Night had thinned but not lifted. The cave still held the cool breath of stone and water. The broken shell on the altar lay in pale shards around Mira's body. Light no longer leaked from her skin in waves, but it did not leave. It stayed close to her like a second pulse. When she inhaled, the glow sharpened; when she exhaled, it softened. The air inside the chamber carried a clean mineral taste, and under it the faint sweetness of the nectar that had pushed her too fast.
Selina checked Mira's forehead with the back of her hand, then her pulse, then the small lines of strain at the corners of her mouth. Kael watched the cave mouth without blinking, his attention stretched out through the wards and the trees and the dark slope below. He was still, but the stillness had a taut edge. The mountain felt it. The mountain was starting to answer.
"Tell me what you hear," Selina said in a low voice. She set a warmed cloth across Mira's eyes to dampen the ache that came with the new light inside her.
Mira swallowed. Her throat was dry. "Water in the rock. Not loud. A drop, then a long wait." She listened again. "Two birds. One is close. One is far. The far one sounds wrong. Like it is confused." She paused. "And… people. Not here. Below. A lot of them. Boots on stone. Metal. Engines."
Kael spoke without turning. "Direction?"
"South slope," Mira said. "And the east road. The east road has trucks. The south slope has people on foot." She pressed her fingers into the cloth. "There is a smell too. Smoke from oil, not wood. And something sharp. Like old blood. I do not like it."
Selina shifted to Mira's left and steadied the cloth as if she could hold the light back for a few minutes longer. "You are not imagining it. Your hearing is wider now. It will feel crowded. We will filter it. For now, keep the cloth. Keep your breath even."
Mira nodded once. "My chest feels heavy. Not pain. Just heavy."
"It will pass," Selina said. "Drink."
She held a cup to Mira's lips. Not the nectar. Plain water. Mira took three small sips and stopped on her own, learning the new limit of her stomach after the shell and the light.
Kael's phone buzzed once. He glanced at it, then slid it into his pocket without answering. "Scouts," he said. "Two groups. One in red cloaks with black masks. The other in dark tactical gear. The red ones look like they own the ground. The guards hang back."
"Red Veil and Arthur's men together," Selina concluded.
"They do not trust each other," Kael said. "But they are moving in the same direction."
Mira breathed slowly. The cloth helped, but the world kept trying to widen. She could feel the cold air around Kael's coat. She could feel the slight vibration of Selina's voice through the stone even when Selina did not speak. A headache sat behind her brow like a small fist that opened and closed. The light under her skin answered it with a slow steady push that warmed but did not calm.
"How many?" Selina asked.
Kael shut his eyes for a second and reached out through the wards he had anchored when they brought Mira into the mountain. The sigils were old and clean; the lines wanted to work. They flared when he pushed his awareness down the slope. "A vanguard of twenty. Two handlers with leashes. Something heavy behind them. The main groups are farther back. One group is chanting. The other is on radio."
"What is on the leashes?" Selina asked.
He opened his eyes. "Not dogs." A short pause. "Things that eat dogs."
Mira gripped the edge of the altar. "I can stand."
"You cannot," Selina said, calm and firm. "You try and you will fall. We will carry you when we move."
Mira's mouth tightened. "I do not want to be carried."
Selina did not change tone. "You do not have to like it. You have to survive it."
Kael finally looked away from the cave mouth and met Mira's blind focus. "We will not drop you," he said. "I know you do not trust that yet. You will."
Mira was silent a moment. "I hear another engine," she said. "Fast. On the east road. One car. The tires are wrong for this road. The driver does not know the ground. They keep braking."
Selina and Kael traded a look. Kael moved to the back of the cave, pressed his palm to a carved recess, and called up a thin ribbon of light along the ward-lines. The patterns brightened—straight strokes and clean curves, the language of a clan that had not forgotten its own name.
The light brushed Mira's ankle and she flinched. Not from pain. From recognition.
"Do not try to hold it," Selina said. "It will only push back."
"I know this place," Mira said quietly. "I do not know the words, but I know it."
"You will remember more later," Selina replied. "Right now we need to decide where to place you if the first line breaks."
"It will not break," Kael said. It was not a boast. It was a calculation.
The phone on the ground near the packs lit. A name flashed. Nora.
Selina picked it up and answered without moving away from Mira. "Yes."
