The red moon rose too quickly, dragging the tide and the breath out of the city.
Bells along the wardline struck the hour—and kept striking, each note thinning until it sounded like iron remembering blood. On the river road, lanterns guttered sideways in a wind no one felt. In the infirmary, three patients sat up at once, eyes wide, mouths opening to scream without sound.
"Harvester's Moon," Archivist Nox said, arriving at a run with papers strapped to his chest. "We forecast nine days. It came in three."
Elyna already had Derek's cloak and satchel. "Orders, Saintess?"
"Lantern cadence," Derek said. "All districts on the fourth beat. No solos; no one breathes alone." He looked to the High Priestess. "I'll be at the east gate."
"Not alone," she said, staff tilting to her shoulder like a banner.
They reached the ward just as the first harvesters condensed—tall as doorways, thin as needles, faces like masks carved out of mirrors. They did not strike. They listened. Every weak heartbeat, every ragged inhalation, every private grief—the creatures found the lowest notes in the city's hum and began to pull.
People folded in the street as if simply too tired to stay standing.
Derek stepped into the space between two braziers and felt the Lantern Network vibrate around him: thousands of small flames, thousands of counted breaths, fear braided to stubbornness. He lifted his hands and spoke so the ward could hear.
"On my breath," he said, and breathed.
The cadence caught. In for four counts. Hold two. Out for four. He felt the chorus gather like a river finding banks. It helped. It did not stop the pull.
Nox's voice was tight. "They're not breaching, they're siphoning through resonance. We can't block a song with a wall."
"Then we'll sing louder," Derek said, and reached for the light he feared and loved.
It rose—not as spear or star, but as cordage: skeins of pale gold roped to every lantern and looped back through him. Pain climbed his arm like frost; he yanked the line anyway and threw it over the city, cinching the chorus tighter.
The nearest harvester tilted its mirror-face to him, interested.
"Saintess," the High Priestess warned, hearing the edges in his breath.
"I know," he said, and didn't stop.
The miracle he chose was crude and costly, the opposite of the fine surgery he preferred. He set the cadence, hooked it to the wardstones, and inverted the pull—every exhale in the city tugging back at the harvesters, every lantern flare stealing a pinch of their shape.
The creatures flared like blown coals—and thinned.
Derek's vision narrowed to a rail of light. Elyna's hand was at his back, the High Priestess shouldering half his weight without breaking rhythm.
"Hold," he said through his teeth. "Hold the four. Love your neighbor while you do."
The city obeyed. The wall hummed into the pitch of a chest held close. The harvesters tried to retune the world to their frequency and found it already full. One by one, they unraveled. The last shuddered hard enough to rattle roof tiles and went out like a candle pinched by two steady fingers.
Silence broke into sound: the slow cry that happens when an entire place realizes it can speak again.
Derek sagged. Elyna caught him; the High Priestess lowered them both to the stones.
Blood pricked his ears and warmed his lip. His hands shook like leaves naming the wind.
The air above them wrote in faint letters, ashamed of being read.
[MIRACLE — CITYWIDE COUNTER-RESONANCE] Civic Chorus: 61,204 participants Lantern Network: engaged Life Drain (base): -39% Mitigation (chorus/ward harmonics): +22% Net Personal Drain: -17% Kernel: adaptive mode — accepted Status: UNSTABLE but sustained
Elyna laughed, breathless relief breaking into joy. "You did it."
"We did it," Derek corrected, and almost smiled.
They got him back to the temple on a litter he would have preferred to walk. He slept for an hour that felt like a bargain struck with thieves.
When he woke, the noise outside was wrong.
Not panic. Not mourning.
Acclamation.
He rose too fast, swaying until Elyna steadied him. Together they stepped onto the high stair and looked down at a river of people. Candles cupped in hands. Banners low so they wouldn't snag lantern wires. The chant rose and fell like surf.
"Crown the Saintess!"
The High Priestess's face set into an unreadable mask—the one she used when truth and duty collided. Nox arrived white-faced and elated, clutching a parchment.
"Three plazas," he said. "The old law is clear. If three plazas acclaim, the Conclave must convene."
Derek's chest felt hollow and overfull at once. "I'm a healer."
"Tonight," the High Priestess said gently, "you were a keeper. The city knows the difference. And what it requires."
A deputation of ministers pushed through the crowd with careful humility. Their leader knelt on the third step from the top—public, ritual, binding. "Her Radiance saved the breath of Ameloria," he said, voice carrying. "We ask her to guard it."
"What if I say no?" Derek asked, not unkindly.
"Then you remain our Saintess," the minister said, eyes never lifting, "and the crown becomes the kindling our enemies will use to burn you."
Nox winced. "He's not wrong. Acclamation refused becomes grievance. Grievance becomes a weapon."
Elyna's hand found Derek's again, fingers small and fierce. "If you take it," she whispered, "write the terms yourself."
He swallowed. The weight he felt was not jewels or bright metal. It was the ledger of promises he had already made: clinics at the wardline, lanterns at the hour, breath before tribute. If a crown could shelter those, it was a shelter he could stand beneath.
"Summon the Conclave," he said softly. "But hear my conditions."
Murmurs slid through the ministers like wind through cane.
"Ink them," Derek continued. "Protection before pomp. Clinics in the ledger, not the margins. Wardstones bound to breath, not blood. And High Priestess," he added, looking to the woman who had stood with him at three different edges, "you will hold the Charter over me when the crown forgets."
She bowed her head. "Gladly."
A breeze moved through the stair like something approving. Somewhere, under the city, an old machine adjusted a lever the smallest possible degree.
Kestrel's voice—only a memory of a knife and a clock—seemed to brush the back of his mind: Overlapping interests.
Derek watched the crowd's faces—tear-lit, sunburnt, exhausted, alight—and felt the old, stubborn lesson settle again.
The only way to win was to survive.
If a throne could be survived—and used—then he would take it like a wall takes weight.
"Then let it be done," he said.
The roar that followed was too big to belong to any single person, which is why he trusted it.
Lanterns climbed the night like patient stars.