Noll's ward without frying the boy, feel Hale's footing before it slipped, catch Elvi's breath just before she loosed, Rook's presence threaded through everything, steadying him like a hand at his back.
They weren't hunting Threadbeasts today, not just, food mattered and cores kept Rook climbing, but Hale had chosen a line deeper than they'd walked before, not because meat was scarce, because rumors were thick. Thornveil carried stories in its fog if you knew how to breathe them, and the air had reeked of men with torches where torches didn't belong.
Elias felt it first, not a howl, not a grunt, a straightness in the hum, human weaving leaves a taste, angles where the Loom prefers curves. He stopped with two fingers on Hale's shoulder and tilted his head, listening with his ribs, "Screens ahead," he murmured, "thin, stitched quick."
Lysera stepped up, palm hovering an inch from the air like she might stroke a cat, a faint ripple answered her fingers, she gave a small, cold nod, "Wardens," she said, "and sloppy ones."
Hale didn't waste words, he ghosted them forward on a new angle, two hand signals and the line bent around a knuckled rise choked with fern and deadfall. Fog pooled thicker here, trees twisted closer, they slid along the ridge and peered down into a shallow ravine where water sulked and roots drank slow.
There, in the bowl of mist, stood a rough waystation, three posts sunk into black mud and bound with iron. A stretch of rope strung planks bridging the creek a pair of tarps slouched over crates.
The Loom's eye burned in yellow thread on a hanging cloth that didn't belong to forests, six Wardens in lacquered dark kept watch with the stiffness of men who believe uniforms do the work for them.
Two more gray clad men in plain cloaks stoked a covered brazier whose smoke slithered along the ground instead of rising. Beside the tarps sat a low iron cage no bigger than a merchant's trunk, chained, and inside it, something moved small and careful, the cage rattled once, then went still.
Elvi's jaw went hard, Thorek's grin died without ceremony, Noll's fingers curled and uncurled until Elias tapped them once, steady, Rook's lips drew back from his teeth in a slow, silent promise.
Hale's eyes flicked as he counted distances, sightlines, kill lanes, the creek ate sound if you stayed low, the fog would hide approach if you cut the screens at the right seam.
But the Wardens had wired their little nest with more than veils. A line of crude chimes hung under the bridge, bone and metal, clackers that would chatter if someone hit the planks wrong, a signal pole stabbed into mud near the brazier. A wrapped crystal lashed to its top, faint resonance bleeding from it like a cough, a flare waiting to call friends.
"Take the pole first," Lysera whispered, "if they lift that screen, half a company will know our names before we've finished breathing."
Elias studied the screens with the eye that had learned to cut wrong notes, two seams showed themselves if you tasted the air, top left of the nearest ward like a loose stitch, bottom right of the second like a chipped tooth.
You could break both without popping the whole net if your timing didn't suck, he pointed with his chin and Lysera's mouth barely moved, not a smile, agreement.
Elvi's bowstring creaked when she tested it, soft as a toe on a stair, Thorek rolled his shoulder until it popped, Hale's hand carved the plan out of fog
He drew in the dirt where damp turned finger ruts into lines, two quick arcs, Elvi left high, Lysera right veil, Noll shield cart, Thorek smash left post.
Elias cut seams and take the signal, Hale breaks center and pins, simple geometry, the kind that gets you killed if you do it slow, the kind that saves children if you don't.
Elias breathed once, deep and slow, fed a thread of resonance down his spear until the head sang. Not loud, a tight buzz you felt more than heard, on Earth he'd learned what vibration did to steel, to bone, to stubborn materials that thought they could hold.
Here the rule was the same, frequency was a key if you learned which door it opened, he touched two fingers to Rook's flank, the wolf leaned in and stilled, silver eyes never leaving the ravine.
Hale's hand counted down, three, two.
A Warden at the brazier bent to lift the tarp, flame light licked his mask and turned the painted eye into a sneer. The iron cage rattled again, small knuckles thudded once against bars, not loud, but loud enough inside Elias's skull. Something old and mean in him settled, the part that had carried a child wrapped in his arms through smoke once and lost one anyway, his grip tightened on the shaft until the wood complained.
One.