Nora's voice came quick and low. "Listen to me. You do not have time to argue. The cult is moving. They pulled men from three cells. They brought the things with the bone plates. They brought the horns. They have Arthur's guards in front so they can blame them if it goes wrong." She took a sharp breath. "You have to move the girl now."
Selina's tone stayed level. "Where are you, Nora?"
"In my car on the east road," Nora said. "I had to stop because there is a truck across the lane. I am turning around. I will go to the old quarry and cut through the chain. That gets me to the north trail. I can bring supplies. But I will not reach you before they do."
"Why are you calling us," Selina asked, "instead of them?"
A beat of silence. When Nora spoke again her voice was hard. "Because I am not letting them take a child to a slaughter. I am not asking you to trust me. I am telling you I am done watching that man buy knives and wrap them as gifts. I will not stand in that room again."
Selina glanced at Kael. He gave a small nod. He was already moving—packs open, straps checked, two blankets rolled tight, the light spear in his hand loosening with practice.
"How many minutes?" Selina asked.
"Twenty for the vanguard," Nora said. "Fifty for the main force. They plan to circle. They think you will run down into the brush. Do not do that. Get higher. The red ones hate high ground when they cannot see the sky. They think the mountain will close on them."
"Send me a photo of the ridge above the quarry," Selina said. "Now."
A second later the phone chirped. Selina turned the screen and held it near Kael's face. He nodded once. "Usable," he said. "If we clear the loose scree."
"I will do it," Nora said. "I am hanging up now. I will keep the phone line open without speaking. If you hear the engine die, that means they reached me. If you hear wind only, I am on foot and moving."
"Nora," Selina said, and for the first time her voice shifted. It lost its edge and picked up a small weight. "If they catch you—"
"I know," Nora said. "I am not a fool. Do not wait for me. Move your girl. Make the choice you dragged her up here to make. And tell her I am sorry I helped him as long as I did."
The line stayed open. Selina set the phone on low volume on the pack so the microphone would keep sending. Wind noise hissed soft. A car engine rose, fell, then steadied.
Mira lay still a moment longer. Then, without speaking, she pulled the cloth from her eyes with both hands and lowered it to her chest. Her lashes were white now. Even in the weak cave light they looked pale against her skin. She did not open her eyes. The light inside made that impossible. But she turned her face toward Selina and away from the cave mouth as if to show she was not going to fight the carry.
"I will not walk," she said. "So you carry me."
"Thank you," Selina said simply.
Kael slid his arms under Mira with care that came from practice, not hesitation. He lifted her in one steady movement, adjusted her weight against his chest, and waited for the shock to hit his own muscles. It did not. The mana in the chamber had been feeding him since dawn. It did not return his old strength, but it woke the memory of it. He felt the first bright thread of it run through his forearms and up into his shoulders.
Mira's breath hitched when he stood. Not from fear. From the sudden change in the sound map around her. The cave moved. The stone lowered under her. The altar cooled to her right. A new heart beat near her ear. It was slow and heavy and regular.
"Tell me if my arm hurts you," Kael said.
"It does not," she said.
Selina slung two packs and checked the spear and the knife at her belt. She touched the ward-line with her palm and pushed a small command into it. The entrance narrowed by a foot. To anyone outside, the shadow of the rock would look unbroken unless they stood on the exact stone where Kael had carved the counter-mark last night.
"Go," Selina said.
They moved through the first passage, then the second bend, then the narrow place that required Kael to angle his shoulders. He did it without jarring her. Selina went ahead to kick small stones out of the path before his boots could slip. When they reached the outer shelf, the mountain opened. Cold air hit Mira's cheeks and she drew it in and held it because it tasted honest. Pine. Wet granite. A thread of smoke far below.
She lifted her head a little. "Wait."
Kael stopped.
"Voices," she said. "On the left flank. Not English. They are counting. They are organizing the dogs."
"Not dogs," Kael said.
"I know," she said. "I do not like the way they breathe."
Selina moved to the lip of the shelf, crouched, and peered through the thin veil of scrub. Red cloaks pricked the trees like fresh wounds. The handlers kept their creatures low. Their bodies were wrong—long backs, plated shoulders, broad muzzles split by an extra row of teeth. When they panted the air steamed. Two guards in dark body armor walked ahead, weapons up, scanning. The guards were tense. The red cloaks were not. The red cloaks walked like they were already stepping on someone.
Selina slid back. "We have one shot to lift above them before they cut across. The second path is loose. If we keep to the inner wall, we can make it."
