Kiran sat on a low bench while Elias closed the door behind them.
The square's clamor thinned to a memory; the chamber smelled of oil, ink, and old paper.
Elias did not look at the sword strapped to Kiran's hip.
He folded his hands and asked, plain and steady, "Tell me about your parents."
Kiran swallowed.
He dug a thumb into the seam of the amulet and pushed at the silver as if it might open a door.
"Maps," he said.
"They drew lines where the currents change. They hummed songs when they worked."
His voice kept even on the facts.
A fragment of wet earth, a tune without a name—those images came first and stayed.
Elias's fingers tapped the table once, like punctuation.
"Names," he said.
"Give me names."
"Kellan Meri and Hayn Roud."
Kiran said each syllable as if setting a stone into place.
"They left for a fissure beyond the charts. They were supposed to take notes, come back. They didn't."
He did not add the part about the platform, the radio static, the way the amulet had been pressed into his hand.
Elias closed his eyes for a breath.
When he opened them his gaze was sharper.
"Meri and Roud," he repeated.
"Cartographers of the Horizon. They mapped corridors through resonance. Two years ago—" He stopped, measured.
"They were listed as lost on the Umbral expedition that sought a Stable Rift."
Kiran's thumb found a worn notch on the amulet.
He slid his hand away before any explanation could form.
Elias watched that motion but did not comment on the amulet itself.
"They were good," Elias said finally.
"Very good, or very foolish. There is a small difference in our work between genius and ruin."
He pushed a thin sheet across the table.
"Sit. Look."
The sheet showed lines like bruises, arcs radiating from points.
Elias tapped a node and the ink darkened under his fingernail.
"We don't map places as people think. We map the pushes underneath—currents of resonance, the seams the spheres leave when they don't meet cleanly. Your parents chased a Stable Rift—a tear that holds long enough to cross."
Kiran leaned closer.
The paper smelled of glue and dust.
The ink made a low metallic sound when his fingernail kissed it.
His ribs tightened in the same rhythm as when the foreman took his wage: one subtraction after another.
"Why would they chase that?" he asked.
Elias folded the map back into itself.
"Because if you find a Stable Rift you can walk where no chart exists. You can cross into the Umbral corridor without being shredded by feedback. The Guild pays for that knowledge—if someone survives to deliver it."
He tapped the phrase "Umbral corridor."
"Your parents didn't return with notes. That makes their last marks precious and dangerous. It also makes you… interesting."
Kiran said nothing.
Interest, here, could be bartered like iron.
Elias's mouth eased into a thin line.
"I can offer you a place. Not a tester—those wear armor in public and die in anonymous ways. A field assistant. You clean tools, mend survey lines, carry kits. You get access to reports and the maps I can show you. It will be work that dirties hands and leaves you thin. Pay is small. The door to the Guild's inner ledgers is not free, but it opens easier for those inside."
"Why me?" Kiran asked.
He kept the question simple.
The answer would tell him whether this was a path or a prison.
Elias leaned back.
"Because cartographers breed intuition and because someone watched you stop the Test of Silence."
His eyes flicked to the sword as if measuring distance without naming it.
"And because I need an extra pair of hands."
Kiran's fingers tightened on the amulet until the metal left a pale crescent on his skin.
The offer was a ladder made of rust and ledger lines.
He pictured Meira's grin over a bowl of thin stew—how she could stretch a coin into a week's comfort.
He pictured the train ticket that might lead him away from the quay.
He also pictured the empty shelf at home where the amulet rested on a strip of cloth.
"I'll take it," he said, the words small and deliberate.
He rose and signed the single line Elias slid across the blotter with a neat mark that made him feel less like a borrower and more like a member.
Elias's hand closed over the pen and then opened.
"Good. You'll report to the annex tonight. You'll sleep in the second tier. Bring what you need, and keep the amulet safe."
He did not ask about the sword.
He did not need to.
Outside the private room the Guild's corridors smelled of wet stone and heated metal.
Kiran's boots echoed against iron grating.
A ledger clerk led him to the dormitories, where bunks stacked like the ribs of a ship.
A single lantern threw a pool of light over a row of instruments.
Elias pointed to a cabinet.
"First task: clean my kit. Instruments catch dust and feedback; if left they'll lie to us."
"Yes," Kiran said.
The word folded into industry.
He carried his bundle past racks of tuning rods, calipers with shaved teeth, and a square glass called by an old name: echo mirror.
The echo mirror leaned against a stand, a disc of glass with filaments crisscrossing its back like veins.
Elias tapped its rim.
"It catches reflected patterns of resonance. Useful to see distortions the eye cannot."
Kiran set a rag to warm water and began wiping.
The glass took the cloth like a skin, revealing faint runs that shifted as he moved.
He wiped the frame; rust from his sword had left a smear on his sleeve.
He did not touch the blade.
A shadow crossed the mirror—the blade at his hip as he bent.
The glass darkened for a heartbeat, an absence that made the reflection disappear entirely.
Kiran's breath stopped in the way breathing does when something expected fails to occur.
Elias's head turned, almost casual, then fixed.
He said nothing.
The silence between them lengthened.
"You'll catalog tonight," Elias said at last.
"Start with the calibrators. Clean them, test their resonance against the bench. Record any discrepancies."
Kiran nodded and kept his hands busy.
He pressed the rag to the instruments, counted ticks, and wrote numbers into a ledger while the echo mirror sat like a question at the edge of his workbench.
That night, he stood at the dormitory window where the city leaked lantern-light into the sky.
He sent a small coin to Meira through the guild clerk and recorded the transaction like a promise kept.
She would not be pleased at the job's begrudging pay but she would eat.
That thought loosened him just enough.
The bunk's pallet smelled faintly of oil and old cloth.
He set the sword across his lap and unfastened the leather.
Rust flaked onto the wool like confetti.
He held the hilt with both hands as if weighing an answer.
The amulet lay against his chest; he pushed it aside with a fingertip and watched the seam catch the dim light.
For a moment, the city and the Guild and the responsibility to find whatever remained of his parents aligned into a single thin rod.
"You're safe here," Elias had said.
His tone carried the practicality of someone promising only what they could guarantee.
It was not comfort, but it was not cruelty.
Kiran drew the blade free and set the cold edge against the pads of his fingers.
The metal replied with nothing but its old, indifferent chill.
He traced a line where rust met cleaner steel and found, with a small, absurd hope, the place where his blood had once kissed the blade.
A single silver mark pulsed at the edge of his attention like a moth's wing; he blinked it away.
The room hummed with distant machinery.
He told himself to sleep.
He could not let the Guild take him and then lose him in paperwork.
He could not hand the amulet to any clerk.
He imagined the maps his parents might have left—notes scratched in margins, arrows that pointed not to cities but to currents.
If those notes existed, the Guild would hoard them.
If they did not, then the Rift had taken more than bodies.
He lay back, sword across his chest, amulet cold against his throat.
His eyelids weighted under the lantern's pulse.
Words formed and left his lips without sound, a private invocation.
"What are you?" he asked the metal.
On the blade, where his blood had dried, a single glyph—no bigger than the head of a pin—flickered silver.
It glowed faint, like a star swallowed by dawn, then darkened again.
He did not know if he had seen it or if the tiredness had painted truth onto the air.
The room waited.
The Guild's walls kept their secrets.
In the bed, in the darkness, Kiran holds the sword.
He whispers into the void: "What are you?"
On the blade, where his blood touched, a single tiny silver glyph glows faintly for an instant and goes out.
He isn't sure if he saw it or imagined it.