The city's breath had steadied to a human rhythm. Lamps along the Chorus Lattice hummed their low, obedient chord; the lighthouse teased out a stronger bar of white over the river. White-cloaked Dawnwardens held intersections like commas in a long sentence; people began to translate fear into chores.
Lord Caelion rode a slow half-circle around me with the practiced ease of someone born on pageantry. His mare's tack whispered; his mirror-inset gorget threw small, flattering moons across the cobbles.
"My heart eased when I saw you," he said—perfect diction, voice pitched for just us. "Vesperfall owes its pulse to your hand again. I would—if you allow—stand the rest of this night inside your shadow."
Aurelia's shield found my spine by a measured inch. The air around us cooled a degree.
┌──────────── SOCIAL OVERLAY ───────────┐
│ Oathbond Harmony: 84% (steady) │
│ Aegis Hymn: 22% (idle) │
│ Civility Zone: inactive │
│ Knight's Mandate: low (sheathed) │
│ Crowd Morale: improving │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
"On-duty," I said gently, palms easy on Lysithea. "And we're still chasing offsets and tallies."
"Duty, yes," he murmured, leaning just enough that his braid bled starlight. "Then let me be useful—and admit the truth that my usefulness is a poor rival to your grace."
Aurelia's jaw worked once. "Eyes front," she told him, which somehow implied and hands to yourself and give his air back and remember the city.
He smiled—neatly, infuriatingly unoffended. "Paladin. I will look where my lady bids—"
"—he's working," she corrected.
I exhaled once and let habit do the thinking. Two quick arcs across the cobbles—Sunline Sutures—and the air between us thickened into a soft boundary.
"Courtesy Field," I said mildly. "On-duty clause: no courting inside the line."
CIVILITY ZONE (active) — Improper approaches → Daze (2s) + Shame (–10% Accuracy, 30s).
Counter-Signature: No courtship while emergency flag is raised. First breach fails.
Caelion reined in a handspan, horse obeying before pride caught up. To his credit, he laughed under his breath and stayed on the correct side of the light.
A ribbon of shadow along a nearby drain twitched—like a foot trying the door after closing. Offset residue, clever as a rat, nosed at the base of a lamp to mute it.
Aurelia flicked a look. "Left."
I kissed the lamp glass with Lysithea—Prism Mercy bled a silent sub-line into the chimney and then down into the casing. The little clerk of dark that had come to cup the light found tone and thought better of its job. It un-happened without spectacle.
Caelion saw the touch—his face warmed. "Every motion a hymn. I confess, Eirion, the Saints built me to notice."
Aurelia's aura rose like a drawn boundary. Not full Mandate, but the weather changed. Two Dawnwardens nearest her straightened instinctively.
"Captain," she said, not looking at him. "If you have breath spare for compliments, your perimeter is too tight or too loose. Loosen it one street, tighten it one alley. Reflectors in pairs. Keep my brother's light five steps ahead and six to the sides."
It should have sounded like a scold. To his credit, Caelion made it sound like an order received. He lifted two fingers; the white shields rippled outward in pairs, mirror bosses intentionally staggered to catch the Chorus tone.
"Done," he said simply. Then, to me—softer again—"You know, there are oaths older than this trouble. House Rhyse—my House—swore to yours before we learned to spell 'dawn' without a tutor. If I speak warmly, it is because the Bride's sun has finally found me a direction."
My ears, traitors, considered pink. "Old oaths are for after the sirens sleep," I said. "Tonight we write new ones: No one dies within our lines."
"Beautiful," he breathed. "Then let me—if I might—write that vow with you."
A ripple. Not of romance—of wrong. The Chorus drifted off-key a hair; the lamps didn't dim so much as go uncertain. The word vow had weight here; the city had bled to anything that sounded like law.
Aurelia was already stepping closer—a shadow inside my shadow, shield turning so the mirror on her rim threw my face at me to keep Backline hooks honest.