Lysera struck first, not with light but with less, the fog folded inward from the ravine's rim and swallowed the signal pole in a soft, gray throat. The wrapped crystal's glow dulled as if someone had put a thumb over a candle, the Warden nearest it blinked and frowned and reached out a hand, he touched air and found it stubborn.
Elias slid, not ran, low and quick along the ridge's belly until the nearest screen's cool shimmer kissed his forearm hairs. He set the spearpoint on the loose stitch he'd tasted and pressed a short, precise pulse into it, the seam didn't break, it forgot.
Resonance turned in on itself and the veil sighed flat like sailcloth in dead wind, a gap opened that fit a man if the man didn't mind bruises. Elias flowed through, Rook poured after him without touching the chimes, Elvi ghosted left like a rumor becoming an arrow.
Hale dropped into the ravine from the center with a clatter that was somehow still quiet, a sound that doesn't carry because it lands on target.
His spear met the first Warden's guard and changed his mind, a quick cut to the inside that opened a path straight into soft under metal, the man gasped, red bloomed. Hale drove him back step by step until he tripped on a root and folded like a badly made chair.
Thorek hit the left post as if it had insulted his mother, hammer down, wood cracked, the clackers jumped and rattled a fraction and then jammed as the post wedged them at a bad angle.
The dwarf laughed with all his teeth and swung again to make sure, splinters leapt like small birds, the near Warden whirled and thrust, the point scraped Thorek's mail and skittered, the dwarf smashed the spear in half and kept coming.
"Shield!" Hale barked without looking, and Noll, already moving, slammed a ward up in front of the iron cage. The glow drew a line in the fog, a small space inside the larger violence where nothing sharp would pass, his arms shook, his jaw set, sweat broke across his lip, he held.
Elvi's first shaft took the signal guard clean under the chin strap and pinned him to his own mistake. Her second shaved a knuckle off the man at the brazier and made him flinch, the third drove into a knee, dropping a Warden out of the fight with a howl. She moved before they found her, drawing and loosing with the calm speed of someone who'd found the rhythm and meant to ride it.
Elias slid under a spear aimed for his ribs and let the vibrating head kiss the inside seam of a breastplate with love and malice, metal parted screaming, flesh parted softer.
He shoved, twisted, withdrew, his breath came hot and measured, another Warden cut in from the right with a short blade.
Elias turned the shaft horizontal and jammed it into the man's wrist, fed a mean little frequency down the ash, the bones there buzzed, not enough to break, enough to betray their owner.
The blade fell, Rook's weight hit the man's thigh and took him down, teeth found tendon, the wolf's growl rolled like a storm caught in a jar.
Lysera stepped through her own veil in time to intercept the one on the far right who had kept his head and his spacing. She didn't duel him straight, she cut his torches' light into slivers that stabbed his eyes every time he turned. His thrusts went a finger wide each time and Hale was there to make that finger fatal, in and out, no flourish, a ledger entry paid.
Two Wardens tried to reach the pole together, one shielding, one dragging for the crystal through fog that didn't want fingers in it.
Elias felt the pull like a snag in silk and didn't think, he drove a burst into the air pocket above the brazier, starved it, then let it collapse, fire went from dull to white in a blink and whoomped.
Not a blast big enough to cook them, a flash bright enough to make men flinch and stumble and clutch their faces. He was already moving when they did, the spearpoint blurred and the first man's shield rim met the frequency head-on and lost, the second got the shaft across his throat and the ground taught him a cruel lesson about leverage.
"Left!" Elvi snapped, for once saying the quiet part, and an arrow screamed past Elias's ear into a shape lunging out of fog with too much confidence, the shape spun and bled and didn't lunge anymore.
Thorek cackled like a saint gone bad, "You've got more than wolves today, boys," he sang. Hammer ringing against a helm and turning it into something a potter wouldn't claim.
A spear grazed his forearm and scored mail, he spat and swung lower, the Warden folded with a sound like a ribcage losing an argument with a wheel.
A gray clad layman bolted from the brazier with panic in his eyes and ran straight into Rook's stare. The man froze as if he'd been threaded to the spot. The wolf held him there without biting, a strand of growl stretched taut between intent and mercy, Elias flicked his spear to the man's blade and swept it aside, "Down," he snapped, the layman went down and stayed, hands open, eyes wet.
