The letters burned behind Teren's eyes even after the doors slammed and the roar of the Hall fell away. The corridor was all stone and breath. His. Brann's. Neris's. No one else's.
The collar shifted again, cold iron rubbing his scar like it wanted to fit better. It kept a steady hum that didn't match his heartbeat. Too calm. Too sure.
"Still breathing?" Brann asked. Big hands. Broad shoulders. Calm brown eyes that didn't flinch.
"Yeah," Teren said. "Air feels thin."
"Air's fine," Neris said, moving at his side. Black braid. Quick hands. Pale green eyes that cut through torch smoke. Her healer's satchel clicked softly with glass. "You're noticing the room. It's built to listen."
They turned the corner.
Two Crown Office guards waited by a thick door of oak strapped with iron. Armor scarred, not shiny. The older one—a woman with steel-gray hair cut short and eyes like cold glass—took him in at a glance. She stopped on the collar. Didn't blink.
"That new?" she asked.
"An hour," Teren said.
"Ugly," she said. "Inside."
The younger guard shoved the bolt. The door groaned open. Cold slid out—clean, sharp, deliberate.
Serin Haldrin arrived as if the hall had been waiting for him. Golden hair cut short, uniform stiff and perfect. A thin ring of gold still glowed at his throat from the trial, like a pet coin of light that refused to leave him.
"Quiet Room," he said, mouth tilted. "Good. Maybe Vale learns to whisper."
"Maybe you learn to listen," Brann said without looking at him.
Serin's smile didn't move.
The older guard—the Marshal—lifted her chin at the door. "No vows inside. No blades. No talking unless you have to. You"—she pointed at Teren—"don't touch that thing unless you want to find out how much of your throat it still owns."
Teren nodded once. "Understood."
He stepped through first.
The Quiet Room was white stone and straight lines. No windows. No carvings. No circles. Thin grooves ran across the floor and met at a sharp center. The silence pressed on the skin like cold cloth. The walls hummed low, a sound you felt in the teeth more than heard with ears.
The door sealed. The hum thickened.
The collar answered.
Neris set her satchel on a bare shelf. "Stand in the center. Hands at your sides. If it pulls, you plant your feet. If it whispers, you don't answer. Let the room do its work."
Teren walked to the meeting point of the lines. The iron settled against his scar. It was heavy without being weight. He could taste metal—penny, nail, blood—at the back of his tongue.
Brann posted just off Teren's left shoulder. Not touching. There if needed. The Marshal took the right wall, sword unbelted and set aside per rules, but somehow still armed. Serin stayed near the door, gold light painting a neat circle on the floor that refused to touch the room's grooves.
"Don't talk," the Marshal said. "Let it read."
The hum deepened.
Something in the walls answered the collar in a voice that wasn't a voice.
Balance. Mirror. Silence. Blood.
Teren kept his jaw set. He thought of rain hitting a barn roof. That old summer sound. He thought of rope sliding through a pulley. He thought of nothing.
The collar cooled. Then it warmed. Not heat—memory of heat. The scar twitched. His breath wanted to speed. He didn't let it.
The thin lines under his boots did not glow. The air did. Dust settled flat to the grooves, as if the room liked clean lines and hated noise.
Neris spoke softly, eyes never leaving his throat. "Count four in. Four out."
He did. In. Out. Again. The hum steadied with him.
The room leaned toward the far wall.
Frost traced a thin ring where there had been nothing.
Serin drew in a breath. "A gate."
"Shut it," the Marshal said without looking at him.
The ring brightened. Cold bled into the room and didn't fog the air; it sharpened it. The collar hummed back, eager now. Like a dog hearing its master's boots.
A whisper pressed under Teren's skin.
Enter.
He didn't move.
The ring formed a second ring inside the first. Then a third. Not circles. Crowns. Broken. One spoke missing.
Neris swore under her breath. Not a big word. A small one that meant not here and not yet.
Brann braced his stance the way farm boys do before a heavy lift. "Tell me when to pull him."
"You won't be able to," the Marshal said. Calm. Certain. "So don't try unless I say."
The ring thinned to a silver hair. A palm print bloomed in frost at its center. Not a hand. A negative—cold where a hand should be. Long fingers. Narrow wrist. A scar across the palm like a line of ash.
The collar pulsed.
Teren heard the word again. Vessel.
"No," Neris said, voice level. Not to Teren. To the room. "He isn't an open jar."
