Vaidya's hand at Solis's shoulder was a whisper of warmth. Solis blinked awake into cool dawn light slanting through the infirmary window; Elizabeth's low, even breathing was a steady metronome. For a beat he had that dream-echo still at his ribs — Razille's shadow, the sword, the sickness of having been emptied — and then the immediate, human scene: bandages, a basin wiped clean, the medallion cold in his arm.
"Shh," Vaidya mouthed, two fingers pressed to his own lips. His eyes glittered in a way Solis hadn't seen since the exams, the youthful spark tempered now by sleepless maps and a scholar's fatigue. "Quiet. Don't wake her."
Solis tried to sit up and the room tilted like a boat. His muscles argued. "What the...?"
"Mailie infirmary," Vaidya said in the same breathless hush. "Under Elizabeth's orders her trainees brought you overnight." He spared a faint, helpless smile. "I'm sorry I lied yesterday. We can't tell her everything. She worries too much."
Solis's brain, still fogged with sleep and the residue of wounds, tried to assemble the scattered facts. Three months had been their punishment. Razille had the sword. Kreg had been freed. Seasons had passed ready to wilt. There was a pressure in Solis's chest — not just hunger but a hunger for movement, for action.
Vaidya stood, tugging the blanket straight as if it might disguise their intent. "Come. We have to go before anyone notices."
Solis brushed a hand across his face, the rough stubble prickling his palm. "What? Where? I'm not—"
"Shush," Vaidya hissed, and his voice held a new, urgent edge. "If you want to know, follow. I will tell you once we are far enough. Elizabeth is sleeping soundly but a single noise can wake her up. We can't have her fretting or, Eloin forbid, leaving the clinic."
He hauled Solis up with an unexpected ease. For a second Solis felt naked in his own skin — weak, the wounds still tender under the bandages. The infirmary smelled of tea and boiled herbs and the old, patient fear of people who had seen too many injured come through the door. Vaidya moved with a purpose that felt like a plan; Solis fell in step because there was nowhere else to put his feet.
Outside, Mailie kept its face of ordinary life but it was the face of someone who had learned to keep secrets. The morning street was empty of market clamor, lights guttered in curtained windows, the usual dogs were curiously silent. No clatter of gliders, no bursts of rune-comm chatter. It felt like the town had been wrapped in gauze. Solis scanned the lanes, heart oddly loud in his throat, wondering which alley still wore the ghost of the last fight.
They slipped past the barracks where two sentries yawned and shifted in their posts. Vaidya moved like a shadow between shadows, avoiding the main lane. He led Solis through narrow paths that threaded behind the inn-dense row of houses — places only someone who knew Mailie by its gutters could use. The streets opened to the outskirts and then to low fields where the dawn mist lay like old linen.
Once they had a safe, wide arc between them and the town, Vaidya stopped. He drew a breath as if gathering a speech he had rehearsed for nights. "Listen," he said. "I lied to Elizabeth about staying. I told her you needed rest and that I would watch over you and keep the truth safe. That was a part of a plan. She didn't need to hear it. But the truth is—"
Solis's fists curled around the medallion without meaning to. "Say it."
"The truth is I can't sit in Mailie and tend to the weak while Ada—" Vaidya's voice cracked for an instant on her name. "—Ada id fighting. I lied because I didn't want Elizabeth to worry, and because I was ashamed. I am not a fighter, Solis. My spells and my maps help more than my hands in a brawl." He looked at Solis with the old nervous intensity. "But the world needs hands that can bleed and a mind that can plan. And—" he swallowed — "I believe in you more than myself."
Solis had expected a dozen things: the hot-headed plea of a friend, a strategist's cold logic, a quiet, academic insistence that he should rest. What he did not expect was the small, sincere tilt in Vaidya's voice. The admission that Vaidya wanted to go; that he was ashamed of his own fear; that he believed in Solis enough to ask him to shoulder the danger.
"You sound like you're recruiting me for an epic quest, huh?" Solis said, half humor, half grief. "Which is worrying because you never pay in treasure."
"Not recruiting," Vaidya said quickly. "Asking. Begging, if you want the big picture. Listen to me: Caldemount hasn't been silent because it's safe. It's been silent because Kreg cut the magic channels. The Airknights can't coordinate flights. Though K.P.P. dominates some checkpoints, but the mountain passes are choked with patrols. Ada — our Ada — she is in Caldemount. She stayed there. She's gone to the Upper Ring to help keep the anchor solid."
A bruise of guilt bloomed in Solis. "Yeah... I already know that."