The clatter of bone chimes under the bridge tried to start up as a Warden stumbled onto the planks and then choked as the broken post jammed them again. The man swore, lunged off the bridge, met Hale's point, and learned new words for regret.
Steam rose off mud and blood, fog thickened and thinned in the press of bodies and breath. The world shrank to sound and angle and the taste of metal on tongue.
Elias felt the fight tighten instead of end, three Wardens still on their feet, one limping, two mean, disciplined, trained to move together. They fell into a back to back wheel that denied easy flanks, shields up, points forward, each covering the next, the kind of pattern that chews up the overeager.
Hale rolled his shoulder, eyes narrow, ready to take the hit if it bought the opening. Lysera's hands flickered with a new pattern, Elvi slid to change the angle of her shots, Noll found another breath to keep the ward humming.
Thorek grinned like a man who wanted a tougher anvil, Rook's hackles rose.
Elias shifted his grip and fed a finer note into the spear, not harder, sharper. A frequency he'd used on rusted bolts and stubborn pins in a life with coffee and asphalt.
The wedge pivoted to face him, trusting geometry, he smiled back without humor and stepped in.
The fog tasted like iron and a choice, the fight still had teeth, and he meant to break them.
The Wardens braced, the wolf tensed, the line drew tight, and the ravine held its breath as steel met hum and the world tipped forward into the rest of the battle
The wedge held, three shields locking into one wall, three spears darting like angry snakes. They turned in rhythm, pivoting in the muck with boots that had drilled this pattern until it lived in their marrow. Their formation wasn't elegant, but it was built to kill faster foes.
Elias felt the rhythm before the points thrust, one, two, three, each on a staggered beat. His chest thrummed with the resonance of their intent. He barked, "Left flank overcommits on two!"
Hale didn't hesitate. He lunged at the second strike, his spear batting it wide and ramming into the shield rim hard enough to jar the man behind it. Lysera flowed with him, her veil bending the fog across the Warden's face so the soldier struck at ghosts instead of flesh.
Elvi's bowstring sang, her arrow slamming into the exposed thigh of the rightmost soldier. The wedge wobbled as he staggered, shield dipping for just a heartbeat.
Thorek roared like a storm breaking stone. He hurled himself into that gap, hammer slamming down with a wet, sick crunch. The shield splintered, the man beneath it folded, and the wedge collapsed inward.
But the remaining two fought like wolves cornered. One slashed at Elias, his spearhead skimming across Elias's ribs. Pain bloomed sharp, hot, but shallow. Elias hissed and shoved resonance down the shaft of his spear until it hummed like a saw blade. He twisted and struck at the man's shield rim, vibrating metal shrieking as it tore away in sparks.
Rook darted past his legs, silver eyes blazing, and clamped onto the exposed soldier's wrist. The man screamed as his weapon fell, his blood feeding the fog.
The last Warden fought with wild precision, snarling under his lacquered mask. His spear lashed in wide arcs, forcing Hale and Thorek back, every movement sharp as if he'd accepted death but meant to take one of them with him.
Elvi loosed again, the arrow shaved the edge of his helm but missed clean. She swore under her breath, already drawing another.
Noll gritted his teeth, his ward still flickering around the cage. His arms shook like saplings in a gale, but he refused to drop it. The captives huddled in shadow, wide eyes fixed on the chaos around them.
The soldier pressed Elias then, jabbing fast. Elias met the rhythm with his Resonance Sense, teeth grit, muttering, "Too damn clean." He shoved resonance not just into his spear, but into the air itself, compressing the oxygen before his thrust. When his vibrating point met the soldier's weapon, a bloom of white flame exploded outward.
The Warden reeled back, screaming as heat licked his mask. His armor blackened, the spear's haft catching flame before he flung it aside. Elias pressed forward, driving his point through the man's breastplate seam, ending it with a grunt.
Silence fell for a moment, thick and choking, broken only by the hiss of torches sputtering in the damp fog.
Then a horn cut the air, not loud, but sharp enough to make every hair on Elias's arms rise.