"Do it," Kael said. He tightened his grip on Mira and let Selina lead.
They took the second path—a narrow switchback carved when the clan had cut the warding tunnels a lifetime ago. The mountain skin was broken by small shelves, each just wide enough for a foot and a half. The inner wall was solid. The outer drop was clean. There were no ropes. There had never been ropes. The clan had trained balance young.
Below them a shout went up. A handler had seen a scuffed stone fall. "There!" he yelled. "Above!"
The creatures pulled against their leashes and snarled. The sound came up through the trees like a metal rake against teeth.
"Faster," Selina said, and they moved faster without running. Running here meant dying here.
A radio crackled below. A voice came through, distorted by the trees but clear enough. Harland.
"Push them to the south face," he said. "They will look for brush. Do not let them find the high shelf. I want the girl alive. Repeat. Alive. If she is injured, you answer to me."
The handler laughed. "We answer to the Red, doctor. You answer to your purse."
"Do as I say," Harland snapped. "Arthur wants proof of life. The cult wants proof of use. You get me both and you get to live another week."
Selina's mouth flattened. She kept moving.
Mira turned her head toward the voice. "He is here."
"Below," Kael said. "With the mask men? Or with the guards?"
"With a radio," Mira said. "He is standing in a truck. He is talking like he owns the road."
The path tightened. Kael shifted his hands and felt the small shift in Mira's weight. She kept her breathing steady. He took the next rise with a long step and a push from his thigh. At the top of the switchback the rock widened for two meters before it narrowed again. A good place to adjust, a bad place to be seen.
"Wait," Selina said. She held up a hand. Her head tilted. "Listen."
All three of them heard it now. A car engine high on the north trail. Nora. Wind on the open mic. The rumble rose, then cut. A dull thump followed, like a bumper hitting a bollard. Nora swore. The sound was faint and clear under the wind.
"Talk to me," Selina said. She did not raise her voice. She did not have to. The phone's mic would carry it.
"Chain is up," Nora said, breath short. "Bolt cutters in the boot. I will—" She broke off. "There is a man at the top of the trail. He has the cult cloak. He is not moving. He is holding something."
"Do not engage," Selina said. "Reverse and leave."
"No," Nora said. "I will distract him. I will walk toward him and ask for directions like an idiot. He will see a woman alone. He will think this is easy. When he moves, I will step to the side and let him fall downslope. Then I will run."
"Nora—" Selina began.
"Do not argue," Nora said. "I owe you something for the years I looked away. Let me do this and do not make it mean less by trying to be noble on my behalf."
The wind roared. Feet on gravel. Nora's voice shifted as if her head turned. "Hello," she said, louder and clear, not for Selina now but for the man at the top of the trail. "Can you help me? I think I am lost."
A man's voice answered, bored and sure. "Turn around."
"I cannot," Nora said. "I am stuck. Please come closer and tell me which way to go. I am not good with maps."
Boots moved. A cloak swung. There was a scuffle, a grunt, then a long scrape of rock and dead brush sliding. The man swore and grabbed for a hold that was not there. Nora's breath came quick. "Go," she said, low and fierce into the phone. "Take the shelf. I will lead a few of them off. I will hide in the cut above the quarry. If I do not call in an hour, do not come for me. Do you hear me? You do not come for me."
"You are not bait," Selina said.
"I am not," Nora said. "I am a person who made mistakes. This is not penance. This is useful. Move."
Kael and Selina moved.
The shelf above the switchback climbed in short sharp steps that taxed even Kael's new-fed muscles. Mira did not fight the carry. She let the rhythm of his movement settle her inner noise. Every time his boot hit rock, her new senses tried to describe it. Dense. Dry. Cool. She let the words go and stayed with the count of his breath.
Below, the red cloaks spread and sent the creatures ahead. One of the guards fired a short burst into the air to make them hesitate. The handler laughed again. "Guns do not scare them," he said. "They like the noise."
A second voice came across the radio. Arthur. Tired. Angry. Frayed.
"Doctor," Arthur said, "if I do not get a photo of her face in the next hour, I will close the account and you can sell your lab one microscope at a time. Do you understand me?"
Harland's answer was almost too smooth. "Of course. The terrain is more complex than expected. The caretakers had help. But they cannot keep her in the open. She is weak. She will slow them. My men will catch up and we will extract her safely."
"Your men," Arthur said with contempt. "You do not have men. You rent them with my money."