"I know," Vaidya said, holding up both hands. "I know. She could have come. She didn't. She's where she believes she belongs. I cannot stay in Mailie with the thought of her—" his voice wavered, then steadied. "—out there, maybe cut off, maybe hoping for help. I cannot wait and pretend I'm a man of books while people I care about hold the line."
Solis swallowed. The world of duty and friendship and fear knotted into a hard little stone in his gut. "So you want me to do what I can't? Walk out of my own town when I can barely stand? You saw what Razille did to me. You know my aura, my energy leaks like a cracked lantern."
Vaidya looked small for an instant, the scholar exposed in that light. He reached into his satchel and produced a small, dark glass bottle wrapped in linen. The potion caught the sunrise and threw it back like a promise. Solis had seen many things in Vaidya's pack — scrolls, charts, little vials of herbal things — but he had never seen that bottle.
"This is mine," Vaidya said. "I don't usually carry miracles. This is a potion. An enhanced version of Instructor Oliver's energy elixir. Oliver's formula was simple: warmth, focus, a pinch of open breath and a calculated amount of a herb, Puffwort. He used it to steady new recruits who had pushed themselves to their limits — kept them from collapsing after exertion. I studied Oliver's notes and added some threads."
Solis's mouth went dry. "You— you made a potion?"
"No," Vaidya corrected with a faint laugh. "I adapted a recipe. I fortified it with the smallest lattice of spatial tonic — just enough to open blocked points, not enough to make a man storm a gate. It will help stabilise your aura, open the 'energy points' that the lectures talk about, and give you a clean, short-term reservoir. It is not a cure. It is a key that opens a door for a little while. It carries risks — fatigue after the effect wears off, a risk of hollowing if abused, a little nausea while the channels reconfigure. Small chance of vision-blur if your core is unstable."
Solis stared at the bottle as if it might explode into explanation. "You expect me to drink... this? To go after Ada on that?"
Vaidya's eyes did not shift. "I expect you to do what you chose to be when you put on the situation. You have a sword to get back. You have a life outside of wounds. I do not ask this lightly. I am not so naive to think a draught will fix everything. But it will give you the hours to walk to Caldemount with a better chance of surviving the first roads, and it will open the channels enough that you can tap into you Aura Release Technique without burning yourself out immediately."
Solis's fingers tightened on the medallion until it bit the skin. He felt small and hollow and vast at once. The memory of Razille's fingers draining his chest flared like a living memory. The idea of drinking a potion to prop open his energy — to risk the aftercost — felt like trading one danger for another. But the alternative was to wait and hope the war would not take Ada and hope that Caldemount's stalwarts would hold without them. That thought did not sit well.
"You make it sound noble," he said finally. "Like a quest. But you also make it sound like I might be ruined for a week if this goes wrong."
Vaidya nodded. "Yes. Possibly. I cannot promise anything but a better shot than you have waking here and walking with no key in your pocket. And I will go with you. I am useless at swordplay but not entirely. I can map paths, I can keep watch, I can hold a line if necessary with my wind and ice magic. But mostly I will be there with you. If you fall, I will carry you if necessary."
Solis looked at him, at the earnest, quivering scholar who had once argued with him about the best angle to throw a parcel so the wind would not take it. There was open fear and open bravery welded into Vaidya's offer. It felt like being offered a rope across a gorge.
"How long does it take?" Solis asked finally.
"Ten heartbeats to down," Vaidya said, and the flippancy of the phrase clashed with the gravity in his eyes. "A warmth will grow from your spine to the throat; then it will settle in your chest like a second heart. The channels will open slowly for about an hour and stabilize. You'll feel like you could run a ridge without stopping. After the effect, you'll feel a hollow like someone took your marrow and forgot to return it for a day or two. I have added tinctures that reduce the hollow to manageable levels. It will not make you immortal. It will make you able to be one though."
Solis closed his eyes. He tasted the morning air: sharp, clean, and full of ash drift from distant fires. His nod was almost imperceptible.
"Drink it now, while we're still away from the gates," Vaidya said. "We have to travel in light-speed. We've slept little. We will take only what we can carry and what won't make us markers for K.P.P. The plan is not to burst through the lines. It is to be ghosts until the foothills."
Solis uncorked the bottle with hands that trembled. The liquid smelled of iron and citrus, of herbs and a faint undertone like warm metal. He raised the glass and thought of Ada's grin, of the way she shoved him during drills, of her promise to be at his side... at their. He thought of Razille's shadow and the sword blitzing into a darkness that had been waiting in stone.
He drank.