"Don't swear in this square," she said, calm as doctrine.
I nodded and built a thing out of what we had.
"Etiquette Canticle."
I laid two Sunlines from lamp to lamp and tapped a Peal into the chimneys—not the bold bell tone, but a thin, courteous pitch. It ran the posts and came back as a house rule.
New Technique (Built): Etiquette Canticle — Civility Zone + Peal Weave through lamp-glass. Within 10 m: speech must align with the On-duty clause ("no courting under alarm"); romantic overtures are suppressed to harmless compliment; Knight's Mandate gains +10% efficacy versus indecent/hostile intent.
The air changed—like a parlour where tea is being poured correctly. Caelion's next attempt at poetry thinned of its heat and arrived as respect instead.
His brows lifted; then he—bless him—bowed properly, not the saddle flourishes. "I accept the rule," he said, and even his voice squared its corners to fit.
A commotion two streets over—Dawnwardens clashed with ledger-wights peeling from a shuttered counting-house. I flicked a look; Caelion returned it with a crisp nod.
"Left detachment, with me," he called. "Hold the reflectors like a mirror hymn; do not drown his lines."
They surged. We followed—not because he'd asked, but because the tone tugged our feet toward unfinished work.
At the counting-house, wights clattered like abacus beads poured down stairs. They tried the old trick—Levy, tithing my on-hit heals into Bleakness for the nearest civilian.
"Sanctuary Exemption," I breathed, stamping the corridor with the charity clause; Annotation locked the last Mend pre-tax. Smite rode the edges; Thread laced the ledger corners so the building couldn't apply for new opinions.
Aurelia's Mandate pressed indecent intent to its knees; white shields staggered into place as Halo Phalanx, mirrors catching my Peal and thickening the sunwheel around us. Caelion, to his credit again, said nothing pretty and did only correct violence.
We cleaned the room—no pyrotechnics, just math finished calmly. I sealed the doorframe with a Sunline bow and wrote the counting-house one small, kind rule: No charging the sick. It held.
We came back into air that didn't smell like numbers.
Caelion removed his helm and held it at his hip, a small concession to intimacy and etiquette under the Canticle. "If I cannot sing poetry under your law, I will sing logistics," he said, skating the edge of the rule without breaking it. "We have three more blocks of dark accounting and two narrow lanes likely to birth offsets. Tell me where you want the white line, and I will draw it there."
Aurelia studied him like a map she didn't trust. "You'll keep calling him 'my love' when the rule drops," she said flatly.
"I may call him 'my grace'," he countered lightly, eyes flicking to me not her, "and mean it in every sense allowed by Saints and statutes."
"Captain," she said, all steel now. "There are two facts. He is my brother. We are under alarm. Break either line and I will put you on your knees and decide when you may get up."
Her aura pulsed—a quick Knight's Mandate heartbeat. The Canticle caught it and polished it to something even harder to shrug.
Caelion's throat worked once. He did not kneel. He did lower his chin. "Understood," he said quietly.
"Good," I said, and let the line between us turn from tension back to habit. "We'll take your line on the river-ward. Stagger mirrors; keep pairs. I'll run tone through the glass. Aurelia will anchor the far lip."
"Orders received," he said—no flowers, only function. It looked great on him.
We moved as a set. Caelion called cadence. Dawnwardens set reflectors. Aurelia shouldered the hinge points. I stitched Sunlines every twenty paces so the city remembered who was speaking tonight.
When the last wight collapsed into paper ash and the last lamp took tone clean, I let the Etiquette Canticle fade. In its place I left a smaller rule written on the nearest post: Praise the work before the workers.
Caelion noticed, of course. "Then let the work be praised," he said, obeying the shape of the sentence. He saluted in the Dawnwarden style—right fist to heart, open palm toward the task—and did not look at my mouth when he did it.
"Status."
