Neris made him drink water until the cup shook less in his hand. "Slow," she said. "If you go fast, it thinks you're agreeing."
"It already thinks that," Teren said.
Brann sat on the floor by the door like a wall with ears. "It doesn't get a vote."
The iron warmed under Teren's fingers. The torc vibrated once, pleased with itself.
Blood knows its king. Wear it.
"Not a king," Teren muttered.
"Good," the Marshal said from the doorway. "We don't need another."
Her eyes stayed on his throat like a blade held flat. "Two riots, one burned tea house, three nobles trying to pledge their houses to the Office because their records are dust. You're coming with me. You'll stand there and you won't swear a thing."
"I can do that," Teren said.
"Prove it," she said, and turned.
They moved through gray morning. The city felt bruised. The air carried a sweet-sour tang of old blood and street incense. People watched from windows, eyes flat, like they were waiting to see who won—iron or light or the hunger under both.
At the river bridge, a line of children sat on the curb, each with a string tied around one wrist. An old woman held the far end like she could keep them from floating away.
"We're counting what won't stay," she told the Marshal. "Some keep forgetting home."
"How long since they ate?" Neris asked.
"Two hours," the woman said. "Or yesterday. Or last year."
The torc pressed cool against Teren's scar.
Pick one. Bind it. They're drifting.
He squatted so his eyes were level with the smallest boy. "What's your name?"
The boy blinked. "Which one?"
"Your loud one," Teren said. "The one your friends shout when you run too fast."
"Pell," he said after a beat.
"Who ties your shoes?" Teren asked.
"My sister," Pell said, sure of that.
"Then we start there," Teren said. "Neris?"
Neris knelt, quick hands gentle. "Pell. Your wrist. Tie gets a knot. Sister says the knot lives here." She tapped the center of his palm. "Does that sound right?"
Pell nodded hard. "She ties mean."
"Good," Neris said. "Mean knots keep."
The torc purred.
Tie. Mine.
Teren flexed his fingers and kept them off the string. "Not yours," he breathed.
The old woman sagged with relief she didn't trust. "Bless you," she said to anyone who would hold a word steady.
The Marshal didn't soften. "Done here," she said. "Merrow hospice next."
They found the hospice with the doors off their hinges. Inside, beds packed tight. People sat on pallets with their hands over their mouths like they were holding their names in. A nurse guided them with her chin; she didn't let go of the boy she carried.
"This one lost everyone," she said. "Twice in one hour."
The torc pressed harder.
Easy. Keep him. Keep them all.
"No," Teren said aloud.
The boy's eyes flicked to him. "No?"
"You're not mine," Teren said. "You don't belong to iron." He pointed at the nurse. "That one's voice handed you bread. That smell is her kitchen." He pointed at the bed. "That blanket is scratchy. That scratch is home."
The boy looked down. His fingers pinched the blanket. He didn't cry. He didn't speak. His chest eased.
Neris exhaled like she'd been waiting for him to pick the right nouns. "Next," she said, moving.
They worked room to room. Names said aloud. Shoes swapped to start fights that led to laughter. Wedding rings knotted into cloth because skin lies to itself when it's scared. The torc pulsed at every save, greedy either way—broken or mended, it fed.
Brann stayed in the doorways like a hinge. He didn't speak much. He watched. He kept doors from closing when people wanted to shut out help.
They stepped back into the street at noon with dust on their boots and ache under the ribs. The city kept breathing because people kept saying each other's names.
A herald's horn cut the noise.
"Council summons," the runner panted to the Marshal. "Emergency vote."
"Of course it is," the Marshal said. "Move."
The Crown Office chamber was full before they reached the benches. Nobles sat with their shoulders high and their coats straighter than their spines. Guild masters crowded the back. Street leaders in plain shirts lined the walls, arms folded, eyes ready to be angry.
Serin stood on the lower step, not the top. Good instinct—close enough to seem with them, not above them. His vowflame burned warm and clean. When he raised a hand, the light folded like a trained dog.
"We need structure," a merchant barked. "If blood records fail, trade fails."
"We need an adoption edict," a noblewoman snapped. "If a child has no house, the city takes them."
"We need a new clerkship," someone shouted. "Light-led, not ink-led."
"We need to stop listening to that thing," another said, pointing at Teren's throat.
The torc warmed, amused.
Tell them yes. Tell them no. They will believe either if you don't blink.
Teren blinked on purpose.
The Marshal lifted her chin. "Order. Say your piece. Then shut up."
Serin's voice cut through without trying. "Lines are failing," he said. "We can keep pretending paper holds blood, or we can move to vows that breathe. We adopt with light. Witness with light. The city holds the child, not a name that burned away."
Murmurs like wind before rain. Heads tilted. People wanted something to hold that did not smear like ink.
Neris's mouth dipped. She did not like how fast the room leaned.