The palm print turned. Slowly. Twice. Then stopped. A sigil etched itself beside it—seven short strokes around a circle. One stroke missing.
Serin's gold light thinned. "First Fragment," he said. "Crownwork."
"Hold your voice," the Marshal said.
The collar squeezed. Not choking. Testing.
It wanted a vow.
Teren felt it—words pushing behind his teeth like a mouth he didn't own.
Say you accept the chain.
He kept his lips closed.
Say you belong.
No.
His breath stuttered. He fixed his eyes on the lines. Straight. Clean. Real. He wasn't a jar. He wasn't a crown. He was a boy with a scar and a bad name and two friends who wouldn't move.
Neris stepped closer, hands up, not touching. "Anchor words," she said, low. "Pick three pieces of your life that aren't this room. Speak them."
Teren forced air through his teeth. "Rain on tin. Rope through a pulley. The smell of apples in late summer."
The collar's squeeze eased a finger's width.
Serin's voice came gentle and sharp. "Try Haldrin next," he said. "See if it loosens more."
"Talk again," the Marshal said, still not looking at him, "and I put you outside."
Serin shut up. For once.
The frost palm pressed outward. The wall didn't change. The room did. The hum flipped from low to high. The rings blurred, then snapped clear again. The collar answered with a quick, eager shake that only Teren felt.
Open, the not-voice pressed.
Teren stared at the palm print and thought about saying yes. Not because he wanted to. Because it would be easy. The collar wanted yes like fire wants air.
He said: "No."
The hum dropped like a stone.
The frost rings shivered. The palm wavered and smeared. The sigil held. The room breathed out.
Neris's shoulders loosened a fraction. Brann's jaw unclenched. The Marshal's eyes narrowed, which was her version of good.
Serin let out a breath he must've been holding and tried to make it sound like a laugh. "If he says yes once—"
"He didn't," Neris said. "We hold to that."
The room didn't like it.
Cold pulled in hard, then snapped back. The frost rings thinned to hairlines, then brightened, then fractured like ice stepped on in winter. The palm print folded in on itself and vanished. The sigil stayed a heartbeat longer.
Teren's collar burned once, sharp, like a pin pressed inside the iron and let go.
A mark settled on the inside of his skin.
He gagged. Nothing came up. The taste of iron flooded his mouth and then faded.
The hum faded with it.
Silence. Real silence. No room-noise. No iron-noise. Just breath and the quiet scrape of the Marshal picking up her sword again out of habit and putting it back down because rules were rules.
Neris gave the room a long look, the kind healers give a wound they don't trust. Then she stepped to Teren and checked his pulse without touching the collar. "Still you?"
"Still me," he said. He meant it. He hoped it stayed true.
Brann tilted his head at the wall. "What did it want?"
"An open jar," Neris said.
"A door," Serin said.
"A mistake," the Marshal said.
Teren looked at the white stone where the frost had been. Nothing showed. If he hadn't felt it, he'd think he imagined the whole thing.
He hadn't.
The iron against his throat pulsed once, very soft, like it had learned a new word and was rolling it around for flavor.
The Marshal knocked twice on the door. The younger guard swung it open. Warmer air slid in and broke the chill.
"We're done," she said. "He needs food and a bed and no one asking him to swear anything. If anyone in this building says 'oath' within ten feet of him, I want their name."
"Understood," the younger guard said.
Serin didn't move. He looked at Teren like a problem he wanted to study and also break. "The Hall won't keep this quiet," he said. "By dusk the city will say a crown has found a throat."
"By dusk," the Marshal said, "the city can say what it likes. We'll be busy doing our jobs."
Brann put his cloak back tighter around Teren's shoulders. "Walk," he said, not unkind.
They walked.
The corridor lamps threw long, thin bars of light. Footsteps. Breath. No other sounds. The Hall's distant noise was a memory now. The collar had cooled. It still weighed the same. It always would.
At the Office dormitory level, the younger guard led them into a small room with a narrow bed, a table, a basin, a window that looked at another wall. Plain. Clean. A place to be left alone.
The guard hovered, unsure. "Food?"
"Bread. Soup. Water," Neris said. "No wine. No sweets. No stimulants. And a cloth soaked in cold well water."
The guard nodded and left quick.
Brann checked the corners like a man who trusted rooms only after he'd touched them. He found nothing worth noting and relaxed a notch. "I'll sit outside the door," he said. "Shout if the iron sings."