"The cult has no interest in your money," Harland replied. "They will discard you as soon as they get what they want. Work with me and we both live to argue later."
Arthur snorted. "You are a thief. You are also the only one who told me the truth about the drug. You get one more hour."
The line clicked. Someone else took the channel. A voice low and even. Red Veil command.
"Doctor," the voice said, "you do not give orders here. If you speak out of turn again, we will take your tongue and staple it to a notice board as a lesson in silence."
Harland did not answer.
Selina led them across the last narrow run to the high shelf. The wind came harder now, funneled by the stone into a cold steady stream. She dropped to a knee and touched three small chiseled marks near the wall. Lines woke and slid into place like a net. She breathed out.
"Here," she said. "We hold here until the main group is too close to turn back. Then we go up again across the tooth ridge."
"Two minutes," Kael said. He set Mira down against the inner wall and braced her with his body so he blocked the wind. Her head rested against his collarbone. The contact kept her from drifting off into the light. She stayed where the sound was solid.
Selina pulled a folded scrap of cloth from her pocket and tied Mira's hair back at the nape to keep the fine white strands from whipping her face. She adjusted the edge of the blanket around her shoulders and tugged the lower fold over her knees. "You will shake," she said. "It is the air and the change. It does not mean you are failing."
"I know," Mira said. She lifted her right hand a little. It trembled. She let it.
A crackle on the phone. Nora again, breathless. "Two down. One left. He has a horn blade. I will not beat him. I will slow him. Move faster."
Selina's jaw worked. "Understood."
"Tell the girl something for me," Nora said, voice suddenly steady. "Tell her I knew she was kind the first time she spoke to me at the post box. I knew she would not last long around wolves. I should have done more sooner. I am sorry. That is all."
"I will tell her," Selina said.
"Do not lie to her about me," Nora added. "Do not make me gentle. Just tell her I stood my ground once. Now go."
The line went to wind.
Selina slid the phone into the inner pocket of her coat and buttoned it. She stood and looked over the lip. The first handlers had reached the base of the cliff below the shelf. They had their creatures pressed flat with signals only they knew. They were watching the rock, looking for shadow.
"Kael," she said.
He lifted Mira and stepped toward the narrow. The shelf's first meter sloped inward. After that the path ran straight like a ledge on the side of an old wall. The wind was worse here. It took heat from his cheekbones and pushed tears into the corners of his eyes that dried before they fell.
"Feet," he told Mira. "I am going to angle. You will feel the drop on your left. Do not move toward it."
"I will not," she said.
They made the crossing. The ledge ended in a safer pocket, a hollow like a shallow cave. From here they could move up to the tooth ridge. Selina came last. She left a small gift on the far edge—a brittle coil of warded thread that would snap if a boot hit it and drop a curtain of loose stone at shin height. Not enough to kill. Enough to take balance.
Below, the handlers began to climb. The first creature leaped and found purchase where the rock looked smooth. Its claws made a hard dry sound. It tried the air and tasted something that made it recoil. It shook its head and sneezed. One handler struck it with a short baton. It bared its teeth and obeyed.
Mira opened her eyes. She could not see the world in lines yet. She could see light. The stone hummed with it. The wards thrummed like a plucked wire. The creatures below had a different light—dull and oily and fast. The red cloaks were worse. They shone a flat dead red.
"Do not make eye contact," Selina said, not as a superstition but as a rule. "Even blind. Do not give them the axis."
"I will not," Mira said. She closed her eyes again. "But I can hear them thinking."
"What do you hear?" Kael asked.
"They are hungry," she said. "Not just for meat. For work. For orders. They want to please the voice that will praise them. It makes my teeth hurt."
"That is the handler," Selina said. "The praise is trained. Ignore it."
"I will try," Mira said.
A new sound rolled up the rock. Not engines. Not boots. A low chant like grinding stone. The red cloaks began to call. The words carried weight but not grace. The air did not like them.
Selina's head turned. "Do not let that in," she said. "It is designed to make you move before you think."
"I know," Mira said. She set her teeth.
Kael adjusted his stance and listened to the chant for the pattern and the breaks. He had been made to sit through rival sect rituals in an older life. He knew the trick tones and the low harmonics meant to numb the spine. He held the counter-pulse in his jaw and the base of his throat and let it run quiet so the wards could pick it up. The carved lines answered. The chant thinned.
