The tavern smelled of smoke and old wood. A dull fire burned in the hearth. Voices stayed low. Elira, Mira, and Kael sat in a corner with a yellow map spread over a scarred table. A cup, a knife, and Kael's gauntlet pinned the edges.
Kael tapped a faded triangle near a ridge. "Not just any ruin," he said. "An old border fortress. My father told me the Third Order fought here in the last war."
The word war hung in the air.
A voice from the corner answered before any of them spoke. "Not a place for the young."
They turned. An older man stood by a window, a weathered spear in his right hand. His left arm ended in a neat leather-wrapped stump. Gray hair, tired eyes, steady stance.
Mira leaned forward. "You were there?"
"A long time ago," he said. He came closer, did not sit. "We faced a demon girl. Name like a knife—Nakea. Faster than wind. Sharper than flame." He paused, then added, "She faced two others that day—one wrapped in light, one wielding a blade of darkness. Not the kind you meet twice."
Elira's fingers tightened on the cup. "Do you remember their names?"
"Names fade," he said. "Power does not. If you go there, be ready to face both." He lifted the spear, nodded once, and left. The door creaked shut. No one stopped him.
Silence settled again. The triangle on the map looked darker now.
Mira glanced at Elira, then away. "Too familiar."
Elira kept her eyes on the mark. Something cold moved under her ribs.
That night, upstairs, the room was small and clean enough. Kael slept the way soldiers do. Mira wrote three short lines in her notebook and closed it. Elira sat by the window with the map on her knees.
Truth is sharper than any blade, Elira, Lumeveil's voice whispered in her mind. The fortress holds more than stone.
"I know," she breathed.
If the dark calls to you—do not answer unless there is no other way.
"I know," she said again. She folded the map and slept light.
They left at first light. The air smelled of pine and frost. The road was only a memory of one, a pale groove between trees. By midmorning, low houses showed ahead—the edge of a border village.
A line of black-armored soldiers stepped into the street. Flat visors hid their eyes. The leader's breastplate bore a muted emblem none of them knew.
"Hand over the map," the leader said. "And any information on demon activity."
Kael took half a step forward. The ground thudded. "And if we refuse?"
Steel came out as one.
Draga flowed over Kael with a soft metallic hum. Plates locked and slid into place. He met the front rank with his shoulder and weight. The line bent.
Mira's Twin Arcs lifted and spun. Fire ran the left ring, ice the right. A spear jabbed in—she caged the steel between the rings, froze it, twisted, and broke it to steaming shards.
Elira drew. Lumeveil's blade flashed pale gold. A soldier cut for her legs; she shifted, let the blow slide, and answered with a short, clean strike that took the guard from his sword. Another came in high. She caught, turned, and cut.
They were trained and fast, but not faster than Kael's grounded power, nor quicker than Mira's switch between heat and frost. The square filled with steam. Shapes lunged and fell back.
The leader pressed through the fog toward Elira. Their blades met. His stance was good, his hands sure. He pressed. She gave ground, then took it back. She kept her edge bright and even.
He cut her shoulder. She lifted, turned, and drove a counter down the line of his blade. For a heartbeat, the gold along her edge darkened. A thin band of shadow slid out and bit into his guard. Metal groaned. His visor cracked. He staggered two steps, shock breaking his rhythm.
"Elira—" Mira's voice cut the steam—no question, only warning and cover. She threw a wave of frost low to trip a charging pair, then burst it with heat to scatter them.
The leader stared through the crack in his visor. His mouth tilted, almost a smile. "So it's true," he said softly, for Elira alone. "The blood will surface, sooner or later."
Elira pressed, but he had already stepped back. Two fingers flicked. Dark smoke dropped, iron and ash in the nose. The unit fell away in practiced order, slipping into the trees like water down a cut.
Silence came fast. A board creaked in an empty house. Far away, a dog barked once and stopped.
Kael let Draga settle and exhaled. "Who were they?"
"Not guards," Mira said, eyes on the ground where the leader had stood. No clear print. No emblem left behind. Her rings hummed once, then quieted.
Elira lowered Lumeveil. The light on the blade was steady again. Her heartbeat was not. The leader's words echoed under her ribs.
Hold your ground, Lumeveil murmured. You did not call to it. It did not choose you. We decide when it rises.
Elira nodded once and cleaned the blade. "We keep moving," she said. "We didn't come to argue with masks."
They left the quiet square and took the road-that-wasn't.
They ran the locator at dawn each day. Mira sent a small pulse of ice and water. Kael set a low rhythm through the ground. Elira let the pendant catch first light. Lines rose in the dew like pale writing. A wedge of glow pointed the way. Beside it, four strange characters held for a few breaths, then faded.
On the third morning, one character shifted. On the fifth, it shifted again. "Closer," Mira said. No one argued.
They saved water by condensing dew with Mira's rings. Kael marked safe ground on a small scrap map. Elira used light drills to keep her wind steady: short bursts to press leaves, not snap branches; thin shields to hold, not shine.
On the sixth day, the sky was a clean blue you could wash fear in. The village came up before noon. No smoke. No birds. Even their footfalls sounded wrong.
On the seventh night, they made camp in a hollow under old pines. The fire was small and careful. The locator slips from the Library sat in a tin cup so they wouldn't slide into a bedroll and vanish like a dream.
"We should go back and report," Kael said. "Black-armored unit. That village. Supply is tight."
Mira nodded, then shook her head. "Yes to supply. No to turning around right now. The locator is steady. The code keeps changing. We might lose the morning window if we go back."
Elira stared into the coals. "And Nakea said something else. 'The other half will wake.'" She touched the pendant through her shirt. "If we stall, we give her time to make that happen on her terms."
Kael rubbed the dent in his gauntlet. "Seventy-two hours," he said at last. "We push for three more dawns. If nothing new, we turn and report."
"Agreed," Mira said.
Elira nodded. "Agreed."
They slept in turns. The trees held their breath. Once, an owl called. Once, something large moved far off and then decided it had nothing to do with them.
At first light, they ran the locator again. Mira's breath laid a thin pulse of ice and water in the air. Kael gave the ground a low hum. Elira lifted the pendant into the light.
A wedge of glow wrote itself in the dew. It was wider than yesterday. The four-character code at the tip matched the one from Selene's last file. No shift this time. A clean agreement.
"Complete overlap," Mira said. "We're on it."
They packed fast. No talk. No waste.
A mile later, they found a stone marker half-buried in thorn. A tri-star sign had been there once. Someone had scraped it flat. Beyond it, the land folded into a quiet valley with old wells scattered like coins. When the wind came down the slope, it split, leaving a thin dead lane between the wells. Hidden entry. A door that wanted to be a hill.
Kael studied the ground. "We can get in," he said. "We can also get trapped."
Mira marked two retreat paths with tiny frost signs no one else would read. "We approach, map the lip, and wait for the next dawn window. No heroics."
Elira looked toward the place where light and dark had once met, if the old soldier was right. Her palm shook once and then went still. She pushed the dark back down into a place where it could not make choices for her.
"We don't go home yet," she said. "Not until this line ends."
Mira and Kael nodded. The wind cut clean across the grass. The dew wrote a bright arrow. They followed it into the valley where the old fortress had slept too long and the truth waited like a blade.