Chapter 5 — Part 3: Sun-Bell Audit
The first bell tasted of copper and breath. Mist clung to the flagstones and made the low arches sweat; the sky-dome gathered light without brightening and held it like a promise it didn't want to break too soon.
KrysKo stood outside the Scentwarden Hall with Kara to his right and Jax to his left. The building was small as a chapel and twice as solemn. Its door was Drakari stone—river-dark, carved in spirals that meant patience, bargain, teeth.
Jax nudged the brass lozenge under KrysKo's scarf—a gesture that was half fuss, half ritual. "Two clicks," he whispered. "Not three. Three reads like panic bath."
Kara gave the knot of her satchel strap a final, needless pull. "They're not trying to catch you out," she told KrysKo softly. "They're trying to catch everyone else up. Answer what you can. Don't invent what you can't."
He inclined his head. The warm system-voice drifted in like the first steam from a mug.
> You are not a lie, it said, patient as old wood. You are a choice. Answer with the part of you that knows that.
Inside, the hall smelled of smokeleaf and clean clay. An oval room: low fire sunk in the center; benches circling it; niches holding ash bowls, reed-sticks, and three ledgers bound in cracked hide. A Drakari scentwarden waited in a cowled mantle of river-stone gray. His scales were dark basalt, his eyes lamplight gold. A human warden stood beside him: Aria Senn, crown-braid, scars tidy, gaze that didn't miss.
"Candidate Myles," Senn said. "Marrow. O'Ruadhraigh."
Kara bowed properly. Jax bowed like a man who'd practiced not looking like he was making fun of the bow. KrysKo inclined his head the exact degree he'd used at the University arch: vow's measure.
The scentwarden touched ash, then tongue. "We test for agreement," he said. Drakari Trade came out of him like stones in a slow river. "Scent tells truth of health and harm. Masks tell truth of intention." His head tilted a fraction toward KrysKo. "And sometimes—masks tell truth of respect."
Aria Senn gestured. "Process."
They went in order. Kara first: wrist over ash, breath over smokeleaf, the reed at her throat marking rosemary, iron, clove, and last night's ink. The scentwarden hummed. "Myles line," he said, ritual-soft. "Healer's hands. Courage."
Kara colored, almost smiled, stilled it.
Jax next: engine-grease, solder flux, adrenaline turning sweet. The scentwarden's nostrils flared. "Mechanum," he said, a touch dry. "And a prayer you don't believe in." Jax beamed like he'd been knighted.
Then KrysKo.
He stepped into the smoke. The brass lozenge plumed its careful lie—salt, faint starch, mint, a clean laundry ghost—and the cold System raised its screen behind his eyes, a grid of values and rails.
[SCENTWARDEN PROTOCOL DETECTED]
[Ambient olfaction net: ACTIVE]
[Human-adjacent profile: 92%]
[Drakari-detectable nonhuman vectors: HIGH RISK]
[Recommendation: enable veil]
He lifted his wrists without being prompted. The scentwarden's eyes thinned to gold slits, not hostile—interested the way mountains get interested when people build roads on them.
"Breathe," the Drakari said.
KrysKo did. The plume warmed with his chest; the lozenge made its little clockwork sigh.
The scentwarden stepped closer. Not a threat. A craft. He drew in KrysKo's presence like reading a long sentence with no punctuation. The silence went a shade denser. Even Jax shut up.
A single, small chime tapped the air: the scentwarden's throat. "Human," he said, slow. "Smoke. Linen. Iron of old blood." A pause. His pupils narrowed further as something else reached him—something the lozenge did not own. "And… other."
Aria Senn's weight shifted a millimeter. "Define 'other.'"
The scentwarden considered. "Not Ophilim. Not Architect." His head tipped. "Not our river." He inhaled again, patient as tide. "A thread I do not name today."
Kara's fingers twitched at her satchel strap. Jax held his breath like he was trying not to laugh at a funeral.
Senn's tone didn't change. "Sponsor?"
Kara: "Under Myles charter. I vouch. He saved my life."
Senn's eyes moved to KrysKo and stayed. "What do you call yourself?" she asked. Not who are you. What do you call yourself. Policy wrapped around bone.
