Seyun nodded once to Ilyra and once to Daro Kesh, sealing their bounded, non-forcing agreement without a single ritual gesture. Across the first four watches of the twelfth night, every setback they had suffered on the northern ridge had grown out of a hidden assumption that someone must remain fixed in place. Whether out of protective kindness in the first approach, or out of the ancient burden of solitary indispensability that had nearly drawn Nara Soth back into the Listening Crown lattice. Now, with every fighter’s true limit declared aloud and every pullback right preserved in advance, the group stood ready for a revised approach built on moving, accountable freedom. The cold dark rock shelter held no grand illusions of invincibility, only eight battered people who knew what each hand could still lift.
In the back of the granite recess, Hall Mistress Soran finished tying the last strip of clean linen over Nara Soth’s deeply cut back and helped the older woman sit upright against the inner seam of the rock. That kept her own bent iron spear within easy reach of her right hand. Beside the guide-rod trough where the iron wedge remained jammed in the bronze joint, Vaska Ren checked the tight bandage Keth Or had knotted around his three-fingered left hand and laid two leftover sample test needles on the slate slab as timing markers. Five paces down at the lip of the escape junction, Bel Sar spat onto his blistered palms, took a wide two-handed grip…
