They met beneath a statue that bled at dusk.
The courtyard was silent but for the dripping, not of water, but of light. Thin streaks of gold bled from the hollow eyes of a forgotten saint carved in alabaster, falling like threads onto the cracked stone below. The air held a hush, as though the city had paused to witness.
Cassiel stepped forward first, the sound of his boots sharp in the stillness. Behind him trailed Mirae and Elior, both subtly on guard, and Bastion, scanning the architecture with an artisan's suspicion. They had followed the bleeding light to this courtyard, unaware they were being followed just as closely.
Across from them, a second group emerged from one of Ashreign's arching cloisters. Ashwen's cloak moved like a blade behind her. Rue, beside her, leaned against the pillar with casual wariness. Loup strolled slightly ahead, hat tilted, hands empty, smile unreadable. Groat glinted once from Rue's coat pocket, though he said nothing. They had come chasing a rumor, and walked into something much larger.
The two groups stared at one another.
Cassiel's stance was protective, a shoulder slightly turned toward Mirae. His eyes swept across the new arrivals, locking for the briefest moment on Ashwen's. "You're the ones who set off the Cathedral Ward."
Rue raised an eyebrow. "And you're the ones that lit a memory lantern in a cursed district without sealing the dream-tracks. Bold. Or stupid. Hard to tell."
"Who are you?" Mirae asked, not unkindly.
Ashwen straightened, the tension in her jaw betraying weeks of silent tracking. "We're looking for someone. Someone who might've passed through here."
"A boy," Loup added, voice musical. "With too many lives and no sense of timing."
"You know Ilyan?" Elior asked, voice carefully neutral, but his fingers twitched at his side.
Ashwen gave a slow nod.
The silence stretched. Bastion stepped closer, then paused, glancing at the statue as another bead of light fell. "He's alive?"
"In parts," Rue said. "But we're trying to find all of him."
Cassiel frowned. "You talk like he's broken."
Loup smiled without warmth. "Aren't we all?"
It was Ashwen who finally stepped forward, closing the space between them. "We've been following traces. If you have pieces of the puzzle—"
"—we're not here to hand them over blindly," Cassiel interrupted. "You still haven't told us your names."
A brief flicker of tension danced through the space, like static.
"Ashwen," she said.
"Rue."
"Monsieur Loup, illusionist, partial librarian, part-time menace."
Groat clinked once. "Groat. Coin. Cursed. You know the type."
Cassiel exhaled. "Cassiel. Mirae, Elior, and Bastion. We've been chasing a name that doesn't hold still."
There was a moment, not warm, not yet trusting, but mutual in its weariness.
Ashwen's gaze softened. "Then let's stop running in separate directions."
The sky above Ashreign rang once, a low, distant bell. The statue wept again, and this time the light pooled at their feet in the shape of a crown.
Loup stared at it, eyebrows raised. "Oh, this city is going to be fun."
Rue muttered, "Or fatal."
No one disagreed
The silence that followed introductions stretched too long, taut as a bowstring. Names had been shared, but not truths, not yet. They stood inside the ruined vestibule of a chapel on Ashreign's edge, haloed by crumbling frescoes of saints with missing eyes. The air tasted of stone dust and something faintly metallic—magic, leaking in from cracked statues that wept at dusk.
Cassiel kept one hand near the hilt of his blade, though he gave no outward sign of tension. His posture was practiced neutrality, shoulders relaxed, weight centered, but Rue knew the signs. He didn't trust them. Not yet.
Ashwen was the one who broke the silence, her voice even but edged like a honed knife. "We're here for Ilyan. Nothing else."
Mirae's brow lifted. "So are we. That doesn't mean we'll walk your path."
Bastion leaned forward, eyes flicking toward Loup, then to Rue. "We've followed his trail through ash, through vanishings and whispers. If you think you know where he is, say so. Otherwise..."
Monsieur Loup made a quiet little chime of a laugh. "Oh, we know many things. But knowing and surviving are rarely aligned, monsieur."
"Stop posturing," Elior muttered, his arms crossed. He seemed young until one looked at his eyes, haunted and far too old.
Rue finally stepped forward, her coin glinting faintly in the shadow of her sleeve. "You want Ilyan? Fine. So do we. But he's not the same anymore. Ashreign's rewriting him. You felt it, didn't you? The bells ringing without wind? The statues bleeding? This city remembers him more clearly than we do."
Cassiel stiffened. "What do you mean, rewriting?"
"Fragments," Ashwen said, quietly now. "Pieces of him that don't belong. Things he couldn't know. Things none of us told him."
Loup twirled his hat by the brim. "And dreams. The city has begun to dream of him. Or rather, dream through him. That, mes amis, is where your troubles begin."
A bell rang. Not above them, but beneath.
Everyone froze. The chapel's foundation vibrated as if something had stirred far below the earth.
Mirae pulled her blade halfway from its sheath. "What was that?"
"The tunnels," said Rue. "We haven't gone down yet, but they're waking up. We need to decide. Together."
"Then we go now," Bastion said. "Or lose what's left of him."
They descended into the undercroft beneath the chapel, where old saints had been buried in silence. The stone gave way to staircases older than the kingdom, carved with unreadable glyphs and sealed with melted wax sigils. Rue's coin pulsed once. Loup's hat tilted in curiosity.
Ashwen knelt at the threshold of a sealed arch, pressing her hand to the stone. "He passed through here. I know it."
"So did something else," Elior murmured. "Something that shouldn't have."
They lit no torches. The light came from within the walls, an unsteady glow, like ink illuminated from the inside. And as they stepped through the forgotten threshold, none of them noticed the faint shimmer left behind, a page from a book that had never been written, now beginning to turn itself.