The Drommala Pact | The Mirrorwalkers Chronicles #1

Prologue

Recovered from the Great Council Archives

Year of the Seventh Reflection

Excerpt from The Chronicles of Mireth, Book III, Page 112

In the beginning, the countless worlds of Mireth were as one, joined by breath, by memory, and by light. Then came the Silence, and the great unity was broken. Each realm drifted away like shards of glass cast upon a dark sea.

For many ages the mirrors stood still and empty. No light stirred within them, and none knew they could be crossed. In those days, Steamhollow was one of the scattered worlds of Mireth, proud, inventive, and alone; cut off from all others by the silence of its mirrors.

There lived in Steamhollow a scholar named Alara Venn, whose heart was filled with curiosity and doubt. She studied the nature of reflection, seeking meaning in the stillness of glass. One day she laid her hand upon the mirror’s surface, and passed through her own reflection. In that moment she awakened the power that had long slept within her blood, and so became the first Mirrorwalker. With her step began the age of passage between worlds.

Those who came after were born of her line, each carrying the same quiet gift: the call of glass and silver. Among them, a few were blessed with deeper sight: they could read the hidden speech of reflection and hear what the mirrors remembered. These were called the Reflectors.

In the early days, the Mirrorwalkers brought wonder and hope, reuniting the sundered lands. But envy grows where wonder dwells, and fear soon followed. Thus came the Mirror Wars: a hundred years of broken glass and burning skies. When the fires at last faded, the survivors gathered in sorrow and swore an oath of peace.

So was founded the Great Council of Mireth: keepers of balance, watchers of the mirrors, and guardians of the fragile harmony between worlds.

Remember this, traveller : the mirrors forget nothing, not even those who wish to be forgotten.

Chapter 1

Dorian swore. Dirty, but still quite elegant, keeping his good manners up to Steamhollow nobility standards. “My tutors should be quite proud of me,” he murmured to himself, trying to fold and pack his Lucky, a handmade brass-and-steam flying motorbike, into a storage capsule. It didn’t fit, and one of its wings stuck outside, making the capsule shake and showing a warning message on its small monitor with his every attempt:

Error in resizing the item. Please try again.

After several tries, Dorian gave up, extracting the Lucky from the capsule’s compression field and restoring its size. His thoughts were too far from the problem, so he stopped fighting it. He left the Lucky behind and pushed open the door to The Suite of Discreet Delights, one of the dozens of brothels in Brassville, Steamhollow’s rusty capital.

He liked this place; compared to others, it was somehow cosy and lacked “the splendour and misery.” His dear friend Coyote once described The Suite of Discreet Delights as “just like a friendly neighbour’s house.” Dorian grinned. Exactly like that.

He stepped inside the dark hall of the brothel, and the smells of expensive cigars, cheap perfumes, and machine oil wrapped him from head to toe. Strangely enough, it was quiet inside; only the muffled sounds of birds’ theatrical moans mixed with their clients’ panting behind doors to private rooms could be heard.

He needed to clear his head, and this place usually worked perfectly. The envelope from the Great Council was still sealed and lay in his pocket. Procrastination wasn’t something Dorian was proud of, but that was exactly what he was doing now.

Ruby and Jun, just two of Madam Vox's dozen birds, stood at the doors to the hall at the end of the corridor like forgotten goddesses guarding the gates to a particularly disappointing heaven. Dorian nodded to both of them; they nodded back to him, as if he were right on schedule.

When Ruby and Jun were pulling him along to the private room, Dorian noticed Madam, who was sitting on the sofa in the hall. He bowed to her, and Madam smiled slightly at him, as though she were approving his choice. Her skin glowed in the dim light; a gold wave of her hair flowed over her shoulders; her gorgeous, voluptuous body looked so tempting tonight. Dorian regretted that Madam was retired.

Madam looked no older than her birds. Either desire preserved her, or wealth did. Possibly both, working overtime.

Ruby and Jun gently pushed Dorian inside a dark room with low, hushed light. The door slammed shut behind them.

