Seraphine and Rocher had both previously agreed—nonlethal measures to draw out the priests and weaken the cordon.

  None of us wanted to argue for more blood, after all.

  But agreement was not the same as capacity.

  With the Forest Guardian's blessing, Seraphine could fire Sleep in short bursts now. A demonic spell, soft-edged and shallow, the kind that slid over the mind instead of cracking it open. That piece of Velka's constitution let her absorb a little of the corruption it left behind, enough to keep it from rooting. But not enough to sustain it, and not without cost. Every use pulled at something fragile inside her, something she was still learning how to hold.

  Rocher's limits were simpler, and crueler. He could move faster than any of us. Faster than thought, sometimes. But he was still only one body, bound by bone and tendon and breath. He could reach a padin before they reached their belt. But he could not be everywhere at once. He could not stop a hand that was already closing.

  That was the gap. That was what kept getting people killed.

  Velka's constant low-grade Sleep would help. I believed that. But belief was not the same as certainty, and certainty was a luxury already burned out of me.

  I needed something else.

  Something inelegant. Immediate. Redundant.

  So I went looking for Nyxara.

  She had lunch duty today, which meant she was in a foul mood and up to her elbows in work she considered beneath her. I found her near the edge of the clearing, dismantling a crate of dried roots with aggressive efficiency.

  I set the basket down beside her without a word.

  It was heavy with mushrooms I had picked at the base of the Great Tree: velvet caps, cloud-ear, a cluster of pale, translucent things that bruised blue when touched. The sort Nyxara liked.

  Her hands stilled.

  She gnced into the basket, then up at me, one sharp brow arching.

  "You want something," she said ftly.

  I swallowed and nodded. "With your permission, I'd like to borrow your cauldron."

  Nyxara nudged the basket with her foot, assessing weight and quality. After a moment, she clicked her tongue.

  "Fine," she said. "As you can see, it's not currently in use. But beware: if it cracks, I crack you."

  She turned back to her task, grumbling.

  The cauldron was still warm when I reached it, residue clinging to its inner curve like old scars.

  I had watched Nyxara enough to understand the basics. Not perfectly. Not confidently. But enough to try.

  I gathered a scrap of hardened resin, a pinch of bone dust, powdered bark, fertile soil, a single seed. Each ingredient chosen with care sharper than it should have been.

  Shape it small, I thought. Something that can cling to armor. Something light, something that could perch or dart the way a small bird might.

  I mixed them carefully, adjusting texture as I had seen Nyxara do: add water, test, fold, coax.

  Slowly, the form took shape beneath my fingers.

  I chose bird-shapes deliberately. Compact bodies. Narrow beaks. Talons capable of gripping gss without shattering it. Wings stiff enough to carry a small weight but light enough to move fast.

  When they emerged, steaming faintly, they were crude but passable. Two palm-sized constructs, perched side by side on the rim of the cauldron like misshapen crows. The etched lines along their bodies pulsed once under my touch, weak and unsteady, then dimmed again.

  An army like Nyxara's was far beyond me, but small constructs like this were fair game. Traditional summons like Seraphine's weapon infusions required a certain level of mana to sustain, but golems could be charged over time and deployed like items. Perfect for someone like me.

  I pressed my palms around them and fed mana in measured threads, waiting for the familiar shift. Not too much. Not yet. Just enough that awareness stirred behind gssy eyes.

  I set a consecrated phial on the worktable between them.

  It was one of several we had taken yesterday, wrested from a padin's belt before he could bring it to his teeth. It was smaller than I remembered. Unassuming. A thin gss capsule sealed with wax and prayer-sigils so fine they looked decorative.

  I did not touch it with my bare hands.

  If the body was a powder keg, then the phial was the flint. Not the source of the power, just the trigger. Something to bridge will and consequence in the smallest possible space.

  It was ignition. That meant it had a signature.

  I uncorked a warded jar and let the faintest thread of magic brush the phial's surface. The air prickled immediately, sharp and acrid, like lightning trapped in a bottle.

  The golems reacted at once.

  Both birds straightened, heads snapping toward the phial. Their bodies hummed, a low, eager vibration.

  I fed that sensation back into them, guiding, shaping. Not the power itself, but its echo. The taste of it. The promise.

  Then I gave them one command.

  "Fetch."

  The word settled into them like a stone dropped into water.

  The birds went still.

  Then, in perfect unison, they lunged.

  One seized the phial in its beak, gss scraping against resin. The other unched immediately after, wings buzzing as it tried to wrest the prize away. They tumbled across the table in a ctter of cws and feathers, intent and tireless and utterly uninterested in anything else.

  I scooped the phial away before they could crack it, heart hammering. I still needed it for the other half of my research.

  The birds froze, heads swiveling toward the empty space where it had been.

  They chirred. Soft, metallic sounds. Expectant.

  That would do.

  I wrapped the birds carefully and stowed them in a padded satchel, then sealed the phial away once more. My hands were steady now. The work had burned the edge off my thoughts.

  By the time I stepped out of the hut, the forest felt marginally less tight around my chest.

  That was when Ferric intercepted me.

