Evening gathered in the alders like ink wick'd into paper. The causeway narrowed to a rib of stone over a slack, black stream; a wooden arch—older than the Abbey's memory—spanned it in a slow bow. Ribbons and old love-knots hung from the rails. Some were harmless vows. Others hummed wrong, as if a stranger had signed for them.
We left Bride's Fen under a ward that sang true and took the road's midline, my Sunlines stitched every so many paces like neat habits. I walked ahead, eyes on the blade's glimmer, listening for the bell behind my eyes.
Mail clinked a half-step behind me. Close behind. I felt a shield's quiet weight at my back.
I glanced over my shoulder. "What are you doing?"
Aurelia didn't break stride. "Guarding your six."
"My—?"
"Back. Rear. Shadowed quarter." A beat. "And your sway is a diplomatic incident; the bridge has witnesses."
Heat rose to my ears. "I'm just walking why is my Ass a art piece."
"Exactly," she said, dry. "Which is why I'm here. Binders like back-clauses—hooks you don't see. And people like to stare at what's none of their business."
I faced forward, oddly reassured by the shield's steady presence. "Understood."
The bridge breathed us onto its planks. Breath tied to posts. Coins bent into hearts. A child's rag-doll pinned with a thorn. I touched none of it; the wrong vows prick like nettle through gloves.
SYSTEM: Area: Alder Bridge — Notarial Residue detected.
Effect: Speech rolls may accidentally Bind. Caution advised.
"Don't say I swear," Aurelia murmured.
"I won't," I said carefully.
We found them at the crown of the arch: five villagers standing too still, eyes bright and empty, mouths stitched shut with thin red cords. The cords ran under the rail and into the shadow where water forgot to reflect.
"Hold," Aurelia said, and set her shield to the rail. The Oathbond hummed; the world sharpened.
It rose from the shadow like a cleric with a grudge: tall, reed-thin, robed in layered contracts, hands tipped with steel nibs, chest a filing of sealed pages. Where its face should be, a blank seal—wax without a mark.
SYSTEM: Alder Binder (Boss) — Attribute DARK
Abilities:
▸ Clause: Backline — affixes a hidden term to the last action taken from behind.
▸ Redact — removes the most recent heal or buff.
▸ Subpoena of Silence — zone of compelled quiet; speaking applies Fine (MP drain).
▸ Penalty — converts overheal to damage for 1 target.
Trait: Contractual Gravity — Oath-type effects are pulled toward it.
Aurelia's shield edged closer to my spine by an inch. "It will try to pull our Oathbond into its ledger."
"Then we counter-sign first."
I slid Lysithea free. The blade tasted the air and answered with a low, practical hum.
"Aegis Hymn."
Tiles of dawn tessellated over us both. The Binder lifted a nibbed hand. A dotted line skated out of the air behind me and brushed the back of my greave—Clause: Backline.
"Not yours," Aurelia said, and stepped into the line, letting it touch her shield instead. The dotted edge smoked and failed to seat.
"Tricant: Smite, Mend, Thread."
I split the breath. Smite stitched a hair-thin seam across the Binder's front page; Mend washed warmth along Aurelia's calf where the line grazed; Thread snapped to the red cords at the villagers' mouths and cataloged their weave without cutting—understanding first, then action.
On-Hit Heal: +6% to Aurelia.
Aegis Hymn: +12% (Bellguard primed).
Analysis: Cords anchored to Notarial Seal; sever requires counter-signature.
The Binder's arm stabbed with terrible neatness. Bellguard kissed the nib aside; the parry window opened where none should, the blade's hymn making space in inevitability. The jolt fed Aegis—another +12% banked, warm and ready.
A dark ring unfurled at our feet—Subpoena of Silence. Sound thinned; words grew costly.
"Walk the line," Aurelia mouthed.
I cut a low Sunline Suture along the planks—wax-resist against ink. The Subpoena pooled on either side of the stroke like oil meeting a dam. We moved inside the thin corridor of lawful air.
The Binder hissed Redact. The last warmth I'd poured into Aurelia tried to vanish—history edited.
"Annotation." I carved a clean caret of light over her sternum and wrote the heal back in, anchoring it one heartbeat prior. The System approved with a small gold tick; the Binder's blank seal twitched.
Resisted: Redact (1).