The room smelled of sandalwood incense and industrial-grade disinfectant. Holographic fish swam lazily across the ceiling, casting ripples of blue light over the antique furniture, all reproduction pieces from Old Mireth's forgotten dynasties. The smell of cigars was quite strong here because of Jun. She elegantly picked up a long cigarette holder of amber with her bionic arm. She exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke that curled around her black shiny hair.

Expensive taste, Dorian thought.

Red-haired Ruby set the timer, a neat little brass box with numbers blinking on a narrow display, and gave Dorian a kind of predatory smile.

One hour.

He shrugged off his coat and dropped onto the bed with all the enthusiasm of a man attending his own funeral. The old, questionably clean bed sheets were semi-white and sharp at the edges. Sterilised for your protection, no doubt.

The birds undressed him with professional precision, the result of years of experience. Ruby slipped on her latex gloves with the clinical efficiency of someone about to perform surgery rather than intimacy and went to work. Jun put her cigarette holder away and leaned back on the mattress. She was slowly unbuttoning her silk shirt, revealing a pair of the heavy boobies. Her breasts were remarkable, perfect add-ons to Ruby’s skilful hands and lips.

But Dorian's body, apparently having more sense than its owner, refused to cooperate with the evening's planned activities. The Mirrorwalker Dorian Corvell, defeated by the most basic of human functions. How terribly poetic. Nothing could lift his penis, not even Jun’s amazing milky-white soft boobies smothering his body.

I cannot believe that a bloody envelope could cost me my erection.

Ruby’s hands paused. She tilted her head with a touch of kindness, a sincere one, at least he wanted to believe it.

“Lost in thought, love?”

Dorian straightened and gave a strained smile.

“You were beyond all praise.” His knuckles whitened as he buttoned his shirt and jacket with brisk efficiency. “But nothing enhances an evening like an invitation from the Great Council. Should I bring a cake, or is showing up with my face enough?” He delivered it flat and metallic, and the words hung there.

He deposited his gearwallet on the dresser. Credits pulsed, ghost-blue, an afterimage of payment still in transit. No negotiations, no regrets. He doubled the rate, as always, the city’s only honest generosity.

He moved to the bar, walking as a man who had just failed to get an erection in a brothel.

Navigating the corridor, he reached the bar and collapsed onto a stool, propped his elbows against wood sticky with the tears of disappointed men, and gestured at the house bottle because, clearly, more alcohol was the solution to his problems. He wished he had some bud instead, but his gearwallet was too slim at the moment. This month he had only managed to complete a couple of commercial Walks. He wasn’t broke. Not yet. But close to that point with every passing day.

A gloomy, tight-lipped bartender with little sense of hospitality poured a measure of what they called here ‘whiskey’. Dorian caught it reflexively and sipped.

He retrieved the envelope from his inner pocket, where it had been burning against his chest all day. The Council’s polished emblem caught the bar's flickering light and reflected it back with smug authority. Dorian's fingers hesitated at the seal before breaking it with a quick, decisive snap.

The words in the letter swam before him with bureaucratic indifference:

To Dorian Corvell
Client: House Of The Great Sun
Initial Location: Veyr Sol, Steppe Loteri Lands
Request: Mirrorwalker/Reflector
Mission: Drommala
Compensation: 10,000 Credits

In case of accepting the offer, inform the great council office within 24 hours of receiving this envelope.
Failure to comply will result in immediate withdrawal of the offer.

Dorian checked his wristwatch, the mechanical one, not the digital implant.

Three hours left.

The Council, never late, never early; always at that one perfect moment when a man found himself flinching.

He folded the letter with care and placed it on the table in front of him. He didn’t let the first flicker of relief fool him. He really needed to think about it first, but the timer’s relentless ticking drowned out his thoughts.

Coyote found Dorian sipping whiskey at the corner table. Coyote’s pupils were still dilated from whatever chemical cocktail he'd shared with the birds upstairs; his shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a leather harness beneath it.