"It won't," Neris said, though she didn't sound sure. She set the satchel on the table. "Don't sleep yet," she told Teren. "Lie down. Breathe. If it pushes again, you sit up. You don't let it set the pace."
"What if it wakes me?" Teren asked.
"I'll wake you back," she said.
He almost smiled. "Good trade."
Serin lingered in the doorway, leaning on the frame like this was his home and they were visitors. "You should be in one of the upper cells," he said. "Stone older than the Hall. Better lines. Safer."
"Safer for who?" Brann asked.
Serin's eyes flicked to the collar. "Us."
"Close the door, Haldrin," the Marshal said, voice level.
Serin pushed off the frame. He measured Teren one more time, trying to see the shape of the problem. "Enjoy your soup," he said mildly. "You'll be busy when the city starts knocking."
He shut the door.
Silence returned. Not Room silence. Dorm silence. Human. Ears could live with it.
The food came. Bread warm from a downstairs oven. Thin soup that tasted better than it looked. Water cold enough to bite the teeth. Teren ate slow because the collar made fast eating feel wrong. Neris sat at the table and watched his throat without being weird about it. Brann sat on the floor by the door like a wall you could talk to.
"Thank you," Teren said when the bowl was empty.
Neris nodded once. "Don't thank yet."
He set the bowl down. The iron hummed once, soft, like a cat asleep.
He stared at the ceiling. White plaster. One crack. The kind of detail that helps a brain not do something stupid.
"Why me?" he asked. He didn't mean why a collar. He meant why this collar.
Neris folded a cloth and set it against the iron, careful not to press. "It didn't pick you because you're lucky," she said. "It picked you because you're stubborn."
"That's your healer opinion?" he asked.
"That's my girl-from-a-house-that-likes-to-name-tools opinion," she said.
Brann huffed a small laugh. "Stubborn beats pretty."
"Tell that to Haldrin," Teren said.
"I do," Brann said. "He doesn't hear it."
A knock came at the door. Two raps. The pattern the Office used for not an emergency, but I won't wait long.
The Marshal walked in without waiting. "You have a visitor," she said.
"Already?" Neris asked.
"City runs on fast mouths," the Marshal said. She stepped aside.
An Archivist entered. Slate coat. Ink-stained fingers. Thin face. Eyes like someone who liked numbers and didn't care if numbers liked them back. He carried a flat box of black wood and a ledger.
"Permission to observe," he said, not really asking.
"No vows," the Marshal said. "No questions worded like vows. No language games."
"I'm very boring," the Archivist said. He set the box on the table and opened it. Inside lay a thin square of mirror, cloudy as breath on glass. "We log anomalies. Today produced several."
"Start with the easy one," Brann said. "Does the collar kill him if he sneezes?"
"No," the Archivist said. "Probably." He slid the mirror onto the table and angled it toward Teren's throat. "Hold still."
Light moved across the surface. Not gold like Serin's. Gray. The color of iron dust in water.
Words formed and un-formed on the mirror like frost catching and melting. The Archivist watched, head tilted, as if listening to a bird decide on a song.
"Report," he said, almost to himself. "Mark: torc response to Quiet Room lines. Mark: first refusal recorded. Mark: imprint formed—ah."
"Ah what?" the Marshal asked.
He tapped the glass. A sigil hung there for a heartbeat: seven strokes around a circle. One missing. It flared and faded.
"Fragment map," the Archivist said. "It will try again. Next time it won't ask so politely."
Teren looked at the mirror and saw his own throat, the iron tight and calm. He felt fine. He didn't trust fine.
"How many fragments?" Brann asked.
"Seven," the Archivist said. "There were eight. One was eaten."
"By what?" Neris asked.
The Archivist looked up for the first time and met Teren's eyes. "By time," he said. "Or by someone who thinks they can eat time."
No one spoke for a beat.
Then the mirror fogged, fast, like breath on winter glass. Letters scraped themselves into the fog from the inside.
SO WITNESSED.
The iron went cold-hot against Teren's skin. Not pain. Attention.
Neris stood. "That's enough observation."
"Agreed," the Marshal said.
The Archivist slid the mirror back in the box and closed the lid like he was putting a bug back where it couldn't crawl. "We'll place a watcher outside your door," he said to Teren. "He will not speak to you. He will not ask you anything. He will only count."
