The linen sling was adjusted with postal care.
Len looped the raw, unwhitened fabric over his right shoulder. He used his teeth and his uninjured right hand to tighten the knot until the two cedar laths bound to his left forearm were held snugly against his ribs. The split cedar held the damaged outward bone in an unmoving vise, preventing any transverse sway or dynamic shock while he walked.
The dull, throbbing ache beneath the sulfur healing wrap was still there—a deep, persistent heat that pulsed with the rhythm of his blood—but the searing agony of the torn stitches had subsided into a manageable body burden.
He checked his equipment with the careful routine of a courier preparing for a winter stage across the mountain passes:
In the waterproof inner pocket of his vest, pressed flat against his ribs beside his heart, lay the official thick parchment Certificate of Fatal Disposition signed by Chancellor Ves Morn, proving his father had died holding the broken-sun release brake to save twelve workers from total incineration.
Beside the certificate rested Deren’s cracked brass bell—seventy grams of unmagical northern metal, its four-inch hairline fracture silent in the dark.
At his left hip. His leather dispatch pouch was held the sealed letter to his sister Cira. He was stamped with his official postal signet, alongside the nitric-acid checked copper token from Nessa Tern bearing the secret registration mark 7-B.