“Corvell, mate. Is it really you? Or your freaking hologram?” Coyote was in a suspiciously good mood, to the point that he couldn’t contain it.

“Probably I should have chosen his birds instead,” Dorian thought wistfully.

Dorian slid an envelope to Coyote. He examined the text with surgical precision, as if he expected a trick but found none.

"Ten thousand," Coyote whistled low, returning the envelope to Dorian. "Plus whatever the Steppe Loteri throw in. Those prairie mystics practically bleed gratitude when a Mirrorwalker shows up." He leaned forward, the scent of sex and expensive cologne still clinging to his collar. "They'll give you their firstborn if you fix whatever's wrong with their precious Drommala."

Dorian swirled the unclear liquid, watching light struggling to refract through the glass. "I don't need a child. I need a reason."

"Money isn't reason enough?" Coyote's laugh was sharp. "Since when did you become so philosophical about Council work?"

“Since I started wondering if any of it matters,” Dorian thought, but he let it drift away, dissolving into the smoke between them.

Coyote produced an identical envelope and slid it across the table. “For Ophelia Rialt,” he said, smirking.

Dorian frowned. “She got the same offer?”

“Yes. She showed me the envelope proudly. Thought it meant they wanted her to prove she’s still got her spiritual mirror nonsense in working order. She actually believes they care.”

Dorian pictured Ophelia. Sharp laughter, sharper mind. The only woman in Steamhollow who could outdrink the nobility and still quote philosophy between rounds. Ironically, he found her spirituality and purity more appealing than the cynicism of most Mirrorwalkers.

“She never mentioned the Council mistreats her…”

“She did,” Coyote interrupted. “You were too busy trying to drown entropy in whiskey.”
He paused, looking at Dorian in slight disbelief. “Mate, really? How is it possible to disagree with the Great Council to the point that they banned you from government contracts for several months? Blew my mind.”

Dorian stared into his glass. The whiskey stared back, unimpressed. Let’s pretend I didn’t hear your last remark. Not the right place or time to discuss it.

“However. But why isn’t she running this one?”

“Because she’s missing,” Coyote said, voice low and almost unwilling. The words struck the air like glass hitting stone, and the silence that followed cracked wide open. Dorian looked at him in surprise. He couldn’t remember when Coyote actually cared about someone except himself that much.

Then Dorian’s voice sharpened. “How’d you get her letter?”

“She crashed at my place for a while. Debts, bad luck, the usual. She’s too pure for this city.” Coyote shrugged, but his grin faltered. “Don’t give me that look. You’re not exactly the moral compass of Brassville. Yes, I went through her things. She never left for the Loteri Lands. Her backpack is still in my apartment. I was worried, alright? She’s my friend.”

He leaned back, the mask slipping just enough to show the raw edge of panic beneath. “The Council wants you now. If they can’t find Ophelia, they’ll take the next available lunatic.”

A short, bitter laugh escaped Dorian. “So I’m the understudy to a ghost.”

“Congratulations,” Coyote said. “If you’re serious about taking this job, talk to the Keeper. That old mirror-hound knows more about the Drommala and maybe Ophelia.”

Dorian drummed his fingers against the table, tracing a faint scratch. “The Drommala,” he muttered, his voice slipping between irony and curiosity. “Still the same old tale? Sacred creature of the Steppe Loteri? He leaned back. “I’ve never met one. I’ve dealt with smaller things, fluffy, adorable, and generally edible, but not the legendary one. I’ve seen a real Drommala once in my life; the Loteri didn’t even let a fly near it without their permission.”

The letter to Ophelia lay sprawled between them like a challenge.

“Did you read it?” Dorian asked, though Coyote’s smirk answered for him.

He got Ophelia’s letter from its envelope with the delicacy of a man handling stolen evidence. Same pompous heading, same bureaucratic vagueness, different only in name and deadline.

“Forty-eight hours,” Dorian murmured, tracing the number with his thumb. “And I got twenty-four. Actually…” He checked his watch, mechanical hands slicing his future into fractions. “…make those two hours left to decide.” His gaze sharpened. “Why the rush? What aren’t they telling me?”