"Count what?" Teren asked.
"How often the iron breathes," the Archivist said. He nodded to the Marshal and left as if he hadn't just said something that would keep a person awake.
The door shut.
Brann blew out a breath. "I hate slate coats."
"They're useful," the Marshal said. "Like sharp wire."
"They cut people," Brann said.
"Only if you lean on them," she said.
Neris refreshed the cold cloth. "Sleep. Short. I'll wake you in an hour."
Teren lay back. He didn't close his eyes at first. He watched the crack in the plaster and counted breath. Four in. Four out. Rain on tin. Rope through a pulley. Apples in late summer.
The iron kept time.
He fell asleep anyway.
—
He woke with cold in his throat.
Not outside. Inside.
The room was dark except for a thin square of moon on the wall. The collar was heavy and still. The cold came from the idea of the iron more than the iron itself. A whisper pressed against his teeth.
Enter.
He didn't speak. He sat up slow. The bed creaked. Neris lifted her head from the chair where she'd been pretending not to sleep. Brann's shadow moved at the door. The Marshal wasn't in the room. She didn't need to be for people to behave.
Neris stood and put a hand in the air near his throat, not touching. "Now?"
"Now," he said.
The cold eased a fraction. The whisper didn't.
Enter.
Another voice answered it, not from the iron, not from the room. From the door.
Two soft knocks. Then the bolt slid back.
The Marshal stepped in, face unreadable. "Up," she said. "All three of you."
"What is it?" Brann asked.
"News," she said. "Word leaked. The city's awake."
"About the collar?" Neris asked.
"About the door in the Quiet Room," the Marshal said. "Someone painted a ring on the Office gates. Seven strokes around a circle."
"One missing?" Teren asked.
"One missing," she said. "And a line under it in red."
"What did it say?" Serin asked from the hallway, because of course he was there, leaning in like gossip was a job. The gold at his throat had faded to a memory, but he still glowed like he owned light.
The Marshal answered without looking at him.
"It said: FIRST DEBT DUE."
The iron pulsed once against Teren's scar, soft as a yes.
Enter.
Archivist's Note, filed later:
The first debt is always the cheapest. Almost no one pays it.
The letters burned behind Teren's eyes even after the doors slammed and the roar of the Hall fell away. The corridor was all stone and breath. His. Brann's. Neris's. No one else's.
The collar shifted again, cold iron rubbing his scar like it wanted to fit better. It kept a steady hum that didn't match his heartbeat. Too calm. Too sure.
"Still breathing?" Brann asked. Big hands. Broad shoulders. Calm brown eyes that didn't flinch.
"Yeah," Teren said. "Air feels thin."
"Air's fine," Neris said, moving at his side. Black braid. Quick hands. Pale green eyes that cut through torch smoke. Her healer's satchel clicked softly with glass. "You're noticing the room. It's built to listen."
They turned the corner.
Two Crown Office guards waited by a thick door of oak strapped with iron. Armor scarred, not shiny. The older one—a woman with steel-gray hair cut short and eyes like cold glass—took him in at a glance. She stopped on the collar. Didn't blink.
"That new?" she asked.
"An hour," Teren said.
"Ugly," she said. "Inside."
The younger guard shoved the bolt. The door groaned open. Cold slid out—clean, sharp, deliberate.
Serin Haldrin arrived as if the hall had been waiting for him. Golden hair cut short, uniform stiff and perfect. A thin ring of gold still glowed at his throat from the trial, like a pet coin of light that refused to leave him.
"Quiet Room," he said, mouth tilted. "Good. Maybe Vale learns to whisper."
"Maybe you learn to listen," Brann said without looking at him.
Serin's smile didn't move.
The older guard—the Marshal—lifted her chin at the door. "No vows inside. No blades. No talking unless you have to. You"—she pointed at Teren—"don't touch that thing unless you want to find out how much of your throat it still owns."
Teren nodded once. "Understood."
He stepped through first.
The Quiet Room was white stone and straight lines. No windows. No carvings. No circles. Thin grooves ran across the floor and met at a sharp center. The silence pressed on the skin like cold cloth. The walls hummed low, a sound you felt in the teeth more than heard with ears.
The door sealed. The hum thickened.
The collar answered.
Neris set her satchel on a bare shelf. "Stand in the center. Hands at your sides. If it pulls, you plant your feet. If it whispers, you don't answer. Let the room do its work."
