By the time Seyun wiped the cold sweat from his brow with his sleeve, the evening shadow of the northern crag had swallowed the ruined pilgrim shelter fully. Inside the high-walled courtyard, the frost on the flat stone slabs turned from white to pale blue-grey. At the rear of the enclosure, Steward Osen Tal and Instructors Venn and Tarn emerged from the shelter carrying the strapped oilskin medicine packs and the iron crowbar needed to pry open the rusted back gate that led onto the high northern service path.
They paused beside Mina and Daro Kesh at the archway, watching the center of the courtyard in silence. Everyone in the party understood that Hall Mistress Soran didn’t make idle threats: if Seyun couldn’t hold five full exchanges at unsparing Bronze tempo on his braced foot, she would leave him behind at the shelter rather than let a slow shift kill both him and Ilyra inside the Chamber of Permitted Shapes.
Across the blue-grey flat stone slabs, Soran settled her boots into White Heron Hall’s low evening guard. Even with a seventeen-copper plain iron spear in her hands and no bronze bell below the point, the fifty-year-old Hall Mistress radiated a compact, seamless readiness that made the twenty-foot courtyard feel as narrow as a gangplank.