┌──────────── POST-PATROL ───────────┐
│ City lanes stabilized (4 sectors) │
│ Etiquette Canticle: operational │
│ HP — Eirion: 12,770 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,180 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 9,880 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 26% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 89% │
│ New: Etiquette Canticle (Rank 1) │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
The System dropped its coin.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ EMERGENCY — SOCIAL STABILITY │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ White Host integrated with Chorus │
│ Civility maintained under alarm │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +11,000 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +60 │
│ ▸ Mastery: Civility Zone +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We paused at an intersection that had remembered how to be an intersection. The lighthouse breathed a full bar at last; somewhere, a baker risked opening a door. Aurelia's shield was exactly where it belonged—an inch and a world.
I looked at her. "Thank you," I said, meaning the line she makes so I can draw mine. "And… the rule helped."
"It helped him," she said, but the edge had softened. "It helped me too."
Caelion stood two paces back, careful as a man in a chapel. "Permission to continue being useful, Healer?"
"Granted," Aurelia said before I could, because that was the safer arrangement for everyone.
We set off again, commas falling behind us, the night pulling itself together into paragraphs that ended correctly. When we crossed the next lamp, I flicked a tiny Sunline bow in thanks. The glass chimed a polite note—the sound of a city agreeing to keep its manners till morning.
Vesperfall held together like a suit you love—mended, not new, fitting better for the repair. Our Chorus Lattice purred along the lamp-line; white-cloaked Dawnwardens posted at corners, mirrors angled to keep our tone walking.
We moved through a block where shop windows wore their own night as glass. Lysithea rode my hip, patient. Aurelia was the inch of shield at my back—habit and weather.
Lord Caelion matched step without crowding, reins loose, helm crook'd in the crook of his arm. He studied the thin Sunline I laid every twenty paces and smiled like someone recognizing a signature in a painting.
"Forgive the observation, Healer," he said, voice careful under our Etiquette Canticle, "but your hand does not decorate the road—it instructs it. Vesperfall walks more correctly after you pass."
Aurelia's left eye… twitched. Only once. A small betrayal in a very composed face.
┌──────────── PATROL STATUS ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 12,770 / 13,180 MP: 9,880 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 26% Oathbond: Linked (84%) │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,180 / 12,460 │
│ Civility Zone: available | Etiquette Canticle: soft │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
"Thank you," I said, keeping the praise inside the Canticle's rule. "The city's doing most of the work. I'm just reminding it."
"It listens to you," he answered—still polite, but truth wearing court clothes. "As do we."
Aurelia angled her shield one degree farther out, as if to intercept compliments like arrows. "Eyes front," she told the street, which happened to include Caelion.
He dipped his chin, obedient. "Front."
We turned into a music-seller's lane, where cracked panes held reflections like sleep held too long. The Chorus tone wavered a hair—the wrong kind of treble, like breath fogging glass.
"Offset residue," Aurelia murmured.
Reflections thickened and stepped out of the windows: our silhouettes, thinner, off a half-note. Their mouths were hairline cracks. Their hands held tuning forks made of night.
SYSTEM: Mirror-Whispers (Dark Swarm)
Traits: Reflective Parry (counters beams), Out-of-Phase (lowers Oathbond Harmony on gaze), Fork-Lash (stuns on tone)
Hazard: May misalign partners; hate true noon, love polite rooms.
Caelion's mirror gorget picked up a wrong gleam. "Permission?"
Aurelia's jaw set. "Hold position. We'll keep the phase."
I planted Lysithea's tip on the cobbles and breathed a thing I'd been thinking about since the belfry.
"Bond Mirror."
I traced twin Sunlines up a cracked shopglass—the lines crossing in a quiet vow—and tapped a gentle Peal through the pane. Then I cut a neat Annotation caret in the air between us, anchoring our last shared Mend as the true moment.
The window carried our clause back to us instead of theirs.