Below, an argument broke out on the radios. Harland again, impatient. "Stop the nonsense," he said. "Just get up the slope. The girl is not a demon. She is a patient."
"Your patient bleeds light," a handler said. "We do not treat that with a stethoscope."
"Climb," the Red Veil command voice ordered. "Save your chatter for after."
Selina put her hand on Kael's shoulder and pressed twice. "Up," she said.
He moved again. The tooth ridge was a run of six jagged points. Between each tooth the wind caught and tried to lift. The view east opened without warning—the forest, the broken road, the scatter of lights from stalled vehicles, a line of red cloaks moving like a wound along the tree line. Kael did not look at the view. He looked at the stone under his boots and at Selina's back and at the next safe place for Mira's weight.
Halfway across, Mira's pulse rose and the wards answered. A thin white flare shot quivering along the carved lines like frost. The cave mouth below flashed and then went dark again. The red cloaks shouted. Several handlers stumbled. One creature lost its hold and slid, claws screeching, tail whipping. It hit its pack and took two men down the slope. The guard on the left fired without aiming and hit a tree.
Kael stiffened, felt the flare pass through his forearms, and rode it like a sudden gust. He did not ask Mira to stop breathing. He did not tell her to calm down. He just moved faster.
"Sorry," Mira whispered. "It did it by itself."
"You are not a fault," Kael said. "Do not apologize for the mountain answering you."
They made the last tooth and found a long narrow saddle that ran toward a darker band of rock. On the far side of that band, Selina knew, was the threshold that had not opened in centuries—the old gate to their clan's high plateau. They had felt it strain at dawn when the shell cracked. It had not opened then. It might open now.
Selina dropped to a knee and pressed her palm to the ground. The lines had been cut deep when they first carved the gate. They were cold to the touch now, but not dead. The pattern wanted power. There was power here. Not enough. Not yet.
"How far," Kael asked, not out of breath, but close.
"Three hundred meters," Selina said. "Then the band. Then the threshold."
"Behind us," Mira said. "They are faster now. The creatures found a run that they can use. Four are free of the leashes. The handlers cannot pull them back."
"Then we stop them here," Selina said.
She stood, pulled the light spear free, and set her left palm to the inner ridge to wake a thin screen of ward-light at knee height. Not a wall. A trip and a sting. Enough to slow the first rush.
Kael shifted Mira to his left arm, reached back, and drew the short blade from his belt. It was not the sword he had grown with. It was a piece of steel shaped in a modern shop and etched last month in a rented storage unit under a city bridge. It would do.
The first creature came over the lip in a spring that would have torn a boar in half. It hit the light screen. The ward flared. The creature screamed and twisted, front feet kicking, back feet clawing for purchase. Selina stepped in, put the point of the spear into the soft place under the jaw, and pushed up and through with a clean mechanical motion. The light in the spear burned steady. The creature dropped without drama.
The second one learned from the first and tried to leap over the screen. Kael cut its front leg on the way by and knocked it sideways with his hip so it hit the stone. It got up, snarled, and turned on him. He let it come, then stepped inside the line of its bite and drove the blade in at the armpit where the plates did not meet. Its weight shoved him back a step. He held the grip, twisted, and freed the blade.
"Go," Selina said. "We cannot stay."
They moved again. Behind them handlers shouted orders that slipped into prayer when the wards flashed. A guard tried to bark range commands and got nothing but static. A third creature found a new line and came up behind in a lunge that would have taken a slower man in the spine. Kael did not slow. He shifted his weight like water around a rock, let the lunge go long, and put the blade into the base of the skull as it passed. It slid. He did not watch it fall.
Mira kept her mouth shut during the fight. Not from fear. From focus. The light inside her pushed at her skin, wanting to break out again, wanting to burn the dead red out of the air. She held it with a will she did not know she had until this hour. She did not clamp down on it. She shaped it like clay between her hands, keeping it close and even. It held.
They reached the darker band. The stone here was different—denser, older, layered from a time when the mountain had flowed. Selina touched the edge and felt the old gate stir the way a sleeper stirs when they hear a name. She turned to Kael. He did not speak. He shifted Mira to his left and put his right palm next to Selina's on the stone.
"Together," Selina said.
They pushed. Not with muscle. With the part of themselves that had been trained for this from the first day they sat in the old hall with bruised knees and a clean floor. The push met the old cuts, ran the old lines, and asked the old thing to wake.