"Damn it," Hale snarled, snapping his head toward the sound. A second squad of Wardens materialized through the fog at the far edge of the ravine, torches flaring bright against the mist. Six more men, moving fast, weapons already drawn.
"They were doubled up," Lysera spat. Her veil flickered around her hands, eyes narrow.
Thorek grinned like a madman, hammer spinning once in his palm. "Finally. A real fight."
Elvi didn't waste words, her bow bent, her first arrow already flying. It struck a shield and ricocheted into the dark. She hissed and shifted position.
Elias rolled his sore shoulder, ignoring the sting at his ribs. "Form tight! Don't let them pin us!"
The second squad charged, boots pounding mud, torches spitting sparks into the fog. They hit like a hammer, two spears lunging for Hale. He parried one, barely sidestepped the other, his grunt of effort grounding the line.
Thorek met them head on, hammer crunching into a chest plate with bone snapping force. The soldier folded like an empty sack, but another was already on him, blade ringing against steel as they traded savage blows.
Lysera wove sharp, her veil snapping down across the nearest Warden's face, blinding him just as Elvi's arrow punched into his shoulder. The man shrieked, dropping his weapon, stumbling into the brazier's embers.
Elias thrust forward, spear buzzing with resonance. He felt the rhythm of the squad's formation and cut across it, shoving his point into the weak seam at the hip of one soldier. The man's scream turned the fog sour with blood.
But the Wardens were disciplined. They didn't falter. Two pressed Elias together, their points darting fast, one high, one low. He twisted, barely catching one on his shaft while the second slashed his thigh. Pain jolted up his leg.
"Shit," he hissed, stumbling back a step.
Rook lunged in, snarling, his teeth catching the low spear and wrenching it sideways. The Warden cursed, striking at the wolf's flank, but Elias was already there, his vibrating spearpoint driving deep into the man's chest.
"Eyes up!" Hale roared. "More coming through the fog!"
Shapes loomed, two more Wardens sprinting in from the far side of the bridge. The bone chimes rattled madly this time, giving them cover noise as they rushed.
Elias's chest thrummed with resonance, the hum of too many enemies moving in rhythm. His pulse thundered in his ears. "We've got to finish this line now, or we're screwed."
Elvi's arrow dropped one midstride. Lysera's veil warped light into a blinding flare that made the other stumble. Hale was already there, his spear punching clean through the man's visor with brutal finality.
Still, the fog whispered of more. The Loom itself seemed to hum louder, warning of the storm yet to break.
Elias spat blood from a cut in his lip, tightened his grip on the spear, and snarled. "Keep standing. Keep swinging. We're not done yet."
The horn's echo hadn't finished dying when the new line hit, mud spattered up in sheets, torchlight tore the fog into rags, Hale braced and met the first spear with a low shove that turned its bite.
Thorek crashed the second aside with a laugh that sounded like a forge at midnight, Elvi's arrow burned a stripe through the mist and took a visor slit clean.
Lysera's veil nicked torchlight into knives and slashed it back across hungry eyes, Noll's ward held like a stubborn heartbeat in front of the iron cage and, saints or not, it did not fall.
Elias caught the rhythm like a song he hated, two up front biting at Hale, one sliding left to peel Elvi, one tracking the motion of Lysera's hands instead of her body, the last hanging back with a short horn and a twitchy stance that screamed runner.
He fed a hard pulse through his ribs and out into the line, a nudge on Hale's heel to plant, a hum under Noll's elbows to steady, a tap at Elvi's shoulder that said breathe now and her next shaft slipped past a shield rim and punished a throat for being exactly where it shouldn'.
Rook launched low and violent, silver eyes bright, he hit a knee from the blind side and dragged a Warden half a step out of formation.
Thorek turned that stumble into ruin, hammer breaking a shin with a sound that made the fog flinch, the man shrieked and went down clawing at ground that didn't care.
The runner twitched, that was the tell, a foot already angled to bolt, the short horn half raised, Lysera saw it too and ripped a thin band of shadow across his face.
The world narrowed for him to dark and the horn clattered from his fingers, Hale swept right to finish him, but the second spear lunged and Hale had to take the hit on wood and muscle.
Elias cursed, shoved resonance into his legs and sprinted the short lane between bodies, spear humming warm.