Harmony: 84% (pulled, but holding).
Contractual Gravity: Oathbond drift −12% mitigated by Lysithea.
Red cords tugged toward the seal. The villagers' throats strained. I eased the pressure with Lumen Thread—not cutting yet, just giving skin something bright to cling to.
The Binder raised both hands. A page tore open along its ribs, words writhing. A Penalty glyph branded the air over Aurelia's head.
"No," I said, meaning it like a ward, and let White Mercy go partial along Lysithea's edge. The mercy flowed forward as a fine silver stream; where it touched the glyph, the foul mark unwrote. What tried to turn my overheal into hurt ran backward, back-credited to our Aegis bank.
Aurelia stepped into the thing like a verdict. "Your contract is void."
Her shield caught another nib; her sword clipped under the robe and pinned a handful of pages to the rail. Ink bled like old wine.
"Counter-oath," I breathed. "Write with me."
We set our palms together for a half-second on the inside of her shield—the smallest of rituals. The Oathbond thickened, and I felt the exact weight of her stance.
"Oathbond: Twin Radiance—Clause of Mutual Consent."
Light bridged us and climbed into the air as language—a single sentence written in gold, simple and infuriating: No vow holds unless both twins agree. The Binder's Contractual Gravity tried to pull it; the sentence refused—it had our names on it, not its seal.
"Now," Aurelia said.
We crossed—her Sunlit Verdict from shoulder to hip, my seam a breath finer beside it. The blank seal crazed, hairline fractures spidering out. Reprise bolts hopped off my overheal and pecked tidy holes along its robe's marginalia.
It retaliated with Clause: Backline again—this time targeting the villagers. A dotted line licked at their heels, eager to finalize.
I turned my blade and drew a circling Sunline around them—a bright Counter-Signature. The dotted line struck the circle and became mine instead, forced to complete on the condition I set. I slashed through my own line; the circle snapped like a ring of ice and the red cords broke cleanly, falling from mouths in obedient lengths.
They gasped. One fell to his knees and sobbed sound out of his chest like a bird finally let out of a shuttered room.
Rescued: 5 civilians (Bind removed).
Technique (Inferred): Counter-Signature — A Sunline traced around targets converts the next hostile Clause that touches it into your owned term, allowing safe sever.
The Binder's robe flared—pages leafing. It threw a Spill of heavy silence, wide as the span, aiming to drown our corridor.
I planted my feet and poured White Mercy not outward but downward, a gentle pressure dome that kept air within our Sunline warm and lawful. The Spill sheeted off our little world and slopped uselessly into the stream.
"Finish?" Aurelia asked, low.
"Together."
We went all at once—Bellguard into parry into Tricant:
Smite rode the blade's edge, opening a seam across the seal.
Mend ran through the little tears in Aurelia's glove hand, smoothing skin without a scar.
Thread stitched the bridge rail where old vows had gnawed it thin.
"Radiant Nova—pulse three."
Boom. Boom. Boom. Tone down the blade, each pulse a gavel. The blank seal shattered like cheap glass. Pages blew out of the robe and fluttered into the alder shadows where the stream drank them with quiet satisfaction.
The body under the contracts was only shadow; it fell the way burnt paper does, ash collapsing without fire.
Silence returned—the good kind again.
We stood a breath longer, listening for the habit of wrong to return. It didn't.
"Status."
┌──────────── CASE CLOSED ─────────────┐
│ Boss: Alder Binder — defeated │
│ Rescued: 5 villagers (Bind severed) │
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 13,990 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 33% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 90% │
│ New: Counter-Signature (rank 1) │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
Loot remained behind in the scrim of dusk—a Notary's Broken Seal (relic fragment), a Reed of Truthful Ink, and a little stack of unsigned slips that hummed like clean paper wanting good words.
The saved villagers touched their throats, startled by the ease of breathing. One woman's eyes brimmed. "I don't even remember what I promised."
"You don't owe it anymore," I said. "Go home. Drink water. Sleep under your own name."
Aurelia stood half a step behind me still, shield at my back out of habit if not necessity. I glanced again. "You can move up," I teased, voice small in the big quiet. "Contract's ash."
She didn't, not yet. "I'll move when you're done working," she said, echoing her earlier verdict, gaze flicking along the rail for any last wrong knot. Then, softer, pitched for me alone: "Also: I am still preventing a diplomatic incident."