Mira felt it. It was not words. It was not a voice. It was a door behind her heart. It had been closed so long it had become part of the wall. Now it cracked. A cold draft ran through and out into the rock. The band brightened. Not white. Clear.
Below, the red cloaks saw it as a pale stripe that ran against the grain. They pointed. The handlers cursed. The creatures hesitated. One tried to back down. A handler hit it and it bit him in the thigh and shook its head until bone cracked. He screamed. The red cloak behind him pushed him forward to feed the panic and quicken the climb.
Harland saw the stripe from the road and swore. "What is that?"
Arthur, still on the call, said nothing for a long breath. When he spoke, the word was flat. "A door."
"To what," Harland demanded.
"To the thing you will never touch," Arthur said, voice gone cold. "Move your cattle. If you fail here the men in red will not be the ones who end you. I will."
Harland bit down and pretended to be calm. He lifted the radio. "All units," he said. "Push to the stripe. Do not let them reach the top."
Selina pressed harder. Kael pressed with her. The band widened. The air around their hands grew cold enough to burn skin. The wind on the ridge dropped for a second as if it had been told to wait. A thin line of light traced itself across the stone.
"Now," Selina said.
Kael stepped forward, Mira in his arms, and put the toe of his boot on the exact place where the pattern told him to step. The light stuck to the sole for an instant and then ran away into the rock. The band opened the width of a man and a half. Inside was not dark. Inside was a dim stillness like a high room behind shutters.
Selina went first, spearing the space in a defensive guard. It held. She turned. "In."
Kael carried Mira through. As his back passed the line, the wind hit the band again and tried to close it like a fist. It met Selina's palm and the set of her shoulders and failed. She waited for Kael to clear the threshold, then stepped back, put her palm to the mark, and let the gate close.
The light line thinned, dulled, and vanished. The outer rock went back to looking like a continuous face. A handler a body length away hit it with both hands and screamed as the ward burned his palms. He jerked back. The creature beside him snarled at the stone like it was a rival.
Inside, the high passage smelled like sealed cedar and clean dust. The air was still. The stone was warm in a way that suggested insulation, not heat. The old cut marks were perfect. No moss. No seep. A place that had waited without rotting.
Kael did not stop. He carried Mira twenty paces into the belly of the mountain until the first inner chamber opened. It was round and bare and built to carry sound in a soft way. The floor was set with nine shallow wells like empty planters. The wells were clean.
Selina set her pack down and crossed to the far wall. She tore a strip from the edge of her sleeve and pressed it into a small slot. The slot took it and warmed. A low bell tone answered from somewhere deeper in the rock. Not an alarm. A welcome.
"Home," she said, and the word came out like a breath she had been holding for a hundred years.
Mira let her head tip back against Kael's arm. She did not open her eyes. She did not have to. She felt the shape of the room. She felt the nine wells. She felt the clean curve of the wall. She felt the old thing that had been hers a long time ago come forward like a dog that has been told it may finally approach.
"I know this place," she said again, quiet. "I do not know the names. But I know the order."
"You will know the names when you want them," Selina said. She loosened the blanket around Mira's shoulders and checked her hands. The tremor had eased but not gone. Her skin was cooler. The light under it was steadier.
Kael set Mira down on a folded blanket on the floor, then knelt to remove the grit from the soles of his boots so he would not track it into the inner rooms. Selina untied her hair and retied it lower so it would not catch on the spear shaft if she had to move fast again. Both of them moved through small necessary tasks without talking. The old habits made the room belong to them faster.
Mira touched the stone next to her hip. It hummed. Not at her touch. At her presence. The hum fed back into her arm and eased the ache in her shoulder. She let her hand stay there.
Selina crouched. "You will hear a lot of voices through the rock from now on," she said. "You can choose which ones to listen to. Mine. Kael's. The mountain's. Not theirs."
"I will try," Mira said. "But there are so many. And they are loud."
"They will quiet when you feed," Selina said.
Mira's eyes opened a fraction. The irises were a very pale gray now. Almost silver. "Feed" made her stomach turn.
"Not on people," Selina said. "On what this place is. The wells. The air. The old light."
Kael stood, blade cleaned, and went back to the threshold to listen. The outer noise was muffled now. The red cloaks had spread around the band and were trying to find a second line of approach. They would not find one. They would try anyway. He could hear their frustration in the short barked commands. He could hear Harland snarling at a man on the phone about a drone that would not launch because the air was "wrong."