He didn't look away. "Student," he said. The word chose him as much as he chose it. "KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh."
"And your intent on University soil?"
"To learn," he said. "To keep people living."
Senn and the scentwarden traded the tiniest nod, old colleagues at a bridge neither liked but both would defend.
"Law is simple," Senn said, reciting what he already knew. "No live steel drawn inside the walls. No autonomous constructs unsponsored. No blood price on University stone. You break the first, you leave. You break the second, I escort you out. You break the third, the Drakari decide how much of you leaves."
"Understood," KrysKo said.
The scentwarden lifted a small bowl of ash. "Mark vow," he said. Drakari ritual opened like a pocketknife. "Not to not be what you are. To be what you are with mercy."
KrysKo extended his right hand. The ash was cool, gritty. The scentwarden drew a spiral on his palm—one, then two, then one again—the University braid in simple form. He pressed KrysKo's palm to the stone rim at waist height. The ash spiral printed itself. The stone kept the mark the way rivers keep stories: not perfectly, but truly.
The warm voice in him smiled, audible in no instrument.
> You didn't lie, it said. You chose. Good.
The scentwarden set the bowl aside. His eyes softened by a shade only stone would notice. "Your mask is skill," he said. "But skill breaks when wind changes. Learn to be your own smoke."
The cold System flicked a new prompt he hadn't offered himself:
[NEW SUBSYSTEM UNLOCKED: Scent Profile Editor — v2 (bioadaptive)]
[Source: Lunari thread activation threshold met (social ritual + intention alignment)]
[Capabilities: modulate baseline volatile profile; mimic limited variants (human, neutral "stone," rain-washed)]
[Limitations: Drakari master-wardens will detect masking; extended use increases metabolic draw]
[Safety: false-negative lockout engaged on campus; manual override disabled on University stone]
The warm voice breathed a laugh. > He asked you to be your own smoke, and your bones obliged.
Jax's eyebrows did a slow climb as if he could feel something about the room change. "You look like you just learned a new curse," he murmured.
"A prayer," KrysKo said, almost.
Aria Senn closed the ledger. "Audit passed," she said. "Provisional clearance renewed. Next: field assignment." She tapped the second ledger with a knuckle. "We keep our students in classrooms as long as we can. Then we run out of 'as long as we can.'"
She led them into the thin morning light. Outside, the campus had brightened to work. Bells ciphered the hour, then the half. A notice board at the Cloister arch had gained new names written neat and unforgiving.
Senn pointed with her chin. "Read."
FIELD ROTATIONS — PROVISIONAL COHORTS
Escort & Salvage: South Farms
Cohort Nine — Myles (K.), Marrow (J.), O'Ruadhraigh (K.)
Oversight: Warden Senn
Ranger Liaison: Ronan Veyne
Kara made the tight little sound people make when fate and desire agree too loudly. "That's us."
"South Farms," Jax said. "Floodplain roads, bad culverts, worse opinions."
KrysKo touched the name Veyne with his eyes before his mind. The word hummed like a string he'd plucked in another room. He filed the hum the way you save warmth from a hand you let go.
Senn's mouth hardly moved when she almost smiled. "You'll meet him in the east yard. Pack for a day. Walk ready for three. If you draw steel outside our walls, you draw it for someone, not against the first thing that offends your breakfast."
"Understood," Kara said. Jax saluted, flippant and sincere in the same breath.
Senn's gaze returned to KrysKo. "One more thing," she said. "You don't bleed people for pride. You don't take bait. If someone needs your temper, make them earn it with cause and witnesses."
"I won't," he said.
"You will be asked," she said, as if reciting weather. "Be ready to say no."
She left them at the foot of the arch and was gone before anyone could decide if they liked her.
---
They packed fast. Kara kitted her satchel with vials and binders and coagulants, checker-labeled and nested in roll-cloth; Jax robbed his own drawers and not a few University bins—coil springs, tri-prism, a wicked little hand winch—leaving IOUs that were drawings of IOUs; KrysKo rewrapped his scarf, checked bracer buckles, and taught the new Scent Editor what "rain-washed" meant until his chest smelled faintly of April and iron.