Despite the dusk, I flushed. "It's just a walk."
"It's a walk with opinions. And you're mine to guard."
I let that sit between us like a candle in still air.
The System chimed, graceful as a coin laid on a ledger.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ QUEST UPDATE │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Twin Radiance: Keepers of the Dawn│
│ Sub-Objective: Break the Binder │
│ Status: COMPLETE │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +24,000 │
│ ▸ Relic Fragment: Notary's Seal │
│ ▸ Skill Mastery: Annotation +1 │
│ ▸ Reputation: Alder Ward (Trusted) │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We cut the last of the wrong ribbons and tied the rail with a slim Sunline bow—no words, just light reminding wood how to be kind. The rescued five walked ahead of us, voices ordinary and beautiful, testing their names on the air like new shoes.
"Next?" I asked as the stream resumed reflecting the first eager stars.
Aurelia finally stepped up beside me, shield easing to her shoulder. "Next," she said, then glanced sideways. "For the record, when we go back across this bridge in daylight, I'll still guard your six."
"Because of back-clauses."
"Because of back-clauses," she agreed, entirely straight-faced. A beat. "And because of people."
We crossed the alder arch as night settled in layers, the road in front of us a sentence we had corrected together—legible, honest, and pointing toward morning.
Dusk put copper on the causeway as we turned back toward Bride's Fen. Lysithea rode quiet at my hip; the ward-bells hummed their small, satisfied hour. I was laying a thin Sunline every twenty paces—habit now—when a knot of adventurers unpeeled from the inn rail and shouldered into our lane.
Five of them. Lacquered pauldrons, mismatched weapons, the swagger of people who've lived through enough bar stories to believe in their own invulnerability.
One with a scar that tried to make his mouth meaner looked me over as if appraising a relic. "He's beautiful," he said to his friends—and to me, as if I were a wall. "You available?"
Aurelia was half a step behind me, shield at my back. That inch was a weather system. "Eyes front," she told the air, voice mild and edged.
The scarred man laughed, a sound with elbows. "Easy, Paladin. We're paying a compliment."
I kept my hands easy on Lysithea's guard. "We're on duty," I said. "The road is under ward. Take your talk somewhere it can't chip stone."
One of the others—braids, too much perfume over old leather—tilted her head. "Can't he answer for himself?"
"He just did," Aurelia said, not raising her voice.
The scarred one stepped closer, eyes sliding down where my plates fit too neatly. His hand twitched—half an inch toward the fall of my hair.
"Don't," Aurelia said. The word had the weight of a drawn boundary.
He smirked, testing. "Or what?"
I exhaled once and drew a clean, knee-high arc—Sunline Suture—across the stones between us. It hung in the air like a line of gold ink that had decided to be a rail instead of a sentence.
"Road rule," I said. "No crossing without dawn. In practice: no paws past the line without consent."
SYSTEM: Courtesy Field (improvised) — Two or more Sunlines within 3m establish a Civility Zone.
Effect: First hostile act inside the zone incurs Daze (2s) and Shame (–10% Accuracy, 30s).
Note: Strength scales with Oathbond Harmony.
Aurelia slid to my shoulder, shield forward, eyes flat gold. The lane shrank to exactly the size we wanted to manage.
"Status," I murmured.
┌──────────── ENGAGEMENT CHECK ───────────┐
│ Oathbond Harmony: 83% (Sustained) │
│ Aegis Hymn: 12% (idle) │
│ Civility Zone: Active │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
"Come on," the braided woman said, amused despite herself. "A line of light?"
The scarred man tested it with the toe of his boot. Nothing dramatic. Just a brief, crisp click of tone where leather touched morning.
"Cute trick," he said, and—because some people must—reached over the line toward my shoulder.
The Civility Zone met his fingers like a bell tapped with a spoon.
He froze for two seconds, eyes blinking stupidly while the Daze ran its small, embarrassing course. When he came back, he found his hand already back on his own side of the line, as if some kindly aunt had returned it without making a scene.
Debuff applied: Shame (–10% Accuracy, 30s).
His friends snorted. One failed to hide a grin. The braided woman actually clapped once, delighted.
Aurelia didn't smile. "Try again, and you'll pick your teeth up off holy stone."