"Harland is fighting his toys," Kael said.
"Let him," Selina said. "He is not the one I am worried about."
"Their master is not here," Kael said.
"I know," Selina said. "But the one who speaks for the master might be. And he will not mind losing men if it brings the smell of fear to the door."
Mira listened to them talk and held onto the parts she could carry. She did not ask for more. Questions would come later. Now she needed to make her breath match the mountain's.
The floor under her hand pulsed once. A very faint white flicker ran through the ring of nine wells. It was not dramatic. It was like a heartbeat that had finally decided to be counted. Selina and Kael both turned at the same time.
"Again," Selina said.
It came again. Slightly stronger. The old circuits were waking, but not all at once. The seal deeper in the rock had chosen to test the air with a small opening. It noted the three people here. It weighed their marks. It tasted the light that leaked from Mira like steam. It made a choice that had been written a long time ago and tucked away for the right hour.
"Welcome," Selina said softly to the room. "We have a lot to do."
Kael came back to Mira. "We move again after you drink," he said. "Not the nectar. Broth. You need salt and heat."
"Okay," Mira said. "I do not want the other."
"You will not get it," Selina said. "Not again."
Mira did not ask the next question. Why had they given it at all. She knew the answer now. They had done it to save her by speeding what would have killed her if it drew out too long. It was not clean. It was not kind. It was what they had chosen. The thought made her chest tight. She did not have room for it. She let it sit in the corner of the room and did not make eye contact with it.
They did not have long to be still. The red cloaks below shifted again. The handlers found a side crack and tried to lever it open with metal bars. The ward there held. It burned the bar. The bar hissed and fell. One of the handlers laughed even as his palms blistered. He liked the pain because it meant the place was real.
Kael wiped his hands on his coat, picked Mira up again, and nodded at Selina. "Up."
They took the inner passage this time—a carved corridor that rose in a long slow slope. The air got colder as they climbed, not from wind but from old storage. Shelves carved into the wall held wrapped bundles tied with silk cords that had not rotted, sealed jars with wax intact, and boxes with clan marks burnt into the lids. The marks were their marks. Selina's mouth tensed when she saw them. She did not stop.
The corridor ended in a landing with a heavy door of layered wood set into stone. The wood was dark and oiled and had not cracked. Three iron latches sat flush with the surface, each with a different cut. Selina set her palm to the first. The latch warmed. She set her palm to the second. The latch cooled. She set her palm to the third and pressed twice. The latch rolled silently back. The door opened inward.
Cold air flooded them. Not empty cold. High cold. The sky was not a ceiling here. It came in like a wide-open eye.
They stepped out onto a broad stone platform that opened onto a high natural bowl. The bowl held terraces, dry canals, and the broken stubs of pillars that had once held banners or lights. At the far edge, a ridge rose like the back of a sleeping animal. Beyond that ridge the sky split. A thin seam of light hung in midair as if it had been painted there and the painter had not returned.
Selina stood still for three slow heartbeats. Then she walked forward ten paces and stopped again. Kael came up beside her with Mira in his arms.
"Do you hear it," Selina asked.
"Yes," Kael said.
"What," Mira asked.
Selina did not answer with words at first. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth and breathed the air in all the way down to the bottom of her ribs and let it out like someone who had not been allowed to take a full breath on her own land in a hundred winters. When she opened her eyes there was water in them. She did not wipe it away.
"Our city," she said. "It is waking."
It was not here yet. Not fully. The bowl was empty of buildings. But the lines under the stone were brightening, and the seam in the sky above the ridge widened a hair. If they pushed, it would open faster. If they waited, it would open on its own when the sun climbed and the day's pressure changed. Either way, the door would show them the missing half.
Mira lifted her head and felt the seam with the same sense that had learned the wards. It was not cold. It was a different kind of warm—the warmth of friction. The world was rubbing against itself there.
Below, the red cloaks reached the band and found nothing but a face of stone and a thin scent of cedar. They cursed and spit and beat the rock with the butts of their spears like angry children. Harland shouted at men with laptops whose screens had gone to static. Arthur shouted at Harland. The handlers laughed and let their creatures bay at the cliff for the sake of making noise. The noise did not reach the platform. The stone drank it and did not pass it on.
Selina touched Kael's sleeve. "We finish this chapter with your feet on the ground and her in your arms and the door in the sky waking," she said, half to him, half to herself—as if setting the shape of the hour to keep it from unraveling.