Brann folded his arms. He looked like a barn someone had tried and failed to tip.
Serin looked past the crowd to Teren. "Stand with me," he said. "Witness the first."
"No," Teren said.
A ripple. Serin smiled like he'd expected the answer and that made it even better. "Then don't stand in the way."
The Marshal's eyes said keep your mouth if you want to keep your head, but she didn't speak.
They followed the crowd to the Office steps. The square stretched tight as a drum.
A line of orphans waited with tags pinned to their collars. A girl with scabbed knees. Two boys who tried to look like they didn't care. A baby who slept through it because babies do.
Serin raised his hand. His vowflame bent into a small ring of light that floated above his palm. "Witness," he said to the crowd. "Say you see."
People said it because they wanted to.
"Witness," Serin said again, and pressed the light ring to the scabbed-knee girl's tag. Gold bled into the paper. The girl flinched and then shivered like something warm had found her spine. The light left a clean brand.
The torc tightened.
He binds. I can swallow it.
"Don't," Neris said under her breath, eyes on his throat.
"I'm not," Teren said.
Another child. Another ring. The square started to cry and clap and ask the light to touch them too.
Teren watched the gold threads drift from each mark, fine as hair, tugging back toward Serin's flame. Not chains. Not yet. Strings.
Brann leaned close. "You see that?"
"I see," Teren said.
"You going to stop it?" Brann asked.
The iron hummed, eager.
Say the word. Eat.
"No," Teren whispered, not to Brann. "Not like that."
A slate coat elbowed through the bodies, face white, breath gone. "Office," he gasped at the Marshal. "Catacombs. Bloodwrights. They're pulling house-marks right out of the wall."
"You three," the Marshal said. "With me. Haldrin—"
"I'm very busy," Serin said without turning.
"Then stay busy," the Marshal said, and shoved into the alley that led down.
The catacombs breathed damp and old. Water ticked somewhere. The floor sloped to a door banded in iron and smeared with red handprints.
Inside, candles ringed a pit. Men and women in red sashes stood with their hands over bowls. The bowls steamed like soup. A figure in a skin-tight mask—the kind surgeons wore when they didn't want to breathe on wounds—held a hooked rod over a slab. Every pull drew a line of dark out of the stone and into the bowl.
"Stop," the Marshal said.
The masked figure didn't stop. "You can jail me," he said in a voice softened by cloth. "But the city will pay anyway. We're only collecting early."
Neris's chin lifted. "Bloodwright," she said flat.
"Magister," he corrected, and bowed. He didn't lower the rod.
Teren felt threads everywhere. The walls sang with names. The iron on his throat warmed, eager.
Take. Keep. Own.
"No," Teren said.
The bloodwright lifted the rod and flicked it. A glob of dark slid into the bowl and steamed into nothing. Someone above would forget a son. Someone else would be un-married and not know why their ring finger felt too light.
Brann moved like a storm. He knocked the closest bowl across the floor. It shattered. The fumes made his eyes water.
Knives flashed. Red sashes stepped in, sharp and trained. Brann caught one wrist and rolled a man to the ground without permission. Neris slid past a blade and pressed two fingers to a woman's neck. The woman's eyes rolled back; she folded like cloth.
The bloodwright laughed, surprised and pleased. "Ah," he said. "Real work."
The torc surged and showed Teren the threads in the room. Red knots. Gold hairs drifting like spores stuck to old cobweb. Black cords sunk into stone.
Pull. Cut. Claim.
Teren planted his hands on the slab. "No claim," he said, eyes on the threads. "No crown."
The iron pressed harder like a hand on his head.
Mine. Always mine.
"Witness," Teren said.
The word hit the room like a bell.
The threads trembled. The black cords hesitated.
"Say it," Teren told the Marshal without looking up.
"Witness," the Marshal said, voice flat as a blade. "By the Office."
"Say it," Teren told Neris.
"Witness," she said, soft and sharp. "By the hand that heals."
"Say it," he told Brann.
"Witness," Brann rumbled. "By the weight I carry."
The cords loosened. The red knots frayed without breaking. The gold hairs recoiled like they'd touched fire.
The bloodwright hissed. "You think you can unwrite a rite with street talk?"
"No," Teren said. "I think the room only obeys power, and we're using the right kind."
He didn't pull. He pointed. Threads shifted anyway, not to him, but to where the witness voices pushed.
The iron vibrated, annoyed and hungry.
If you won't eat, I will starve you of sweetness until you beg.
"Try," Teren whispered. "See if I don't throw you in the river."
The bloodwright snapped his rod toward Teren's throat. A hook of thin red shot through the air.
The torc laughed in his bones and drank it before it landed.
For a breath, the room went silent. Even the water stopped ticking.
The red burned inside the iron and went black. The iron liked it too much.
Neris's hand found Teren's shoulder. "Easy."
"I didn't—" he started.