Coyote’s grin faded. “The rumour is, Loteri’s Drommala is extremely sick. Maybe already dead. Steppe and Desert Loteri are panicking. No Drommala means no water, no crops, no mercy.”

Dorian exhaled, the sound halfway between a sigh and a curse. A Reflector’s job then: to converse with a dying god. He finished his drink and braced for whatever insult destiny had queued next.

Before leaving, Coyote threw out the words, “You know the deal. I can pay you for Loteri artifacts far better than the Council.”

Dorian pulled on his coat, shoulders heavy, and pushed through the brothel’s murky hallway. The air outside was a mixture of fog and something burning. He found his stubborn motorbike exactly where he’d left it. He reached into his coat, fingers brushing the envelope. Ten thousand credits.

For Dorian Corvell, that almost qualified as hope.

Chapter 2:

Recorded in the Year of the Third Reflection
From The Chronicles of Mireth, Book II, page 47
Loteri Lands Oral Histories, Steppe and Desert Accounts

“The Elders said that in the first time the Loteri Lands were whole. There was no Steppe and no Desert, only endless green grasslands. Prey was plentiful, and life water ran freely through fertile fields. The Loteri lived without borders, sharing water and land, settling disputes in circles rather than behind walls. The land answered them because they listened first.

In the far North lived one Loteri apart from the others. His name was left unkept. The Whisperer Spirit of the Lands tested him, and he failed. Greed took hold. He dammed the rivers, built a fortress around the deepest springs, and demanded payment for water. Gold came first, then leather and tools, and finally children. The land suffered with every bargain. Grass cracked, prey fled, and water withdrew beneath the ground. Some Loteri left, but many stayed, unwilling to abandon their homes.

The Great Sun judged him with fire. The fortress burned, stone split, and gold melted into the soil. The greedy one was found later, his eyes burned out, the ruins ringing with children’s cries. Yet the land did not heal. Water hid itself deeper still, and thirst remained.

The Loteri gathered in a great circle and smoked the sacred bud. They listened rather than pleaded. From their prayers, the smoke, and the reflection of missing water, the Mother was born. Vast and patient, plated in blue and old copper, she listened to the earth itself.

The Steppe and Desert Loteri called her Drommala, She Who Finds Life Water. In older speech she was Morrawyn, She Who Walks the Buried Rivers.

She found life water and turned the Loteri from dead water. She stood between them and storms, and did not move aside when war crossed the plains.

When the Mother left, she gave the Loteri her daughter Drommala, so they might survive what the land had become. In return, she demanded care without possession, guarding without chains, and listening without command. This was the binding of the pact.

A daughter Drommala lived close to a hundred years. When her end neared, the Loteri sought the Mother again. She judged them by stillness. If she agreed, another daughter was given. If she refused, nothing could move her. Long ago, the Loteri tried force, and every attempt failed. They learned the rites were invitations, not commands.

In early generations, some Loteri carried the old reflective tongue in their blood and could commune with the Mother directly. Over time, wars scattered families and memory fractured, and the tongue fell silent among the Loteri.

Then the Mirrorwalkers appeared. They carried the old tongue through reflection, altered yet intact. They did not command the Mother nor speak for the Loteri, but served as vessels, carrying truth between need and judgement.

Thus the pact endured. The Lands were no longer whole and life was no longer easy, but it remained, changed by time, bound by care, and unbroken.”

Liana had been gone from her commune for days, roaming the uneven border where the Steppe slowly gave up and turned into the Desert. Her braid was pulled tight to keep it out of her way, though it did nothing to stop the sand from finding every possible place to stick. She was hunting Feather-tail Cats, small colourful creatures with tails tipped in metallic feathers, the best kind for fletching Solbloom Bow arrows, durable and light enough to fly true.