In the east yard, Drakari rang the perimeter stones with the flat of their thumbs. A string of wagons waited in a patient line: two ox-carts laden with seed, a low-bed salvager carrying pipe, and a rickety box wagon whose driver had written a prayer along its edge in chalk. "Don't tip." As if the road listened.
The rangers moved along the line with the unhurried efficiency of people whose timing is the timing of everyone else. KrysKo clocked sightlines without looking at them. Jax cataloged lash points. Kara checked the children with quick eyes that said fever or not, wound or not, hungry or hungry-later.
He noticed him at the same instant Kara did: a man leaning against a pillar like he'd made the pillar when no one was watching. Mid-thirties, broad through chest and shoulder, rangy legs, hair dark and cut functional, a day's stubble he hadn't apologized to anyone for. His eyes were a green that had decided to be brown when needed. He wore University travel leathers and a ranger's band, and at his throat a bead-mark: Veyne.
When he pushed off the pillar and came toward them, Kara's chin lifted one degree, the degree that meant equal parts respect and test. "Ranger Liaison?" she asked.
"Ronan Veyne," he said, offering it like a hand-grip. His voice had a low scrape in it, like rock under water. He took them in—Kara and the Myles line in her wrist; Jax and the tools in his pockets; KrysKo and the stillness that made air take longer to get around him. His gaze snagged there, not alarm—calculation.
"Aria said you don't waste time," Ronan added, half to himself. "Good. The road is a liar. I like truth in the people on it."
Kara found the ritual's rhythm. "Kara Myles. Apotheion."
"Jax Marrow. Mechanum. Emergency miracles on request," Jax said, and got the ghost of a smile for his trouble.
"KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh," KrysKo said.
Ronan's brow notched a hair, not at the name, at the temper under it. He nodded once. "You fight?"
"I try not to," KrysKo said.
Ronan approved that without saying so. "Good. We're not going far, which is when things go wrong. South Farms had a night of little thieves"—his chin flicked at the ox-carts—"and a day of bigger ones. We move seed, pipe, and a list of bad ideas the farmers will insist on keeping." He jerked his thumb toward the gate. "We walk out on two bells. You get ten minutes to make friends with your caravan and six to hate your boots."
He stepped closer to Kara, voice lowered. "You Myles?"
"I am," she said, as if the answer mattered to thunder.
"The old healer at South Farms kept your grandmother's recipes like law," he said. "If she's still above ground, she'll ask you to prove you can read them with your nose."
"I can," Kara said, and the part of her that was a child who'd learned to count by tincture drops smiled without teeth.
Ronan's gaze returned to KrysKo. "We don't draw on campus," he said, habit making policy personal. "Outside the wall—if steel comes out, it goes back clean or we talk about why it isn't."
KrysKo nodded. "Understood."
"Good," Ronan said. He clapped Jax once on the shoulder like a smith tests a new hammer. "You—don't blow any bridges we plan to cross."
"I'm a builder," Jax said, wounded pride as performance. "I only blow the ones other people forgot to burn."
"Useful," Ronan said, and meant it.
Two bells marked the ready. The gate groaned its kindness open. The world outside smelled like last rain and next dust. A pair of ravens argued about nothing on the wall and lost track of their argument mid-argument.
Aria Senn met them at the threshold, tablet in hand. She looked at each of them in turn and built a little map with her glance: Kara's steady braid; Jax's impatient fingers; KrysKo's balance that belonged to arenas that were not chalked.
"Walk quiet," Senn said. "Listen to Ronan. If the road changes shape, tell the person behind you what shape it changed to. If you kill something, write down why."
Jax opened his mouth. Senn looked at him. Jax shut it, smiling.
Senn's gaze returned to KrysKo for a last second. Whatever she meant to say, she did not say aloud. Her eyes did instead: No pride. No bait. Not today.
KrysKo inclined his head. The warm voice in him laid a hand on his shoulder made of nothing and made it feel like something.
> You are walking with people, it said, pleased. Good.
They rolled.