The scarred man bristled. "You going to hide behind a ward forever?"
"Only long enough to decide whether you're a problem," Aurelia said. Her shield edged a fraction higher. "Decide faster."
The moment could have bent either way. I preferred one particular way.
I pointed at the scabbed knuckles on his off-hand—the kind that come from training too hard, too long, without mending between. "You're tearing more than you build," I said, and flicked Lysithea in a small, precise crescent.
Sunline kissed his knuckles and dissolved in. The angry red quieted to healthy pink, the skin remembering what it was before it learned how to split.
He stared, betrayed by his own relief. The braided woman's shoulders eased a hair; one of the others—tall, tired—shifted his weight as if he'd just put his pack down after a long day.
"Take the win," I said gently. "And the road."
Something in the knot relaxed. Pack animals are braver when they think they're a story. Take the story away and you have people again.
The scarred man cleared his throat, trying to find a place to set his pride that wasn't on my side of the line. "Didn't mean offense," he lied almost well.
"You meant to see if you could," Aurelia said. "Now you know."
He looked at my sister, at the shield that had not budged, at the line that had made a fool of his fingers without humiliating his bones. Then he looked at me—and managed, if not contrition, at least the good manners to nod once.
"We'll… head on," he said.
"Do," Aurelia agreed.
They peeled away, quieter than they'd come. The braided woman glanced back and gave me the smallest two-finger salute, rueful and impressed. I lifted Lysithea a centimeter in reply, then let the Sunline soak back into the road.
The causeway breathed again. Dusk went on being dusk.
"Thank you," I said, meaning it for the inch of shield that had lived at my back and for the way she let me fix instead of break.
"You built a rule and enforced it," Aurelia said. "Good work." Then, with dry fatalism: "Also, yes—I am still guarding your six."
"I noticed," I said, cheeks warmed by more than the last of the sun. "Is it always going to be like this?"
"With you?" Her mouth almost smiled. "Yes."
I huffed—half laugh, half surrender—and rolled my shoulders. "Status."
┌──────────── POST-INTERACTION ───────────┐
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 13,640 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 14% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 85% │
│ Technique: Courtesy Field (noted) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
We filed the report with the quay scribe—Ink-wolves routed. Binder unmade. Minor disturbance on Pilgrim Road de-escalated without violence. The rune over the bridge brightened on the slate map; the scribe's shoulders lowered a centimeter.
On our way past the inn, a server with reed-dye on her fingers leaned over the rail. "Light bless you both," she called. "For the road—and the manners."
Aurelia inclined her head the precise degree that means accepted. I traced a tiny Sunline bow in the air and let it vanish—a hello you don't have to hold.
We took the lane toward the Abbey. Night laid its blue over the fen. The ward's dome shimmered like breath on glass. Behind me, the shield stayed where it always does now, an inch and a world away.
"Next posting at dawn," Aurelia said.
"Dawn," I echoed, and the bell behind my eyes rang once—clean, ready—like agreement.
The Abbey's dispatch hall smelled of vellum and oil. A slate map glowed with our previous lanes stitched thin and neat; rune-pegs tracked threats like chessmen. When we entered, the posting bell chimed—one soft strike, then a second, brighter.
DISPATCH LEDGER
Assignment: Old Glassworks — Gloom-Kiln
Site: Sunken Quarry Rise, north of Bride's Fen
Threat: Shadow-stoked furnace seeding dark-glass beasts onto Pilgrim Road
Hazards: Heat (Scorch), Shatterfield (glass shrapnel on loud bursts), Sootblight (DoT, lungs)
Objectives:
Stabilize apprentices; 2) Extinguish Gloom-Kiln; 3) Clean the prism vents
Bonus: No collateral (≤ 5% facility damage). Maintain Oathbond ≥ 60% in combat.
Note: Avoid wide-area Radiant Nova—edge-casts only inside.
Aurelia skimmed the lines, chin set. "We take it."
The scribe slid us a brass token stamped with a glassblower's pipe. "Last crew came back coughing dust and seeing edges that weren't there. Apprentices still inside."
"Then we move," I said, already turning.
Outside, evening leaned violet. I checked my kit, thumbed Lysithea's guard, and pulled a small lantern from my satchel—new, delicate, bone-pale.