The backliner wasn't brave, but he was trained. He felt the wind of Elias coming and pivoted on muck like a dancer. The knife flicked out underhanded for a gut.
Elias slipped outside and met wrist with ash shaft. He didn't swing to break, he buzzed, a tight frequency that set bone to singing and fingers to betraying. The knife fell. The man's other hand found the horn by feel, fast as habit. He scooped and blew, and the sound punched through fog like a nail.
"Shit," Elias snapped. Too late to snatch it quiet. The blast stabbed the trees and ran, one clean note saying come. Hale's face did not change, but the next thrust he made went in two ribs deeper than mercy. The horn dropped a second time, this time with its owner.
"Finish fast," Hale rasped. No panic, just the math. "We cut and move."
The remaining Wardens fought uglier once the call was in the air. No more tight wheeling, just teeth. One slammed shield to stagger Elvi. Another hacked at Noll's ward until sparks walked his blade. Thorek stepped into that man's guard and taught him the difference between courage and leverage.
Lysera shoved a veil like a pane of hard air and smacked a spearpoint sideways, so Hale's counter could find the seam at the armpit joint. Elias took the last in front of him head-on. He let the thrust glance, drove the vibrating edge into the hip plate, and sawed a breath, quick and brutal. The body gave way the way stubborn bolts finally do when heat and frequency make old grudges soft.
Silence tried to come back. It got a single breath. Then the forest answered the horn, not with horns, with motion. Branches shook in a line too straight to be boar. Fog bulged with the shapes of men. More Wardens, more gray clad porters, more torches like angry stars.
Hale's head snapped to the north and then west, quick triangles drawn with his eyes. The creek ran like a thin black idea between them and an angle of escape.
"Cut them here, then out," he said, and his voice made the plan exist. "Elvi, smoke the bridge. Lysera, blind the torches left. Thorek, break the clackers for good. Noll, hold the ward until I say. Elias, with me on the throat."
"The throat," Elias echoed, and saw it, the pinch where the ravine bent, a place that turned a line of men into two men wide no matter how badly they wanted to be an army. He wiped blood from his mouth with the inside of his wrist and grinned without humor. "On you."
Elvi popped a pouch at her hip and flung its grit over the brazier. Lysera's weave caught the grit and made it a screen. Smoke crawled obediently into a thick, low curtain that turned the bridge into a suggestion.
The new Wardens hit that and slowed, feet cautious where eyes lied. Thorek stomped the broken post until the clackers became wet wood and teeth, then planted himself shoulder to shoulder with Hale at the ravine's pinch point and laughed like he'd found a festival.
They came anyway, because orders make brave men out of fools and dead men out of both. Two abreast, shields up, spears tucked, one torch held high behind to throw shadow forward. Hale nudged the point of his spear low and caught the first man's shin where armor forgot to be generous. Thorek hammered shield edge to drive the second into the first. The pinch did the rest.
One body turned into an obstacle for the next. Elvi threaded an arrow through a gap no sane person imagines exists, and the torch behind them dropped sputtering. Lysera jerked vision sideways with a lashing veil, and men stabbed where no one actually stood.
Elias fed a tight hum across the pinch like a carpenter's line. The first three shields that crossed it vibrated on a wrong note and began to buzz out of their own grips, fingers suddenly full of bees. The fourth man screamed a curse, shoved anyway, and found the dwarf waiting with religion.
"Back," Hale called after the third fell twitching. Not retreat, just the step that keeps you from dying greedy. They stepped. The Wardens shoved. They broke on the bend and fell into each other.
The pinch took another bite. Rook flashed in and out, taking ankles and leaving emptiness. Noll's ward shook, steadied, shook again. Sweat ran down his neck like rain from eaves. The children in the cage pressed so tight to iron they became lines in shadow. Elias caught that shiver, pressed a steady drum into Noll's bones, and the ward stopped quivering and started humming. A better sound by far.
The second wave behind the smoke made the clever decision to stop crashing and start throwing. Short spears arced and clattered. One nicked Elias's thigh and hot pain went up like a fuse. He swore and ripped it free. Hale's forearm took a line of red he ignored with practiced disdain.