Teren walked to the meeting point of the lines. The iron settled against his scar. It was heavy without being weight. He could taste metal—penny, nail, blood—at the back of his tongue.
Brann posted just off Teren's left shoulder. Not touching. There if needed. The Marshal took the right wall, sword unbelted and set aside per rules, but somehow still armed. Serin stayed near the door, gold light painting a neat circle on the floor that refused to touch the room's grooves.
"Don't talk," the Marshal said. "Let it read."
The hum deepened.
Something in the walls answered the collar in a voice that wasn't a voice.
Balance. Mirror. Silence. Blood.
Teren kept his jaw set. He thought of rain hitting a barn roof. That old summer sound. He thought of rope sliding through a pulley. He thought of nothing.
The collar cooled. Then it warmed. Not heat—memory of heat. The scar twitched. His breath wanted to speed. He didn't let it.
The thin lines under his boots did not glow. The air did. Dust settled flat to the grooves, as if the room liked clean lines and hated noise.
Neris spoke softly, eyes never leaving his throat. "Count four in. Four out."
He did. In. Out. Again. The hum steadied with him.
The room leaned toward the far wall.
Frost traced a thin ring where there had been nothing.
Serin drew in a breath. "A gate."
"Shut it," the Marshal said without looking at him.
The ring brightened. Cold bled into the room and didn't fog the air; it sharpened it. The collar hummed back, eager now. Like a dog hearing its master's boots.
A whisper pressed under Teren's skin.
Enter.
He didn't move.
The ring formed a second ring inside the first. Then a third. Not circles. Crowns. Broken. One spoke missing.
Neris swore under her breath. Not a big word. A small one that meant not here and not yet.
Brann braced his stance the way farm boys do before a heavy lift. "Tell me when to pull him."
"You won't be able to," the Marshal said. Calm. Certain. "So don't try unless I say."
The ring thinned to a silver hair. A palm print bloomed in frost at its center. Not a hand. A negative—cold where a hand should be. Long fingers. Narrow wrist. A scar across the palm like a line of ash.
The collar pulsed.
Teren heard the word again. Vessel.
"No," Neris said, voice level. Not to Teren. To the room. "He isn't an open jar."
The palm print turned. Slowly. Twice. Then stopped. A sigil etched itself beside it—seven short strokes around a circle. One stroke missing.
Serin's gold light thinned. "First Fragment," he said. "Crownwork."
"Hold your voice," the Marshal said.
The collar squeezed. Not choking. Testing.
It wanted a vow.
Teren felt it—words pushing behind his teeth like a mouth he didn't own.
Say you accept the chain.
He kept his lips closed.
Say you belong.
No.
His breath stuttered. He fixed his eyes on the lines. Straight. Clean. Real. He wasn't a jar. He wasn't a crown. He was a boy with a scar and a bad name and two friends who wouldn't move.
Neris stepped closer, hands up, not touching. "Anchor words," she said, low. "Pick three pieces of your life that aren't this room. Speak them."
Teren forced air through his teeth. "Rain on tin. Rope through a pulley. The smell of apples in late summer."
The collar's squeeze eased a finger's width.
Serin's voice came gentle and sharp. "Try Haldrin next," he said. "See if it loosens more."
"Talk again," the Marshal said, still not looking at him, "and I put you outside."
Serin shut up. For once.
The frost palm pressed outward. The wall didn't change. The room did. The hum flipped from low to high. The rings blurred, then snapped clear again. The collar answered with a quick, eager shake that only Teren felt.
Open, the not-voice pressed.
Teren stared at the palm print and thought about saying yes. Not because he wanted to. Because it would be easy. The collar wanted yes like fire wants air.
He said: "No."
The hum dropped like a stone.
The frost rings shivered. The palm wavered and smeared. The sigil held. The room breathed out.
Neris's shoulders loosened a fraction. Brann's jaw unclenched. The Marshal's eyes narrowed, which was her version of good.
Serin let out a breath he must've been holding and tried to make it sound like a laugh. "If he says yes once—"
"He didn't," Neris said. "We hold to that."
The room didn't like it.
Cold pulled in hard, then snapped back. The frost rings thinned to hairlines, then brightened, then fractured like ice stepped on in winter. The palm print folded in on itself and vanished. The sigil stayed a heartbeat longer.
Teren's collar burned once, sharp, like a pin pressed inside the iron and let go.