"Made it on the way," I said. "From the recipe—Lantern of Ten Safe Hours. Holds a pocket of clean air. We'll nest it in the work floor."
Aurelia's gaze softened at the edges. "Good."
"Status."
┌──────────── PRE-DEPLOY ─────────────┐
│ Eirion Luminara │
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 21,100 / 21,100 │
│ Weapon: Lysithea (Legendary) │
│ Sigils: Honest Road (+8% vs ink) │
│ Item: Lantern of Ten Safe Hours (1) │
│ Oathbond: Linked (decay −20%) │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
The Old Glassworks hunched against the quarry's lip like a kiln-black chapel. Heat made the air ladder; panes of cooling glass slept in racks like thin, dreaming lakes. Inside, the main kiln throbbed a slow, dark heart—fire gone wrong, flames burning without orange, as if someone had taught shadow to imitate heat.
Coughs broke from the annealing room—three apprentices, maskless, eyes streaming, knees webbed with cuts where glass had spidered in the rush.
Aurelia slid past me, shield first. "I'll take the fore."
"I'll take the air," I said, setting the Lantern at the room's center. Its pale wick woke; a dome of honest breath swelled until the coughs hitched… eased.
"Aegis Hymn."
Healer (sustain):
"Aegis thalán, hyménne arhael;
Serin valín, sirae velyn;
Lirë solánne— aërion keep."
Twin Paladin (antiphon, optional):
"Osthár an rhael— kyrn valára."
Stand for the light— our hearts together
Tiles of dawn tessellated over us. The kiln belched and something poured out—dark-glass jackals, bodies jointed like window lead, eyes bright with borrowed furnace.
SYSTEM: Kiln Jackal (Dark/Construct)
Traits: Shatterburst (on death: cone shards), Gloam-hot (melee hits cause Scorch)
Weakness: Clean edges; resists diffuse light; avoid loud bursts.
"Edge-casts," Aurelia reminded without looking.
"On it."
She met the first jackal at the lip of the annealing room—Bellguard clipped its muzzle; Aegis drank—+12%—while her sword kissed down and away, shaving silent slivers that collapsed without bursting.
I kept my voice narrow—Tricant in one breath:
Smite rode my blade in a hair-fine seam, trimming legs at the joints without pressurizing the glass.
Mend poured along Aurelia's knuckles where heat bit under the glove.
Thread laced the apprentices' shallow cuts, sliding splinters out as if the skin politely expelled unwelcome guests.
On-Hit Heal: +6% to nearest ally (Aurelia).
Aegis Hymn: 26% banked.
Lantern field: Stable, radius 6m.
Two jackals tried to flank through the cooling racks. I sketched twin low arcs—Sunline Sutures—that met beneath their paws. They ran across the lines; the sutures healed us, then detonated inside them—not with sound, but with a tidy hush that folded their bodies into harmless pebbles of clear glass.
Heat pressed like a hand. Sweat slicked my spine; lungs wanted to pant. The Lantern took the edge, but the kiln kept teaching the room how to scorch.
"Harmony?" Aurelia asked, cutting clean, unhurried.
┌───────────── COMBAT OVERLAY ─────────────┐
│ Oathbond Harmony: 78% (Sustained) │
│ Aegis Hymn Storage: 51% (surge ready) │
│ Hazards: Scorch ↑ | Sootblight ↘︎ (lantern)│
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
The kiln's door yawned—Gloom-stoker Warden stepped out, a foreman's silhouette in an apron woven from soot. Fingers like iron tongs clacked; a mask of black-mirrored glass reflected us wrong—our shapes warped, our timing a half-step off.
SYSTEM: Gloom-stoker Warden (Mini-Boss) — Dark/Heat
Abilities: Refraction Veil (bends incoming lines), Tongs (grabs to throw into kiln), Stoke (heats jackals to over-burst)
Hazard: Shatterfield rises when armor is loud.
"Quiet," Aurelia warned—meaning our motion. She lowered her stance; even her plate sounded like cloth.
The Warden snapped—Tongs clamped my bracer. I turned with it instead of against, let Bellguard shave the angle; the parry window opened where none should. Aegis drank big—+24%—and sang warm under my ribs.
I didn't explode mercy. I poured it—White Mercy (partial)—down Lysithea's fuller, a cool ribbon that bit the Warden's heat and returned as strength to our bank.
