"You don't even know how to sharpen the blade properly," Janis muttered, biting down on a thick strip of dried root, her fingers smeared with blackened grease as she finished repairing her bowstring.
Azrael winced, holding the dull knife in his hand, watching her work. "I was just checking the edge."
"You were grinding the wrong side. That's how you chip it. You're not forging pottery."
She tossed the blade back at him. It clattered against his chestplate before falling to the dirt. Azrael reached for it, his cheeks burning. Her bluntness always struck harder than a slap.
The sky was gray again, veiled with low clouds that dragged across the peaks like slow-moving beasts.
They had set up camp near a ridge overlooking the southern vale; a place Azrael hadn't visited since his childhood.
Janis stood, stretching her arms behind her back, then paced to the ridge's edge. She gazed into the distance, where trails of dark smoke still curled from the far-off ruins of Morrin.
Azrael's eye lingered on her hands; the swift, firm, unfaltering way she had wrapped the bowstring, how she'd twisted the sinew with her teeth and clenched it in her palm.
Something about it pulled at him.
He had seen that gesture before.
Not hers.
His mother's.
---
It had been fifteen years ago, before the fever took the cows in the lower meadows, and before the first great frost of that cycle. He remembered the room clearly; the roundness of it, how the wooden beams above crisscrossed like ribs, like he was inside the belly of some old beast.
Kelea Danigrasse had been younger then. Her braids were tighter, streaked with fewer silver strands. She wore a robe of dark green flax, tied at the waist with simple twine.
Her hands moved with an almost melodic rhythm as she strung an old hunter's bow across her lap.
Young Azrael sat cross-legged opposite her, legs still too short to fold neatly. He watched, wide-eyed, as she wet her fingers and twisted the string with silent precision.
"You always breathe too loud when you're nervous," she said, not looking up.
Azrael clamped his mouth shut.
Kelea smiled faintly, winding the string again. "There's no shame in fear. Fear is a lantern. You can see more when it's lit."
"But… but I don't want to be afraid. Barek says fear is weakness."
She chuckled, low and warm. "Barek says a lot of things. When he was five, he said fireflies were star fragments. Now he says fear is weakness. Neither are quite true."
Azrael shifted. "But the boys; they all laugh at me. They say I blink too much when I hold the spear."
Kelea finished the knot and turned the bow toward him. "Then blink. But don't drop the spear."
He took it from her with both hands. It was heavier than he expected. He had hoped for magic in it—a warmth, a hum, a whisper. But it was just wood.
She reached forward and adjusted his grip. Her fingers were warm.
"One day," she said, eyes softening, "you'll hold something much heavier. And no one will laugh then."
"Like a sword?"
"No." She smiled, brushing a stray curl from his forehead. "A secret."
---
Back in the present, Azrael's throat tightened.
Janis turned. "You spacing out again?"
"Just thinking," he murmured.
She squinted. "You get that look when you're about to mope. Don't mope."
"I'm not. Just... remembering."
She sat beside him, pulling her cloak tighter. The wind was biting now, full of dry leaves and far-off howls.
"We used to come here," Azrael said. "This ridge. Me and my mother."
"Did she teach you anything useful?"
"Patience," he said. "And how to listen."
Janis chuckled. "No wonder you're bad at shouting."
He smiled. It faded quickly.
"She told me once that I'd carry a secret."
Janis looked at him, her expression unreadable. "You think this is it? What happened in that vault?"
"Maybe. I don't know. She always looked like she knew something. Like she was waiting for something to catch up to me."
"Parents are weird that way," Janis muttered. "Mine told me I'd become a baker."
Azrael raised a brow.
"Turns out the only thing I bake is arrows in bone."
They both laughed quietly. The wind carried the sound downhill, where a pair of sentries were lighting early fires.
Janis leaned back, her boots against the rock. "She was smart. Your mother. Always kind to me, even when the elders told her I was trouble."
Azrael looked at her. "You were trouble."
"I still am."
She nudged him with her shoulder.
He let the silence settle again, letting the memory linger. The bowstring. The hands. The secret. He hadn't thought of that day in years. Why now?
The orb, maybe. The voice. The pressure behind his eyes. Something was opening. Cracking.
"What if she knew?" he asked suddenly. "What if she knew what I was?"
Janis sighed. "Then I hope she left you more clues, because you're about as subtle as a goat in a pottery shed."
He rolled his eye.
"Seriously though," she said, tone softening. "If she knew something… maybe she left it behind. A journal. A whisper in a scroll. Something in the old chambers."
Azrael frowned. "The eastern attic. She kept her own books there."
"Worth a look."
He nodded slowly.
Below, the Vale bustled with pre-night movement. Faint horns blew, the signal for border changes. Dogs barked near the west trench. And in the wind, faintly, faintly, a smell of burning moss drifted past.
Azrael closed his eye and tried to return to that moment—the curve of the bow, the warmth of her fingers, the way she said secret like it was a sacred stone in the mouth.
But it was already fading.
He opened his eye. Night was falling.