A stuttered light above the crowd cut Kiran's breath short.
He tightened his fingers around the coin in his palm and tugged Meira's sleeve until she looked at him.
The festival music drowned for a blink.
Lanterns jittered like teeth.
"What's wrong?" Meira asked, smiling as if the night could be held in one expression.
"That one," he said, nodding toward a tall lantern that winked unevenly.
His voice stayed low.
The amulet at his throat pressed its cold seam against bone.
They moved through a river of bodies and paper glow.
Stalls lined the lane: skewers ticking, a kettle singing, a maker hammering thin bells for children.
A vendor shoved a plate of root-stone dumplings at them and called, "Hot—hard shell, sweet heart!"
The dumplings steamed between Kiran's fingers, dough cracking like old promises.
Meira bit and made a face that split into a grin.
"Ugh. Crunchy."
She chewed, eyes bright.
"Worth it."
"Keep the change," Kiran said, slipping a few coins across the stall.
The vendor grinned and banged a palm on the counter as if the exchange were a blessing.
A troupe arranged themselves in a small square, thin cloth stretched into shadows.
A puppeteer with fingers like quick maps gestured, and the crowd leaned close for the shadow-play.
The shadow tale was an old one—refugees guided by lanterns across the open nothing to safety.
The puppeteer bowed his head as if carrying the story on his shoulders.
"Look," Meira whispered, finger against Kiran's ribs.
She mouthed along with the puppet's lines.
"They say the first Fortress was lit by lamps that remembered the road."
"The sword," Kiran said, before he could hold the thought back.
The word slipped from him like a stone dropped into a quiet pool.
Meira's glance found the blade at his hip.
"You mean a sword cut the shadow?"
"That's the legend," Kiran said.
He kept the sentence light like a coin tossed into rumor.
The puppeteer moved hands; a silhouette of a blade crossed a paper moon.
The crowd breathed as one.
"That story's ancient," an old man behind them muttered, voice thick with years.
"Swords and shadows don't mix. Not since the Rift."
"Then why tell it?" Meira asked.
The old man shrugged the size of a truth.
"Because lanterns break but stories mend. People need mending."
Kiran let the words sit like lightweight coals.
He watched the blade on his hip catch the trimmed light.
The seam at his throat pressed a little harder.
The legend hooked somewhere in his chest that still folded to the memory of a humming voice and wet earth.
"Eat," Meira said, nudging the dumpling closer.
"You're thinking too much."
He took a bite and a small sweetness cracked open in his mouth.
The taste pulled him out of thought until a new sound cut the night.
Low laughter.
Silk folding.
The whisper of a practiced step.
Across the lane, leaning against a column, Sylas watched with casual interest.
His coat had tasteful patches; his grin measured what he saw.
A figure in a hood moved beside him—thin enough to slip through the crowd like someone uninvited.
"You see him?" Meira asked, following Kiran's line of sight.
"Yeah," he said.
His jaw set into a small line.
"Sylas and—someone else."
Sylas lifted a fingertip and the hooded companion melted among the festival's movement.
The figure did not move with the patterns of the crowd.
Instead it threaded between people, breezing where shoulders should have stopped it.
"Looks like a dancer," Meira said, but the laugh in her voice had an edge.
"They buy nicer cloth than we do."
Kiran did not answer.
He watched Sylas's fingers play with a coin.
He watched the hooded figure lean close as if to read a palm.
The sight sewed a little unease along his spine.
He slid the card Sylas had left in his pocket and felt its paper like a grain of threat.
"Don't stare," Meira said softly.
Her fingers curled around his wrist, an action that asked him to choose between curiosity and calm.
He let the grip steadied him.
"Come watch the end," he said.
"The puppet's about to drop the last light."
They edged closer to the stage.
The puppeteer told the final scene in a voice made small for the ears nearest.
A blade cut a shadow, and lanterns rose like a crown.
The crowd clapped with the old, practiced relief of people who had survived storms on stories alone.
"Do you think swords can cut shadows?" Meira asked.
"If shadows are tied to a thing, maybe," Kiran said.
He did not explain which thing.
He had no language yet beyond the feeling that his rusted blade had a name the story almost remembered.