The first half-mile was a rehearsal: straps creaked, wagon wheels re-learned ruts, oxen were reminded that turns are not opinions. The seed carts smelled of hope and mildew. The salvager clanked like an old heart. Pipe sang quietly to itself in a note only mechanics and desperate people hear.
Ronan set an easy pace. "Eyes up," he called back, every so often. "We don't get paid extra to be surprised."
Jax trotted alongside the low-bed, listening to bearings the way priests listen to sinners. Kara walked the right flank, eyes on the ditches where skull rats loved to make their little empires. KrysKo ran his awareness out to the hedges and brought it back, to the fences and brought it back, to the birds and brought it back, like casting a line and practicing the reel.
A mile out, the hedgerow did not breathe right.
KrysKo didn't stop walking. He said, low, "Ronan."
The ranger was already looking. "I have it," he said. But he waited for KrysKo to name it.
"Ground scent wrong," KrysKo said. "Urine. Machine oil. Copper."
Kara's face shuttered. "Raiders," she whispered. You could smell a camp even after the camp was gone—the way a lie lingers.
Ronan's fingers checked his bowstring like a man who trusted it and himself equally. "We go single file for the next forty," he said over his shoulder. "If someone says 'down,' you make them proud of how fast you learned."
They threaded through the bottleneck where a dead shuttle bus had decided to retire across the road a century ago. KrysKo slid up to the second position, behind Ronan and in front of the first ox-cart. Kara stayed three back where medicine gets to be a shield. Jax drifted last like a fisherman who intends to pull everyone out if they slip.
The world held its breath.
A can clinked somewhere it shouldn't have. Ronan's hand came up. Everyone stopped the way good training stops—beautifully.
Nothing dropped from the hedges. Nothing sprang. That bothered KrysKo more than an ambush would have. The cold System kept its measured tone:
[Threat: latent.
Anomalies: trip-noise without follow.
Advisory: devices or bait. Maintain forward motion in controlled cadence.]
They eased through. Jax palmed a wire from the road's edge that would have ripped the seed sacks and left a feast on the gravel for birds and human thieves both. He pocketed it and didn't smile.
Past the choke, the road ran open again and tried to pretend it had no memory. They let it.
South Farms lifted out of the low ground piece by stubborn piece: a ring-wall of welded panel and timber; watch-platforms that had learned to be patient; roofs with stone on top because the wind has opinions. Children on the wall leaned out and were yanked back by someone who loved them; then allowed to lean again because that's how both hearts survived.
The gate opened because the University braid buys trust it hasn't spent yet. The first face inside the wall was old and familiar in a way KrysKo couldn't have explained: a woman with hands like recipes. Elowen Myles—line aunt, keeper of jars.
Kara almost ran. She didn't. She walked fast and let Elowen see her coming. That's how you meet elders.
"Elowen," Kara said, voice small and large.
The old woman's eyes filled. "Girl," she said, hand on Kara's face like confirming a spell. "Your grandmother taught you your nose?"
"She did," Kara said, shining and serious.
"Good," Elowen said. She looked at the wagons without turning her head. "Set your pipe there. Your seed here. And your opinions in that corner where they won't hurt anyone."
Jax laughed once. Ronan smothered a smile in his sleeve. KrysKo liked Elowen at once, completely.
Inside the gate, noise happened—the good kind. Hands took rope. Shoulders took weight. Someone thanked the oxen as if they understood and perhaps they did.
Ronan's voice stayed low. "We unload, we listen, we look at the fences. If anything large has been testing them, it will have left questions. We answer."
KrysKo's gaze had already found the questions: scrapes on timber at the wrong height; hair snagged on a nail that didn't belong to ox or dog; a track in the mud that had too many toes and not enough mercy.
Kara caught his eye, and the look they traded was brief and full.
Capacity, the warm voice said, and did not mean triage this time. It meant we brought enough of ourselves.
Aria Senn's signature mark on the field ledger winked up at him from the cart bench: tidy, impatient. He set his palm to the page beside Cohort Nine, left no ash spiral this time, only weight. The road outside waited. The farm inside needed fences to hold.
They had come to learn. The world had never cared what people came to do.
Ronan Veyne slung his bow. "Let's work," he said.
And the day opened like a gate.