The cats only showed themselves during their short mating season. At dusk, the females rolled in the sand and called to the males with a click-clock sound that carried across the dunes. It would have been romantic if it were not so loud. During that time, their Stillness Veil, the magic that froze you stiff before you could blink, weakened just enough to make hunting possible.

Liana heard the call, low and steady. She crouched, whispered her counter-spell, and felt the air snap back to normal. There it was, sleek and golden, tail glowing like metal in sunlight. She moved quickly. A clean snatch. A twist. She came away with a metallic feather. The cat dashed off, offended but very much alive.

She stood for a moment, brushing sand from her knees, and glanced at the feathers in her hand.

“Three days of chasing for nine feathers,” she muttered. “Perfect math.”

There was a hint of pride in her voice. She carefully packed the feathers into her pouch and started back toward camp before the heat decided to argue again.

A memory rose uninvited. Her father sat beside their leather tent, turning a broken feather between his fingers, examining it as if it mattered.

“Not bad for my daughter, for the first time,” he had said. “Excellent for any other Steppe hunter.”

He was a Steppe legend, though he never acted like one. A hunter and guide who could read the wind better than most could read a map. People said the Drommala trusted him, and maybe that was true. He did not talk much. He did not need to.

Her mother had died when Liana was born, so it had been just the two of them. He raised her between hunts, between long rides and longer silences. No speeches. No soft words. He showed her things instead. How to track by shadow. How to hear water under stone. How to keep moving when the world did not care if you stopped. He was not gentle, but he was steady. His kind of love was not something you said. It was something you did. Liana learned every bit of it.

She was still smiling when a silhouette cut the sunset clean open. Toren. Covered in dust, panting, hair a mess.

“Such a nice surprise,” she thought, then said aloud, “Took the wrong turn, Toren?”

It had taken him longer than expected to find her. His guiding magic, the one that let him sense other Steppe Loteri across distance, weakened the moment he crossed into the borderlands. The desert interfered with it. Sand scattered and reflected the magic, breaking its direction like light in a mirror. Every step sent his sense spinning the wrong way. By the time he caught Liana’s trail, he had lost nearly a day circling dunes and dry wind.

When he saw her at last, crouched low with her bow and dust in her braid, relief hit harder than he wanted to admit. There was no time to rest. The Drommala was dying, and he had already spent too long finding her. He looked at Liana, confused, not understanding the joke. His expression was lost, almost boyish.

“The Drommala is dying,” he said quietly.

Liana’s eyes darkened. Her lower lip trembled before she caught it. The loss of the Drommala was not just sorrow. It was sacred. The Drommala was the heart of their life and balance.

“The Elders sent me,” Toren said. “They are gathering the guides. It is down to hours. Maybe less.”

They packed in silence, throwing her gear together without caring about order. When everything was ready, Liana whistled sharply. Ineya lifted her head from the steppe grass and galloped toward her.

Liana swung into the saddle and nodded. “Come on.”

He swung up behind her and locked one arm around her waist, anchoring them together. On any other day, he might have blushed at the closeness. Not today.

He reached inward instead, sinking his awareness into the quiet, patient strength of the Steppe. The land answered. With his free hand, he drew the power up through himself and fed it forward into Ineya.

The horse surged beneath them, hooves barely touching the ground. Dust rose in a tight spiral around their path as the Steppe pushed them on, relentless and swift. Ineya ran as if the wind itself had chosen her.

It took only a couple of hours instead of half a day before the faint outline of the commune appeared on the horizon.

Darkness had already spread across the land when they arrived. Smoke rose in the distance, first thin, then thick above the fire pits. Toren still hoped the healing rites were continuing. He had burned the herbs himself the day before, circling the Drommala with smoke, praying she would recover.

The air changed as they neared the centre. The fires no longer smelled of herbs, but of farewell. Then they heard it, the funeral song, low and trembling, spreading through the night.

They were too late. The Drommala was dead.