Lysera slashed a veil across the air that turned the next volley back with a hiss. Three spears tumbled at the throwers' own boots, and the front rank shuffled in confusion just long enough for Elvi to take two of them out of arithmetic.
"Enough," Hale said, not to the enemy, to his people. "We cut. Now."
"Signal pole," Lysera said, a reminder and a threat. The dull, wrapped crystal still glowed under her smother, but not dead. If they got hands on it again, they'd make a scream across the district.
Elias looked at the pole, looked at Thorek, looked at the pinch trying to turn into a flood.
"Shortstack," Thorek grinned, "you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I'm thinking you break the pole," Elias said. "I'm thinking I'll make the air love you for one second so you don't catch on fire doing it."
"Romantic," Thorek laughed. Then he slammed his hammer into the mud at an angle that turned the ground slick under the next rush. Three Wardens went down like pigs on ice. The dwarf bounded through the seam like a happier kind of boulder.
Elias yanked oxygen out of the pocket around the brazier until flame went mean and low, then shoved cold air in after to wrap Thorek's shoulders.
The dwarf hit the pole with a roar, and the thing snapped with a crack like a green branch. The wrapped crystal bounced and rolled. Lysera's veil smothered it, and the light beneath became the kind of hope that dies quietly.
"Back," Hale barked again. Not running—peeling. The skill that keeps squads alive. Elvi fell into step without looking. Lysera's veil slid like water to cover the retreat path.
Noll shuffled with the cage in his shadow, ward dragging like a net but holding. Rook paced Elias's knees and kept his teeth bright for anyone who misread distance.
The Wardens tried to surge across the broken clackers and found slippery wood and angry men waiting on a trail too narrow to be brave on.
They still came, because that's what men do when horns blow behind them and pride sits in their throats like a stone. One cut left, fast and clever, and nearly got around to the cart. Elvi saw it late. Hale saw it late.
Elias felt it first, that wrong speed hum knifing through the big drum of the fight. He pivoted and hurled his spear like a javelin, a hard pulse packed in the shaft.
The vibrating point hit the man under the collar ring and did not stop. It carried him off his feet and nailed him to wet dirt like a pinned cloak.
Elias limped to retrieve it, teeth bared, and Rook guarded his back with the courtesy of a saint with fangs.
"Go," Hale snapped. "We're done." And done meant we made our point and didn't die for it.
They peeled into the trees the way a good line does, not scattering, vanishing as a whole. Lysera laced a closing veil behind them that turned torchlight into a dull smear. Elvi left two gifts in the mud that would take ankles from anyone arrogant enough to sprint blind.
Thorek shouldered the shattered pole like a trophy until Lysera hissed, and he dropped it with a roll of his eyes. Noll walked backward three steps, then forward two, until his breath came back into rhythm. Elias kept count in his chest and fed the boy each beat he needed.
They didn't run far. Not toward the temple, never toward the temple. You don't teach a predator your door. Hale looped them through a braid of gullies and deadfalls until the horn's echo felt like a memory instead of a map.
Only then did he set them in a low hollow under leaning boulders and drop them to a knee with a fist that meant breathe now.
Elvi pivoted to the cage first, knife sharp, hands gentle. She cut gags. She cut wrist ties. She cut the illusion that anyone else might reach in before her. Two children blinked at her like owls dragged into day, dirt-streaked, smaller up close than the fight had allowed Elias to admit.
"Water," he said, and Noll had it ready, because he'd learned the habit in an hour that takes some men months.
The younger drank too fast and coughed, clinging to the skin like it was a rope over a river. The older sipped and watched with a stare too steady for a child. Lysera checked ankles and wrists with a healer's care she'd never claim she had. Tamsin wasn't here, but Lysera could stitch anything that bled and make the Loom pull clean in places it wanted to snag.
Hale didn't sit. He stood at the edge of the hollow with his spear butt dug into the ground, eyes on fog that kept its secrets.
Blood ran down his forearm, and he shook it once as if it were an insect and nothing more. Thorek wiped his hammer across his own mail and left a smear that made him look like a painting of a saint no church would hang.
Rook curled around the children's feet with the improbable gentleness only beasts can get away with. He rested his head on his paws and watched the trees.
The younger child's hand crept into the fur without asking permission from anyone, and the wolf did not move except to breathe slower.
