—Anchor XVI: Take a street that isn't yours.
—Requirement: Walk a hostile procession and leave it kinder than you found it.
—Complication: The Spear will borrow your word if the choir gets it first.
The cathedral district dressed itself in evening. Sponsor lamps braided the parade route into a ribbon; White Crown marked turns with polite ropes; wardens checked the angles of their lanterns as if light could be filed. A thin wind moved through banners and learned to behave.
Mira laid a map on the steps of a shuttered shop and pinned it with four coins. "Pinch points," she said, tapping: a neck of street by the fountain, the bridge crown, the guildhall corner, the last stair to the square. "If anything turns, it turns here."
Riven shouldered the clapper strap across his forearm and pressed his palm to a post cap. The small bell hidden under it hummed once, remembering how to be useful. "We seed the knocks," he said. "Posts, railings, the stone lip at the bridge."
Selene's eyes moved like a hunter's, tracing shadows that would become mistakes. "We borrow their crowd," she said. "We give it back cleaner."
The procession formed: choristers in white, lamps lowered; a row of officials who had learned how to look solemn; then families who had been told this would be beautiful. Near the dais, Asher Drake stood as if no one had ever taught him to hurry. The Bloodreign Spear leaned against the brass rail, unlit, like a promise that didn't need to repeat itself.
"Begin," the conductor breathed.
The choir came in on a soft count—one-two-three—pleasant as a game. The word they meant to own slid under the melody, ready to be lifted.
Bellmarked.
One voice tried it first, testing the grain of the evening. Others readied their mouths.
Damien stepped into the route.
Processional Right warmed in his ribs. Streets recognize men who pay them their hour; the current shaped around his pace. He lifted the clapper hand-high and tapped the first post cap. The metal answered with a small, public courtesy.
Tok.Ask first. Answer out loud.
The post carried the knock to its twin. The twin told the rail. The rail told the stone. A hundred feet of prepared iron asked a question at once, not loud—right. The choir's vowel faltered on the edge of its throat.
A woman with bracelets at the fountain raised her chin. "If there's harm," she called, clean and unafraid, "say it."
The crowd took the line because the water clock had taught them how. Tok.Name your harm.
Asher turned his head a fraction toward the conductor. The man adjusted: not a chant now, a confession set to a smile. Sabotage, the white throats sang, gentle as a nurse.
Damien set the Eclipse Chord beneath the vowel and pushed a half tone until the chord only settled when the knock completed it. The melody was suddenly built to need the question. Anything else rang crooked.
The route breathed with him. At the first pinch point, the crowd found its own space. Mothers with lamps stepped forward; vendors folded their trays inward without complaint; a patrol lifted his staff to rest two inches lower because his arm had discovered it didn't want to be in a photograph later looking like a problem.
On the bridge crown, wind learned to be kind. Damien tapped the ring-lip hung under the keystone and slowed his breath on purpose. The water below answered with the smallest of approvals; the press of bodies lifted and set itself down like a flock.
Mira moved ahead, her palm flashing once, twice to the onion-seller and the baker. The onion-seller laughed right where panic would have crested; the baker handed a heel of bread to a boy whose eyes had been too busy to blink. Not bribes. Punctuation.
At the guildhall corner a survey-lamp swung too far and spilled brightness across faces. The rope line tugged. One voice at the edge tried the word again—bellmarked!—with the eagerness of a boy about to join a chant.
Damien didn't turn. He breathed once—the long, even breath the Stone prefers—and let Echo Right ripple out through the ringed iron. The word fit the air better on a single voice. The boy felt it. He said it quietly to himself and liked it that way.
Asher finally lifted the Spear. Not light; lines. A clean grid crept up the street like lace, stitching the procession's edges so a story would be neat. A thin filament reached toward Damien's shoulder as if to measure distance between a man and his name.
Tok.
The knock traveled the railings, met the filament, and asked. Name your harm. The line hesitated, then offered containment in a tone that sounded better in a memo than in a street. The rail rejected it without rudeness. The line took the curb instead.