A mark settled on the inside of his skin.
He gagged. Nothing came up. The taste of iron flooded his mouth and then faded.
The hum faded with it.
Silence. Real silence. No room-noise. No iron-noise. Just breath and the quiet scrape of the Marshal picking up her sword again out of habit and putting it back down because rules were rules.
Neris gave the room a long look, the kind healers give a wound they don't trust. Then she stepped to Teren and checked his pulse without touching the collar. "Still you?"
"Still me," he said. He meant it. He hoped it stayed true.
Brann tilted his head at the wall. "What did it want?"
"An open jar," Neris said.
"A door," Serin said.
"A mistake," the Marshal said.
Teren looked at the white stone where the frost had been. Nothing showed. If he hadn't felt it, he'd think he imagined the whole thing.
He hadn't.
The iron against his throat pulsed once, very soft, like it had learned a new word and was rolling it around for flavor.
The Marshal knocked twice on the door. The younger guard swung it open. Warmer air slid in and broke the chill.
"We're done," she said. "He needs food and a bed and no one asking him to swear anything. If anyone in this building says 'oath' within ten feet of him, I want their name."
"Understood," the younger guard said.
Serin didn't move. He looked at Teren like a problem he wanted to study and also break. "The Hall won't keep this quiet," he said. "By dusk the city will say a crown has found a throat."
"By dusk," the Marshal said, "the city can say what it likes. We'll be busy doing our jobs."
Brann put his cloak back tighter around Teren's shoulders. "Walk," he said, not unkind.
They walked.
The corridor lamps threw long, thin bars of light. Footsteps. Breath. No other sounds. The Hall's distant noise was a memory now. The collar had cooled. It still weighed the same. It always would.
At the Office dormitory level, the younger guard led them into a small room with a narrow bed, a table, a basin, a window that looked at another wall. Plain. Clean. A place to be left alone.
The guard hovered, unsure. "Food?"
"Bread. Soup. Water," Neris said. "No wine. No sweets. No stimulants. And a cloth soaked in cold well water."
The guard nodded and left quick.
Brann checked the corners like a man who trusted rooms only after he'd touched them. He found nothing worth noting and relaxed a notch. "I'll sit outside the door," he said. "Shout if the iron sings."
"It won't," Neris said, though she didn't sound sure. She set the satchel on the table. "Don't sleep yet," she told Teren. "Lie down. Breathe. If it pushes again, you sit up. You don't let it set the pace."
"What if it wakes me?" Teren asked.
"I'll wake you back," she said.
He almost smiled. "Good trade."
Serin lingered in the doorway, leaning on the frame like this was his home and they were visitors. "You should be in one of the upper cells," he said. "Stone older than the Hall. Better lines. Safer."
"Safer for who?" Brann asked.
Serin's eyes flicked to the collar. "Us."
"Close the door, Haldrin," the Marshal said, voice level.
Serin pushed off the frame. He measured Teren one more time, trying to see the shape of the problem. "Enjoy your soup," he said mildly. "You'll be busy when the city starts knocking."
He shut the door.
Silence returned. Not Room silence. Dorm silence. Human. Ears could live with it.
The food came. Bread warm from a downstairs oven. Thin soup that tasted better than it looked. Water cold enough to bite the teeth. Teren ate slow because the collar made fast eating feel wrong. Neris sat at the table and watched his throat without being weird about it. Brann sat on the floor by the door like a wall you could talk to.
"Thank you," Teren said when the bowl was empty.
Neris nodded once. "Don't thank yet."
He set the bowl down. The iron hummed once, soft, like a cat asleep.
He stared at the ceiling. White plaster. One crack. The kind of detail that helps a brain not do something stupid.
"Why me?" he asked. He didn't mean why a collar. He meant why this collar.
Neris folded a cloth and set it against the iron, careful not to press. "It didn't pick you because you're lucky," she said. "It picked you because you're stubborn."
"That's your healer opinion?" he asked.
"That's my girl-from-a-house-that-likes-to-name-tools opinion," she said.
Brann huffed a small laugh. "Stubborn beats pretty."
"Tell that to Haldrin," Teren said.
"I do," Brann said. "He doesn't hear it."
A knock came at the door. Two raps. The pattern the Office used for not an emergency, but I won't wait long.
The Marshal walked in without waiting. "You have a visitor," she said.
"Already?" Neris asked.
"City runs on fast mouths," the Marshal said. She stepped aside.