"Be careful," Elias called from the edge of the crowd as he passed, eyes sharp as a ledger.
"Night tends to welcome strange company."
Kiran nodded.
Elias's presence held like a map pin.
The veteran cartographer's voice carried the kind of warning that did not require elaboration.
It stitched a seam between past advice and present worry.
The crowd swelled as traders moved lanterns into a great circle for the night's finale.
Colored paper flared like stitched wounds.
A child squealed when a lantern bobbed too low.
Someone behind Kiran jostled.
Meira's elbow knocked his shoulder and she stepped away.
"Come on," Meira urged, pulling him to a lane that smelled of fried root and sugar.
"We haven't watched the Gilded Dancers yet."
They moved, but Sylas remained in Kiran's peripheral vision.
He shifted his weight and exchanged a word with his hooded contact.
The figure's head tilted.
A pale hand slipped an object across Sylas's palm so easily it might have been a secret traded for the night.
Kiran felt the crowd like a tide.
He thought of Elias's map lines—currents people did not name aloud.
He imagined Sylas trailing information like an old net.
"We should go," Kiran said suddenly.
The words came clipped.
Meira paused, chewing.
"Already? The dancers don't start for ten minutes."
"Just... not hungry," he lied.
The lie folded into a plausible evening.
He did not like how Sylas looked at his sword.
They ducked between stalls and Kiran kept his steps close to Meira's.
He handed her a few coins—his first small payment—like a pledge.
"Don't spend it on dumplings," he said.
Meira laughed.
"One rule of the festival: always eat questionable food."
They found a little alley with paper streamers tied overhead.
Lanterns here hung lower, casting the crowd's faces into small moons.
The festival's heart beat loud enough to make Kiran's jaw tense.
"Is it true?" Meira asked suddenly, voice hushed.
"The play—about a sword that cut the shadow. Did you think of that because of yours?"
Kiran set his jaw.
"I thought of it before you mentioned the blade."
Her hand found his sleeve.
"Then maybe it's not just a story."
He could have argued.
He could have said the sword was scrap, a thing to sell.
He did not.
The choice to keep it had already been made.
From the outer lane a sudden high whine rose—metal on a whisper.
A lantern near the main circle blinked.
The crowd's laughter thinned.
"What's that sound?" Meira asked.
Kiran's head turned.
The big lantern over the plaza flickered.
Then it pitched into a sharp, erratic buzz.
It cast its paper skin in stuttering bands.
People froze mid-step.
A vendor dropped a skewer.
The clatter jumped the sound into the air like a thrown stone.
"Keep moving," someone shouted.
The voice had the brittle edge of somebody used to improvising calm.
A ripple of alarm moved like a hand through the festival.
A young man stumbled into Meira from behind, pushing a wave of bodies.
Her balance tipped.
A hand clutched at her sleeve.
"Careful!"
Kiran lunged.
He reached for her as the crowd's panic skated outward.
A lantern nearer to their alley bucked, then snapped.
Paper tore.
A smaller lantern slid loose from its hook.
Flames licked at the torn rim.
Sparks spun like teeth.
The little lantern fell from the post with a crooked arc aimed at the gap where Kiran and Meira stood.
Kiran's foot found purchase on cobbles.
He moved before any thought could add weight to the motion.
He wrenched the sword free with one practiced, almost angry motion.
The leather rasped at his hip and the blade came free, dull edge catching light.
"Meira!" he shouted.
His voice cut through the panic.
Hands grabbed at them from both sides.
A shout rose: "Fire! Move back!"
People shoved and pulled, eyes bright with the kind of fear that does not translate into sound.
Sylas watched from a column, chin tipped as if he were assessing a purchase.
The hooded figure slipped away into the press of bodies without drawing attention.
Someone's hand closed on his sleeve, but he shook it off as if annoyance were a cloak he could shrug.
Kiran did not look for Sylas.
He focused on the falling flame.
He focused on Meira's small shoulder, where her hair had come loose and caught a stray ember.
He did not plan.
He acted.
Pure instinct.
Kiran ran for Meira.
A smaller lantern fell from a post, in flames, straight toward her.
Without thinking, he pulled the rusted sword from his belt and raised it.
Not to cut.
But as an instinctive, foolish shield against the fire.