Kael nodded once. He shifted Mira's weight so her head rested in the hollow of his shoulder and her legs were balanced on his forearm. She felt the change and let herself sink against him. She was not asleep. She had no room for sleep. But she set her body to rest as much as it would.
"Tell me if you want me to put you down," he said.
"Not yet," she said.
Selina moved ahead, scanning the bowl for movement and watching the seam. The light there flickered once like a slow blink. She lifted her spear in a short salute to the empty terraces and the dry canals. "We are back," she said, and the air seemed to ease.
A small bell sounded deep under the stone. It was not loud. It was perfect. The wells in the chamber below answered. The line of the threshold warmed again. In the forest under the ridge, a fox that had been hiding in a hollow log sat up and looked at the platform as if someone had called its name.
Far below, Nora reached the cut above the quarry and dropped to her stomach to crawl under a low shelf. Her coat tore. She did not care. She put her ear to the ground the way an old ranger had taught her when she was nineteen and trying to be brave in a stupid way. She heard the red cloaks move past on the trail. She did not move. She waited and counted the boots. When they were gone, she pushed herself into the little cave and curled up. She took the phone and texted one word without adding a name.
Alive.
On the road, Harland leaned his hands on the hood of the truck and tried to think of a way to salvage the hour. He had wasted his charm on the wrong men. He had sold a plan he did not own to a man who no longer needed him. He had put his weight behind a cult that would take his hands first and his eyes second and his mouth last so they could enjoy the silence. He did not have a plan. He had a knife in his jacket that he had never used on anything that did not lie still. He hated that about himself in this moment more than he hated anyone else.
He looked up at the mountain and saw nothing but rock. He imagined the lab he would build if he had a drop of whatever ran in that girl's veins. He imagined the vault he would need to hold it. He imagined the accounts that would fill without the donor logs asking questions. He imagined the hand that would take all of that from him and say thank you for your service. He pushed the heel of his hand into his eye and laughed without humor.
Arthur stood in the truck bed and watched men he had rented fail to impress men who were not impressed by money. He had spent a life buying the easiest path, and now the mountain was telling him no. He did not like that word. He did not like the thin edge of fear that had been riding under his anger since the day the first monsters walked out of a hole in the air and breathed like they were in the right place and he was not.
"Pull back," he told his guards. "We are done for the morning. I will not have my name in the report when these clowns fall off a hill."
One of his men hesitated. "Mr. Halden, the doctor said—"
"The doctor works for me," Arthur said. "He just forgot. Move."
The guard signaled the others. They began to withdraw in a tight disciplined line that the red cloaks mocked with small precise cruelty. The handlers tried to set their creatures on the guards as they passed. The Red Veil command voice told them to stop without raising its tone. They stopped.
On the platform, Selina watched the seam widen another fraction. She turned to Kael. "We end here," she said. "On this image. Not because it is safe. Because it is true."
Kael did not argue. He stood at the center of the old bowl with Mira in his arms, the cold air bright on their faces, the door in the sky widening by a line you could not see unless you stood exactly where they stood. The mountain under them accepted their weight. The wells below answered. The clan's high city pulled at the seam like a tide.
Mira lifted her head one more time. She did not open her eyes. She did not need to. She set her palm flat against Kael's chest so she could feel the shape of his breath. "I hear them," she said.
"Who," he asked.
"Everyone," she said. "The ones climbing. The ones waiting. The ones who will come when the door opens. The ones who will come to kill me. The ones who will come to stand with me. I hear them all."
"Do you hear yourself," Selina asked.
Mira was quiet for a long moment. "Yes," she said finally. "I do. She is not loud. But she is clear."
"Good," Selina said. "Hold on to that."
A thin white line shot up the seam and vanished. The bell below chimed once more, brighter. The wind shifted. The scent of cedar and old smoke rolled over the platform like the first breath of a house opened after winter.
Kael looked down at Mira. "We go higher when it opens," he said.
"I know," she said.
He gathered his feet, squared his shoulders, and held her close without squeezing. Selina planted the spear and stood with them, eyes on the seam. They did not move. They did not speak. They waited for the mountain to take the next breath.
Behind the ridge, something old turned its head toward them and listened. The Red March below slowed as men argued with stone and lost. The phone in Selina's pocket stayed on wind. And the seam above widened by the width of a fingernail and did not close again.