An Archivist entered. Slate coat. Ink-stained fingers. Thin face. Eyes like someone who liked numbers and didn't care if numbers liked them back. He carried a flat box of black wood and a ledger.
"Permission to observe," he said, not really asking.
"No vows," the Marshal said. "No questions worded like vows. No language games."
"I'm very boring," the Archivist said. He set the box on the table and opened it. Inside lay a thin square of mirror, cloudy as breath on glass. "We log anomalies. Today produced several."
"Start with the easy one," Brann said. "Does the collar kill him if he sneezes?"
"No," the Archivist said. "Probably." He slid the mirror onto the table and angled it toward Teren's throat. "Hold still."
Light moved across the surface. Not gold like Serin's. Gray. The color of iron dust in water.
Words formed and un-formed on the mirror like frost catching and melting. The Archivist watched, head tilted, as if listening to a bird decide on a song.
"Report," he said, almost to himself. "Mark: torc response to Quiet Room lines. Mark: first refusal recorded. Mark: imprint formed—ah."
"Ah what?" the Marshal asked.
He tapped the glass. A sigil hung there for a heartbeat: seven strokes around a circle. One missing. It flared and faded.
"Fragment map," the Archivist said. "It will try again. Next time it won't ask so politely."
Teren looked at the mirror and saw his own throat, the iron tight and calm. He felt fine. He didn't trust fine.
"How many fragments?" Brann asked.
"Seven," the Archivist said. "There were eight. One was eaten."
"By what?" Neris asked.
The Archivist looked up for the first time and met Teren's eyes. "By time," he said. "Or by someone who thinks they can eat time."
No one spoke for a beat.
Then the mirror fogged, fast, like breath on winter glass. Letters scraped themselves into the fog from the inside.
SO WITNESSED.
The iron went cold-hot against Teren's skin. Not pain. Attention.
Neris stood. "That's enough observation."
"Agreed," the Marshal said.
The Archivist slid the mirror back in the box and closed the lid like he was putting a bug back where it couldn't crawl. "We'll place a watcher outside your door," he said to Teren. "He will not speak to you. He will not ask you anything. He will only count."
"Count what?" Teren asked.
"How often the iron breathes," the Archivist said. He nodded to the Marshal and left as if he hadn't just said something that would keep a person awake.
The door shut.
Brann blew out a breath. "I hate slate coats."
"They're useful," the Marshal said. "Like sharp wire."
"They cut people," Brann said.
"Only if you lean on them," she said.
Neris refreshed the cold cloth. "Sleep. Short. I'll wake you in an hour."
Teren lay back. He didn't close his eyes at first. He watched the crack in the plaster and counted breath. Four in. Four out. Rain on tin. Rope through a pulley. Apples in late summer.
The iron kept time.
He fell asleep anyway.
—
He woke with cold in his throat.
Not outside. Inside.
The room was dark except for a thin square of moon on the wall. The collar was heavy and still. The cold came from the idea of the iron more than the iron itself. A whisper pressed against his teeth.
Enter.
He didn't speak. He sat up slow. The bed creaked. Neris lifted her head from the chair where she'd been pretending not to sleep. Brann's shadow moved at the door. The Marshal wasn't in the room. She didn't need to be for people to behave.
Neris stood and put a hand in the air near his throat, not touching. "Now?"
"Now," he said.
The cold eased a fraction. The whisper didn't.
Enter.
Another voice answered it, not from the iron, not from the room. From the door.
Two soft knocks. Then the bolt slid back.
The Marshal stepped in, face unreadable. "Up," she said. "All three of you."
"What is it?" Brann asked.
"News," she said. "Word leaked. The city's awake."
"About the collar?" Neris asked.
"About the door in the Quiet Room," the Marshal said. "Someone painted a ring on the Office gates. Seven strokes around a circle."
"One missing?" Teren asked.
"One missing," she said. "And a line under it in red."
"What did it say?" Serin asked from the hallway, because of course he was there, leaning in like gossip was a job. The gold at his throat had faded to a memory, but he still glowed like he owned light.
The Marshal answered without looking at him.
"It said: FIRST DEBT DUE."
The iron pulsed once against Teren's scar, soft as a yes.
His scar twitched. The torc hummed in reply, shaping the word in his head. "Enter".
Archivist's Note, filed later:
The first debt is always the cheapest. Almost no one pays it…