Elias sank with his back to a stone and only then let his thigh tell him what the spear cut had cost. Tamsin would swear at him later and make him sit longer than he liked. He pressed a palm there and sent a small, cool hum into the ache, enough to quiet, not enough to close. He wasn't that kind of weaver, and pretending would only make the Loom toss him like a bad bet.
The older kid found a voice first, raw and small. "They said the Choir needed us, so the Loom would sing right again." A look at the yellow-stitched eye on a dead man's cloak. A flinch that wasn't fear so much as learned obedience.
Elias swallowed heat that tasted like old smoke and worse memories. Lysera's mouth went thin and hard. Elvi stared at the cloak like she might set it on fire by will alone.
"It's not the Loom," Lysera said, voice cold and precise. "It's them."
Hale let out a breath through his nose. He looked around at his squad, then down at the blood on his hand as if it were ink writing a line he'd already read. "We didn't get the runner quiet," he said, simple and true. "They'll push men into this part of Thornveil now. They'll search the ravines. They'll pull any thread that looks out of place."
"We've been training for a reason," Elias said. The words came out flat, not a speech, a fact. He wiped a smear of blood from his cheek with the heel of his hand. "We knew we couldn't hide in the woods forever."
He met Hale's eyes and found agreement there, not relief, a soldier's acceptance of the next page. He looked at Thorek next, and the dwarf was already grinning like a bad idea had finally been given a feast.
"Then it's time we perfected the grenades," Elias said, quiet, and the air seemed to lean in to hear it.
"By the Forge, lad," Thorek chuckled, eyes alight with wicked joy. "Music to my damned ears."
Lysera didn't smile, but some battle-tension eased in the line of her shoulders. Elvi rolled her eyes like someone who knew exactly how this would wreck her day and would still show up with extra arrows. Noll looked equal parts terrified and thrilled, because boys are made out of those two metals mixed and hammered thin.
"We don't bring heat to the temple," Hale said, iron in the words, not a request, a boundary. "We ghost left three miles. We circle wide. We sleep in the stones tonight and walk in when Thornveil swallows our tracks." He glanced to the children, and his jaw ticked. "We find them a place that isn't our door."
"I know a root cellar an old woman keeps beneath a willow," Elvi said, already there in her head. "She hates the Church more than she loves breath. She'll hold them till we can move."
"Good." Hale nodded. Decision made into plan, plan into motion. That was how he cheated fear. Elias respected it.
He let his head touch stone for a single heartbeat and then pushed himself up. The spear felt like it belonged in his hand again. Not a miracle. A tool.
Rook gave a small, questioning huff. Elias scratched behind his ear and felt the steady thrum of the wolf's contentment. He looked at the kids and somehow found a smile that didn't feel like it would crack his face. "You're safe with us," he said. Then, because truth matters, he added, "For now."
The fog shifted as if listening. A slow roll along the ground that tasted old in Elias's teeth. Not Warden, not beast, something watching deeper in Thornveil, a presence like a hand over a long-quiet drum, not striking, just feeling the skin. His Resonance Sense brushed it and came away tingling, almost like recognition, almost like a question in a language he didn't know yet.
He didn't tell the others. Not here, not with children still shaking and blood still wet on sleeves. Some storms you name when you have a roof. He filed it away beside a spear he meant to build and a truth he meant to cut.
Hale lifted his hand and they moved, quiet and quick. Elvi ghosted ahead to open the way. Lysera stretched veils thin and taut across their backtrail.
Thorek carried nothing breakable for once. Noll kept the ward small and steady around bare feet and bruised wrists. Rook paced like a shadow you could pet. Elias walked at Hale's shoulder with a mind already half at a forge and a line he had finally stepped over.
Behind them, the ravine filled with the wrong kind of prayers, the clatter of men who had arrived too late and wanted the world to make sense anyway. Ahead, the forest breathed. Somewhere, a presence watched and did not interfere.
Above it all, the Loom hummed in a note Elias felt now in his bones more than his ears, a promise and a dare, the kind that ends in oaths you can't unsay.
They didn't go home. They went smart. And the fog closed around their footprints like a hand smoothing a page, ready for the next line they would cut into it.