New Technique (Built): Bond Mirror — Peal Weave through facing glass + Annotation of last shared Mend writes your Oathbond cadence into reflections.
Effect: Cancels Out-of-Phase, +5% Harmony while in sight of marked panes; Mirror-Whispers lose Reflective Parry vs. your line.
Harmony steadied under my ribs like a boat finding the right river.
They came, forks up—polite knives ready to make our tone a weapon against us. Bellguard became geometry; Aurelia took the live swing, I shaved the shadowed after-image. Timing opened—Aegis +12%—warm bank for later.
"Silent work," Aurelia said.
"Silent," I agreed.
I flicked Prism Mercy off the music-shop's broken display glass—three silent sub-lines threading the lane at shin, heart, eye. Each line crossed a Bond Mirror pane and came back cleaner. Starlit Reprise hopped between our reflections, pecking at fork tips until they sang the wrong note and fell.
Two Whispers slipped past and hissed in Caelion's shadow, forks raised for the compliment he'd been swallowing like a gentleman.
He didn't gild. He blocked—mirror boss forward, angled to catch my sub-line on the rim and throw it into their wrists without noise.
"Useful," Aurelia said, which is a garland in her language. Her eye did not twitch this time, but I heard it thinking about it.
"Tricant," I breathed. Smite rode Lysithea across a reflection seam; Mend slid into Aurelia's elbow where parry torque lives; Thread stitched a long crack in the nearest pane so the Bond Mirror wouldn't bleed out in the next gust.
The Whispers tried Fork-Lash—a stuttering ring meant to stun by perverting our own Peal. I refused the noise and laid a narrow Ripple Peal down the gutter—tone in water, not air. Their forks found nothing to eat.
"Now," Aurelia said.
We crossed, the lane becoming what we make of lanes: her Sunlit Verdict teaching a clean diagonal, my seam staying polite and unforgiving a finger's breadth aside. Where our lines met a Bond Mirror's memory of us, the Whispers went thin as fog at noon and lifted off the street without anyone having to hate them, which is my favorite kind of victory.
Silence returned—the good kind, like a shop door opening for the day. The reflections in the glass found our faces again and kept them.
┌──────────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Threat: Mirror-Whispers — dispersed (9) │
│ Bond Mirror panes: 3 active (10 min) │
│ HP — Eirion: 12,940 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,312 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 8,950 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 31% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 90% │
│ New: Bond Mirror (Rank 1) │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
Caelion exhaled and—lawfully inside the Canticle—let a compliment out the proper door. "Your Bond Mirror is elegant, Healer. You taught the city how to admire you and obey at once."
Aurelia's eye twitched. It did. She caught herself and transformed the twitch into a perfectly normal blink that fooled absolutely no one.
"Captain," she said, very even. "Compliment the technique. Not the person."
He took the correction without flinch. "The technique is elegant," he amended smoothly, and then, with a shade of mischief that somehow obeyed the rule, added, "—as expected, given its author."
The tiniest muscle in Aurelia's cheek considered revolution.
I coughed—mostly a laugh—and set a small Sunline bow on the shop's lintel. "No more offsets," I told the windows. They looked like they'd try to keep the promise.
We moved on. The Dawnwardens flowed ahead in pairs, reflectors catching our chorus like a game of sunlit catch. Aurelia drifted that half-step behind again, the inch of shield exactly where breath ends.
Caelion kept to the correct side of the Courtesy Field without being told. "An observation about logistics, Paladin," he said, deliberately bland. "When your brother walks a block, the block keeps the lesson. I am considering how to make that permanent for Wardens with fewer hymns."
Aurelia's aura eased a measurable fraction. "Teach them to see hinges, not target dummies," she said. "Make parries a conversation. If they learn anything from him, let it be pours, not bursts."
"Done," he said, and I believed him for reasons that were not entirely about the mirrors on his armor.