They took the last stair. The square opened with the cathedral rising like a verdict no one could sign. The dais waited. The choir turned to the final phrase, the one meant to crown the evening with the word Asher wanted to own.
Selene leaned in without appearing to move. "Now," she said.
Damien lifted the clapper to the canopy beam the wardens preferred and struck once, palm-flat to wood. The beam remembered Wall-Ear and repeated what it had learned.
Tok.Ask first. Answer out loud.
A thousand bodies felt their hearts step into the same place. The conductor's hand hung above the downbeat—deciding whether to conduct a question. He lowered it as a man lowers a tool he can't explain to himself.
The choir sang sabotage. The crowd answered with the knock. The route kept its pace. The procession reached the dais with no bruises and fewer lies than it had set out with.
—Anchor XVI accepted.
—Skill unlocked: Borrowed Way.
—Effect: While walking a hostile procession, your cadence overlays the route; crowd choice favors courtesy; command phrases must include the public knock to land cleanly.
It should have ended there—tidy, patient, something a city could sleep on without dreaming.
Asher tapped the Spear twice against the brass rail.
A bell answered from the north tower.
Not the tower Damien had asked to stand with him that morning. The other. The tone was perfect the way a forgery is: each partial exactly where a mathematician would put it, none of the human scrape that makes a bell deserve to ring. The note went out like a command written in marble.
The route shivered.
The ring in Damien's chest tightened to a wire. Processional Right bucked as if the street had remembered an older loyalty. The public knock stuttered and came late.
Selene's hand closed on his sleeve hard enough to bruise. "He bought a bell," she said, low. "Or worse—he taught one to lie."
The forged tone reached for the word and wrapped it. Bellmarked came back wrong: a stamp instead of a name.
Mira's eyes had already found the seam where the sound had been fed. "Rune throat on the tower mouth," she said. "Bound to the Spear count. It's eating the echo."
Riven's voice was even because rule stays even when a room tilts. "The door can't hear that from here."
The second strike from the north tower arrived, precise as a ledger. The crowd felt the neatness and wanted to obey it just to stop the discomfort of almost-order.
Damien raised the clapper and pressed the metal to the beam until the wood remembered real weight. He pulled breath in on four and held it longer than comfort—long enough to remind the morning he had paid already.
He set Eclipse Chord under the forged tone and bent. Not away. Through.
The bell above the square sounded a third time. The false perfectness hit his line and wrinkled. Four posts along the rope answered with tiny, decent rings; the bridge behind them agreed a heartbeat later; somewhere a baker's lintel contributed a stubborn, homely note that refused to be improved.
The forgery overreached. When it tried to claim the word a second time, the crowd held its breath instead. Single voices—woman at the fountain, boy at the step, watchman at the edge—said the name once each, separate and sufficient. The echo had nothing to eat.
The tower tone faltered.
Asher didn't show surprise. He rarely did. He set two fingers to the Spear and traced a line not on stone but on air, point to point between bell mouths—cathedral, north tower, the far-foundry chime. The net tightened. One more strike and the false bell would land.
Damien lowered his hand from the beam and looked up where the tower mouth opened on night. The rune plate glowed there—small, precise, expensive—teaching old bronze to behave.
He touched the clapper to the rail and let Nocturne's peal find him through iron, across stone, into ribs.
The thin handwriting cut a line across his vision like the edge of a knife on paper:
—Anchor XVII: Free the stolen hour.
—Requirement: Take the false tongue from the tower.
—Condition: No song. No door. Only breath.
The fourth strike gathered in the throat of the north tower.
Selene's mouth curved—a hunter who has just seen the path she wanted. "Up," she said.
Mira lifted her map and folded it once along a seam that hadn't been there this afternoon. "There's a stair behind the choir loft," she said. "It stops where the architect quit believing in men with hands."
Riven slid the strap tighter and checked the clapper with a thumb. "We'll make him believe."
Damien took the first step, and the street—which had not been his—made space. The forged tone began to fall.
He breathed for the tower.
And climbed.