"I know," she said.
The bloodwright froze, eyes bright through the mask. "Oh," he said, delighted. "You eat. That's new."
Brann threw him across the slab. He hit hard, breath gone.
The red sashes faltered when their magister dropped. The Marshal stepped forward and put her boot on his wrist. "You're done," she said.
The rods went down. A few fled. Most didn't make it to the door. Brann didn't hit anyone he didn't have to. Neris didn't drop anyone she didn't have to. The room stopped trying to bleed.
On the far wall, a stone square clouded like a mirror in winter. Letters carved themselves from the fog, sharp and thin.
HOST REJECTS SOVEREIGN CLAIM. VARIANCE RECORDED.
Neris read it under her breath and looked at Teren. "You're off-script."
"Good," the Marshal said. "Scripts get people killed."
Brann glanced at the bloodwright. "Who wrote your script?"
The man wheezed through the mask and smiled with his eyes. "Everyone who wants a crown. Everyone who likes easy math. Blood in, power out."
The Marshal tightened her boot. His smile didn't change, which told Teren the man liked pain more than was useful.
"Take him," the Marshal said to the guards flooding the doorway. "Take the bowls. Burn the rags. Seal the lower doors. If any of you bring a souvenir home, I'll hang you with it."
They climbed into air that tasted like air again. The square above had half-emptied. The children were gone. The string on the curb lay coiled like a shed snake skin.
Serin stood where the string ended. The scabbed-knee girl stood beside him, a fresh gold brand on her tag. Two more children clutched his coat. Gold threads drifted from each mark, thin and bright, tracing back to his throat.
He looked at Teren and smiled without teeth. "You went below and brought back a trick."
"I brought back a decision," Teren said.
Serin stepped closer. The air between them tightened like cloth pulled.
"Show me," Serin said. "Show me what your iron does when it's hungry."
The torc slid cold under Teren's skin.
Take his light. Learn it. Eat.
"No," Teren said.
Serin tilted his head. "You will."
The wind shifted. One of the gold hairs tugged loose from the girl's brand—just a breath of thread—and drifted toward Teren like dust.
The torc moved on instinct. It plucked the thread out of the air with a sound too small for anyone but bone to hear.
Light hit iron.
Gold hissed. The iron rang inside Teren's teeth, pleased and sharp. A smell like hot metal and burnt honey sliced the space between them.
Serin's eyes widened. For a beat his flame stuttered.
"What did you do?" he asked, voice quiet and dangerous, like he was asking the light if it had betrayed him.
"I didn't," Teren said, breathing hard. "It did."
The scabbed-knee girl shifted closer to Serin like a bird to a warm hand. The gold threads tugged tight again, as if nothing had happened. But Serin's eyes didn't leave the torc.
Neris slid between them without making it look like she had. "We're done here," she told the air.
The Marshal's voice carried from the steps. "Inside. All of you. We're not fighting in the square."
Brann's shoulder touched Teren's like a door closing gently. "Walk," he said.
They walked.
The Office corridor smelled like paper and old wood and a little like fear.
In the Quiet Room threshold, the mirror fogged and scrawled three fast lines:
IRON SAMPLED LIGHT.
COMPATIBILITY: UNKNOWN.
ESCALATION: LIKELY.
Teren didn't say anything. Neris didn't either. Brann's jaw worked once, the way a man chews a bad idea before he spits it.
The Marshal stared at the letters until they faded. "Fine," she said. "We plan like everything will go wrong, and if it doesn't, we're pleased."
She looked at Teren's throat one more time. "You hold that thing on a leash," she said. "Or we cut it. I don't care if it takes the neck with it."
"I know," Teren said.
He felt the torc listening, hungry and happy the way a storm is happy when it finds a valley to live in.
Take. Learn. Eat.
He pressed his palm flat over the iron until it hurt. "No," he said, and meant it with his teeth.
In the stairwell, a bell rang in the north ward. Not alarm. Not sermon. The steady count the Office used when the city had to do one thing at the same time.
"Anchors," the Marshal said. "We're ordering them every hour until people remember how to stand."
Teren blew out a breath. "Rain," he said softly, like he was practicing for a choir. "Rope. Apples."
Neris's voice joined. "Stitch. Knot. Keep."
Brann's voice followed. "Lift. Hold. Stay."
The stone felt less loud with those words in it. The torc still hummed, but it didn't sing.
They reached the dorm level. The door guard nodded, counting like the Archivists had asked. He didn't speak. He didn't have to.
Inside the small room, Teren sat on the narrow bed and let the iron cool against his skin. He stared at the crack in the plaster he'd been using as a place to put his eyes when he didn't want to put them on anything else.
Neris set her satchel on the table. "You're off-script," she said again, but this time there was a smile in the words.
"Good," he said.
Brann leaned in the doorway. "You eat gold now?"
"I don't," Teren said.