We crossed a square where our rails met at tidy right angles. People had gathered within the Suture Bridge field to breathe without counting. A child waved with both hands. Aurelia lifted two fingers in the tiniest salute; the child exploded with the kind of joy that makes policies worth writing.
The System placed one coin on our ledger:
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Vesperfall — Residual Cleansing │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Mirror-Whispers dispersed │
│ Chorus lanes: stable │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +9,500 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +40 │
│ ▸ Mastery: Prism Mercy +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We paused under a lamp that had decided to glow a little brighter for having survived being wrong. I checked my wrap; Aurelia checked the street; Caelion checked his distance and found it appropriate.
"Thank you for the help," I told him. "And for obeying the Canticle."
He bowed, not too deep. "I would prefer to be invited closer than rules allow. Failing that, I will be exemplary at following them."
Aurelia's eye almost twitched. She smoothed the impulse by tightening a strap that did not need tightening. "Keep being useful, Captain," she said, which is how she says you may remain.
We took the next corner, laying commas behind us. Bells along the river traded a soft chord. The lighthouse drew a fuller breath and held it. People in doorways practiced standing in their own names.
"Still guarding my six?" I asked, because light words keep lines supple.
"In a city where glass thinks it's a person?" Aurelia said, dry as good bread. "Especially."
Caelion fell in two paces back, precisely where the rule allowed. The road, having been complimented correctly, went on behaving, and the night settled into paragraphs that knew where to end.
The city had finally learned its breath. Lamps along our Chorus Lattice held their tune; puddles wore the moon like a borrowed brooch. Dawnwardens kept corners like commas, mirrors tilted to keep our tone walking. We stitched our little Sunlines every twenty paces, the road remembering how to be a sentence.
That was when the air remembered how to be a question.
It arrived like a pause you can trip over: a soft thinning of noise, a chill that didn't claim to be wind. The nearest lamp did not dim; it simply felt looked at. Somewhere, a bell that was not one of ours cleared its throat.
He stepped out of the space between two posts and came to the center of the lane as if he owned the middle of things. A man: tall, dark coat buttoned too neatly, gloves that made his hands into opinions. Hat brim low. He carried a cane that refused to click on stone. Two shadows walked with him—one to his right, one behind—both accurate to different lamps.
The world arranged itself politely around him.
Aurelia's shield found my back—the exact inch that stops a fall. "Eyes front," she told the night—and him.
Lord Caelion eased a pace to my left, reflectors angled, helm under his arm, every muscle rehearsing not to make this worse.
┌──────────── PRE-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 12,940 / 13,180 MP: 8,950 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 31% Oathbond: Linked (84%) │
│ Buffs: Chorus Lattice (active), Etiquette Canticle (soft) │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,312 / 12,460 │
│ Allies: Dawnwardens (6) — Halo Phalanx ready │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
He tipped the hat an exact centimeter. "Cantor of the Bride's Oath," he said, voice even and dry as vellum stored well. "Paladin who guards the rear of saints. Captain of mirrors." His gaze felt like a ledger, not a stare. "I am here to take measurements."
"Of what?" I asked, keeping Lysithea quiet at my hip.
"Of due things," he said, as if the word had weight. "A city's dawn written in someone else's hand. A vow unsheathed before its hour." His eyes—grey, careful—touched the sword only once. "And of you."
Aurelia's aura pressed; not quite Mandate, but the weather changed. "Name," she said.
He smiled without teeth. "I have several," he said. "You may call me Nones. The hour that is neither after nor before." One shadow nodded; the other did not.
The Etiquette Canticle around us tried to polish the air into a parlour. It slid off him like rain censored by paper.
"State your business," Aurelia said. "Briefly."
"Briefly," he agreed. The cane drew a small circle in the air, and the circle decided not to be perfectly round—a wrong ellipse. From its edge, three minute figures climbed down, neat as brass insects: quill-shouldered, visor-faced, each with a tiny seal in its belly. They unrolled paper that wasn't paper and began to walk the lane, measuring our Sunlines with stingy little steps.