  He loomed out of the path ahead, arms crossed, expression thunderous in a way that meant he had been inconvenienced rather than worried. His eyes flicked to the satchel, then back to my face.

  "Where the hell is Rocher?" he demanded. "It's past noon already, and he hasn't shown up for training."

  The words nded heavier than they should have.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  Ferric's scowl deepened.

  "Ysel won't tell me how to find him," he said. "She said to ask you."

  "I... I don't know. He has a lot on his mind right now."

  He scoffed. "Brooding, is it? He seems like a brooder."

  With that, he stalked off, already done with the conversation. I was grateful for it.

  I pced a hand on my chest and exhaled. I wasn't ready to say how stupid I'd been.

  How Rocher had stomped off to pursue his own training. How I might have broken something I didn't know how to fix.

  I had watched him kill in the Forest without hesitation. Watched him choose me over mercy, over restraint, over the lines he used to draw so carefully. I had taken that choice and folded it into something simpler. Something safer.

  He would choose me. Every time.

  And I had spoken from that certainty, without stopping to ask what it cost him to keep it.

  My chest tightened.

  Maybe that was the part I had broken.

  I found Seraphine at the edge of the warded gde, seated cross-legged on a ft stone with her staff id across her knees.

  Her eyes were closed. The air around her thrummed faintly, mana held in careful suspension. Even the insects seemed reluctant to intrude.

  As I approached, one of her eyes cracked open.

  Just enough to track me.

  I stopped a few paces away and held out the satchels.

  "Phial countermeasures," I said.

  Seraphine's gaze dropped to the bags, then returned to my face. She nodded once, slow and grim.

  She rose smoothly to her feet and accepted the satchels, testing their weight with a practiced hand. A faint spark of magic flickered along her fingers as she brushed against the contents.

  "You want these infused," she said.

  "Yes. And I need one delivered to Rocher."

  That made her pause.

  Her brow lifted a fraction, one eyebrow arching in that precise way she had when something did not add up.

  "Why not give it to him yourself?" she asked.

  The moment stretched.

  The warded air hummed softly between us.

  "I can't," I said at st.

  Seraphine studied me for a heartbeat longer, her expression unreadable. Then she inclined her head.

  "All right," she said. "I'll see it done."

  She turned back toward the gde without another word, already adjusting the flow of mana through her palms.

  I stood there until the hum of her casting settled back into stillness.

  Then I turned away.

  The vigil began before dusk, when the forest was still warm from the heat of the day. We told ourselves it would be hours. Then we stopped telling ourselves anything at all.

  We waited.And waited.And waited.

  The sun fell. Shadows thickened. My chest stayed tight.

  Seraphine sat with Pulseweaver resting across her knees, humming under her breath to keep her mana smooth and quiet. I could feel the tension in her like a held note, the knowledge that she could end a skirmish before it began if she let herself dip just a little deeper. She did not. She watched the Forest instead, saving that edge for when it would matter.

  Rocher refused to sit. He paced the perimeter in slow, measured lines, stretching his shoulders, rolling his wrists, testing the ground beneath his boots as if movement itself might summon the breach. Every so often his gaze flicked to the treeline, sharp and searching, like he was already calcuting how fast he would have to run.

  Ferric was in a foul mood. He was pacing as well, but sharp-tempered and bristling. From his demeanor, I could only surmise he'd spoken with Rocher. They made it a point to avoid each others' paths.

  Watches rotated. Food went untouched. Ysel pressed her palms to the Great Tree more than once, her awareness threading outward through root and leaf, and each time she stepped back with the same answer.

  Nothing.

  No movement.No breach.No ripple of holy magic.Not even intent.

  The longer it stretched, the worse the silence felt. Not empty. Intentional.

  I began to repy my assumptions in my head, turning them over until they were worn thin. The routes. The timing. The incentives. Had I misjudged them, or had they simply decided not to py the game I expected?

  Rocher gnced at me once, concern flickering across his face, and I looked away before he could ask the question I did not want to answer.

  Something had shifted.

  I did not yet know whether it was the war, or me.

  Habit would have taken us back to the hut together. Habit would have let me lean into him and pretend the knot in my chest was only fatigue.

  I stopped myself before that instinct could take hold.

  We could not afford distraction while on watch. Not tonight. Not with everything banced this close to the edge.

  I told him as much, keeping my voice steady. A matter of vigince. Of readiness.

  Rocher hesitated. Just long enough that I felt it.

  Then he nodded, once, and turned away without protest, giving me the space I had asked for even though neither of us believed the reason was that simple.

  The distance settled between us quietly. Not cold. Just... there.

  Darkness encroached. Firelight flickered. The forest glowed with drifting spores, quiet as stars.

  Then—A whistle.

  Soft. Low. Casual.

  Too casual.

  Rocher straightened. Ferric swore. Seraphine blinked.

  Ysel snapped her head toward the treeline, voice sharp as a bde. "Something is inside the barrier."

  Cold dread sshed down my spine.

  Before any of us could move, a figure stepped out from between the roots—unhurried, rexed, impossibly at ease, as if she had wandered into the encve by accident.

  Evelyn dusted off her Mask and gave a zy wave.

  "Oh. Evening, everyone."