"Prism cut," I murmured to myself, and tried something new.
Radiant Nova—edge tap met a hanging sheet of cooling glass; I angled the blade so the tone refracted. The pulse split—three thin, silent lines that slid around the Warden's Refraction Veil and bit from odd angles.
Technique (Inferred): Prism Mercy — Edge-cast Nova against glass splits into silent sub-lines (max 3). Scales with INT.
Aurelia took the cue—her sword drew a clean diagonal; my seam rode beside it, a letter-width apart. The Warden's mask crazed like ice walked on. It reached to Stoke the jackals; I traced a tight Sunline across the kiln's feed slot—the line acted as a damper, light refusing the wrong kind of air.
Jackals popped anyway—Shatterburst coned slivers toward the apprentices.
I snapped Lumen Thread in a fan—Suture Screen—weaving a quick gauze in the air. Shards struck the glowing mesh and dropped harmless, tinkling like rain on a tent.
New Variant: Suture Screen — Rapid, short-lived Thread lattice; blocks small projectiles; converts 30% blocked into Aegis.
"Axe!" one apprentice cried, pointing—an overhead pulley creaked, holding a crate of raw cullet about to swing down into us.
Aurelia didn't look. "You have it."
I did. Tricant again—Thread shot to the pulley rope, Mend kissed the frayed fibers into temporary strength, Smite shaved the edge so the crate swung back and settled like a scolded dog.
"Finish?" Aurelia asked, voice level in heat.
"Together."
She drove—shield a hush, boots sure. The Warden's Tongs grabbed; Bellguard turned; Aegis swelled—73%—and I opened White Mercy—Release: White Mercy (cone) as a cool front, no boom, just pressure. Heat fled the Warden's joints; soot-weave cracked. Prism Mercy split a final silent line off the inspection pane; Reprise bolts, fat with overheal, pecked tidy pits along the mask until it finally fell inward, the body under it collapsing into ash that smelled like a forge that had just been told the truth.
Silence returned in the shape of ordinary shop noise—tick of cooling glass, soft ping of stress releasing. The kiln's black flame guttered, then turned honest—orange licked back through like dawn slipping past a curtain.
"Status."
┌──────────── ENGAGEMENT REPORT ───────────┐
│ Threats: Kiln Jackals neutralized (12) │
│ Mini-Boss: Gloom-stoker Warden defeated │
│ Kiln: Stabilized (orange burn, safe) │
│ Apprentices: 3 stabilized (Sootblight 0) │
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 15,920 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 29% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 87% │
│ New: Prism Mercy (noted), Suture Screen │
└───────────────────────────────────────────┘
We did the slow work then—Thread in the prism vents, teasing soot where it caked; Sunlines along the floor lanes to remind heat how to flow; Mend at the apprentices' wrists where years of work had written a story of strain.
"Breathing's… easy," one said, shocked at the simple luxury.
"Keep the Lantern for the night," I told the foreman, now just a tired person with glass dust in his hair. "Ten safe hours. Let the kiln relearn its color."
He took it like a sacrament. "We'll repay—"
"Make good panes," Aurelia said. "People need windows."
The System chimed—cool, precise.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ POSTING COMPLETE │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Old Glassworks — Gloom-Kiln │
│ Objectives: 1–3 COMPLETE │
│ Bonus: Facility damage ≤ 5% — PASS│
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +26,500 │
│ ▸ Fen Scrip +140 │
│ ▸ Relic Shard: Prism Venter │
│ ▸ Skill Mastery: Sunline +1 │
│ ▸ Title (Local): **Window-mender** │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
Outside, quarry wind felt like a basin of cool water. Stars began their careful work. Aurelia walked a half-step behind me until we cleared the ramp.
I glanced back with a small smile. "Still guarding my six?"
She considered, then moved up beside me, shoulder to shoulder. "Edges managed. For now."
I cut a thin Sunline down the causeway's crown, just enough to teach the road another good habit. Lysithea hummed low and practical in my hand—the sound of light that prefers to be useful rather than loud.
"Next posting at first bell," Aurelia said, eyes on the Abbey's warm windows far off.
"Dawn," I agreed, and the bell behind my eyes answered once—clean as glass that's never known a crack.