SYSTEM: Nones, the Omen Clerk (Unknown Tier — Dark)
Traits: Two Shadows, Polite Radius (downgrades hostility to courtesy), Audit of Oaths (samples Oathbond), Clause of Appointment (invites itself past rules once per scene)
Summons: Minute Clerks — Nib (nicks Sunlines), Seal (mutes a lamp), Stamp (marks aid as "pending")
Note: Resists Etiquette effects; vulnerable to named law.
Aurelia took one step. The Minute Clerks stopped and looked up—if the seam of a visor can look. Caelion's hand brushed his sword out of habit and then stopped, checked by the Canticle. He cleared his throat instead, which is the Dawnwarden version of swearing.
Nones wagged a finger at the little creatures without looking. "Mind the plates. They bite."
The clerks resumed, extremely careful.
"Those are not courtesies," Aurelia said, voice low. "They are trespass."
"Observation," he said. "Yours as well as mine. I'm impressed by your rails." He nodded at the lamps. "I have come to admire, not spoil. And to warn." His eyes touched mine again. "When you unsheathed the Bride's Oath, the Bride noticed."
"Good," I said, meaning it.
He inclined his head as if I had moved a piece in a game he liked. "Not always," he said. "She will come with an auditor."
Aurelia steadied. "State the danger plainly."
He considered my sister, weighed her exact interest in violence, and decided to use a noun. "Forfeiture," he said.
The word tasted like iron.
I didn't like how the Oathbond hummed at it—how the tone tried to become a column in a ledger.
"Enough," Aurelia said, and the line between civility and law flowed toward law. "Your minute creatures are stepping on our work."
"They must," he said, very apologetically. "I must know how thick your promises are." A very small sadness warmed his words. "I am not here to break you. Only to see where you fit when the larger book opens."
I looked at his shadows—the one behind agreed with the lamplight; the one to the right was loyal to a moon we didn't have. I could not abide mysteries that thought they were better than mornings.
"Step into the line," I said.
He arched an eyebrow. "Do you invite me into your house, little cantor?"
"I invite your measurements into mine."
I drew two Sunlines post to post and set a thin Suture Bridge between them. Then I crossed the air above with a Bond Mirror—a quiet Annotation caret marked between Aurelia and me—and tapped a Peal through the nearest pane to carry that shared Mend as truth.
"Inquest Halo," I breathed.
New Technique (Built): Inquest Halo — Suture Bridge + Bond Mirror + Peal Weave.
Creates a polite interrogation ring: anything inside must keep one shadow and show its anchor clauses as faint text in air. Etiquette applies at +20%. First attempt to invoke Clause of Appointment fails politely.
The lane grew careful. The Halo's tone—barely there—wore the softness of a library where sunlight knows where to land.
Nones stepped in without stepping. His right shadow faded; the one behind stayed. Over his shoulder, faint writing flowered—not letters we use, exactly, but law with bones. I made out three clauses before they blurred:
Clause: Appointment to speak before bells.
Clause: Courtesy before violence.
Clause: Noon unpaid.
The Minute Clerks froze, little seals ticking. One lifted its nib to nick a Sunline—Inquest wrote over its head the word Borrower. It put the nib down as if it had been taught.
Aurelia's weight shifted—not an attack, an answer waiting.
Nones looked a fraction chagrined, and then—delighted. "Well done," he said softly, real respect threaded in. "Law laid kindly. I could almost sit."
"Do," Aurelia said in a way that implied on the ground.
He did not. "I bring a message," he said, politely inside the Halo. His cane's tip traced the smallest of bows in the air—a Sunline in negative. "If you keep writing rules like this, something that does not like rules will come. It will not audit. It will eat."
Caelion's hand went tighter on leather. "Name it."
Nones's smile remembered teeth. "I am an omen, captain. Names are above my pay grade." He looked to me again. "Eirion Luminara. When the Bride comes, do not let anyone else choose your noon for you."
The Oathbond chimed once—like a coin deciding which side to show. Aurelia's hand found the edge of her shield. "Are we done measuring?"
"Nearly." He lifted two fingers. The Minute Clerks gathered with bureaucratic gloom; one of them—Stamp—stuck something on the base of a lamp: a slim black ribbon printed with a circle that wasn't closed.
"Leave that," Nones said to us gently. "Or don't. It will do what it is meant." He tipped his hat again, precise. "Thank you for making your work legible."
The Clause of Appointment above his shoulder shivered, tried to blossom; the Inquest Halo fluttered a polite refusal—first attempt denied. He smiled wider, almost pleased to be inconvenienced.
"Until noon," he said, and stepped out of the circle in two places at once, which is how you know a conversation is over.
He left politeness behind like a fragrance.
We stood very still until the air remembered how to act like a street. The Halo slowly dimmed; the writing above where he'd stood dissolved into dust that wasn't dust.
Aurelia's breath went in once, out once. "Status."
┌──────────── INQUEST REPORT ───────────┐
│ Entity: "Nones" — Omen Clerk (assessed)│
│ Traits observed: Two Shadows; polite │
│ radius; audit tendencies; warns of │
│ Forfeiture event; references Bride │
│ Inquest Halo: SUCCESS (clauses revealed) │
│ HP — Eirion: 12,940 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,312 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 8,210 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 29% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 88% │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
We approached the black ribbon on the lamp. Up close, the circle printed on it almost closed, like a mouth that refuses to finish a word.
"Don't touch," Caelion warned, catching his own fingers mid-curiosity.
I touched it.
Not with skin—with Thread. Lumen sutures kissed the ribbon's weave; Annotation marked it as observed; Counter-Signature put the smallest sentence beneath: No harm to wards. The circle's gap stayed; the lamp's tone did not change.
"It's a marker," I said. "An invitation, maybe. Or a receipt." I loosened it with Thread, careful, and sealed it into a glass vial. The lamp brightened the smallest degree, like someone who'd decided to keep their own smile.
The System placed a precise coin.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ QUEST UPDATE │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Vesperfall — Omen Encounter │
│ Objective: Assess entity "Nones" │
│ Status: COMPLETE │
│ Loot: Null Ribbon (ominous), │
│ Minute Seal (spent) │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +13,000 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +70 │
│ ▸ Skill: Inquest Halo (unlocked) │
│ ▸ Mastery: Annotation +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
Caelion let a breath out he'd been holding with commendable discipline. "I dislike him," he said politely, which is to say he hated everything about that encounter.
Aurelia considered the ground where Nones had stood. "He obeyed after we wrote the rule."
"He admired that we wrote it," I said. "That might be worse."
She eyed the vial in my hand like a live coal. "We keep it?"
"We keep it labeled," I corrected, and tied a very small Sunline bow around the neck. Specimen, not pledge.
Caelion stepped the correct distance closer—the Canticle still soft as a house rule. "Healer," he said, voice gentled at the edges, "if noon is going to be a battlefield, may I stand exactly where your rules say I'm useful?"
Aurelia's mouth flattened, then relented a millimeter. "Yes," she said. "Where we say."
He bowed—properly this time, without mooning at poetry. "Where you say," he echoed.
We resumed the patrol. I set commas of light; Aurelia made sure commas can be walked through; Caelion kept mirrors where tone could turn corners politely. Overhead, the lighthouse held a true bar and hummed the note that means hold fast.
At the next lamp, I pressed two fingers to the glass. "Noon is ours to choose," I told it. The lamp liked the sentence and kept it.
The city breathed in agreement. And the night, having met a man with two shadows and found itself corrected by a halo written kindly, settled back into paragraphs that ended where they should—at morning.