Her body lay still at the centre. The once-brilliant hide had cooled into blue and burnished copper scales, fitted together like worked metal. Her long trunk curved downward, its segmented length resting against the ground, the tip half-coiled, as if movement had only just left it. Torches packed with healing herbs burned around the pyre, their smoke thick and bitter-sweet, returning brief colour to her body. In the flicker of firelight, the Drommala looked both tragic and majestic.

The Loteri sat cross-legged, mirrors pressed to chests and brows, faces striped with ochre and grief. No one spoke. No chatter. Just the old funeral song, wrapping everyone in its rhythm. Liana and Toren joined the crowd, adding their quiet, uneven voices.

When the song faded, the Steppe and Desert Elders formed the first circle around the pyre. Ritual masks marked with ancient runes were fitted with small pieces of mirror, tied with red thread, their hands woven together in the old gestures.

Liana dropped to one knee, palms pressed into dust. Toren joined her, bowing his still-messy head. Words did not come. They had not for a long time.

“Yesterday,” Toren whispered. “I thought maybe she would recover.”

Liana did not answer.

The chanting shifted. Desert Elders took over, voices deep and rolling like sandstorms. They lifted small brass mirrors tied with red string and called her Morrawyn, She Who Finds Life Water.

Morrawyn vel, na shara ven.

They asked the Great Sun for justice, not mercy. The smoke would carry her home.

“Do you think she will be back?” Toren asked quietly.

Liana said. “Only if we deserve it.”

The Elders signalled. Children and Wise Mothers moved to the outer ring, lighting small fires and scattering steppe grass seeds. Smaller circles formed. Bone pipes were brought out, smooth and darkened with age, packed with sacred bud.

The smell spread fast. Dry and green. Familiar. Sweet on the first breath, bitter underneath. Smoke mixed with the burning wood and settled heavy in the air. The pipes passed hand to hand. No one hurried. Each person drew, breathed toward the fire, passed it on. The smoke settled over faces, clothes, thoughts. Not to erase the pain. Just to make it bearable.

Stories followed. Quiet ones. The first time she led them to water. Her shadow at sunset, long enough to cover a caravan. Toren spoke of getting lost as a child, of her turning them from dead water. Heads nodded. Everyone remembered something.

Liana listened, pipe resting on her knee, saying nothing. The smell wrapped around her like an old memory. Every breath heavier. Slower. Easier.

They spoke of fifty-three years of the Drommala sharing their lives. Of life water found and dead water avoided. Without her, there would be no communes. No trade. No life.

When the pipes burned out, no one spoke. They watched the last sparks drift upward. It was no longer sadness. Just stillness. Acceptance.

The Drommala was gone. The Steppe would have to find a new protector. Silence returned, heavy and absolute. Only the fire crackled. Liana exhaled. Toren did too.

The ritual was over.

Some Loteri remained seated on the ground. Others lay where they were. No one rushed. No one was moved along. Liana rose slowly, brushed the dust from her palms, and looked toward the faint glow of dawn behind the dunes.

“Come on,” she said. “Tomorrow everything starts again.”

They walked away in silence, not quite steady on their feet, smoke curling behind them. On the way to the communal tent they shared with few other young Loteri, Toren spoke.

“Liana. I think someone or something helped the Drommala die.”

Liana stopped mid-step, brow tightening. “What do you mean? How would that even be possible? The Caretaker’s job is to protect it no matter what. And the guardians wouldn’t just let it happen. Not with the Drommala’s power.”

“When I was burning the herbs and walking the healing circle around her,” he said, “I saw markings on her scales. Near the belly. Runes, half-hidden by the plates. I have never seen that kind before.”

“I hope you told the Elders.”

“Of course. That is why they are calling me to the Elders’ tent tomorrow.”

Dawn thinned the last of the smoke. The Steppe waited, silent, for whatever came next.

Chapter 3

Morning dragged itself across the Steppe. Smoke from the funeral clung low to the ground. Liana and Toren walked in silence. No one greeted them. No one looked up. The commune moved carefully, not from grief now but from worry.

They passed the Drommala’s body. Herbal smoke still lingered, thinning as the sun rose. By firelight she had looked asleep. In daylight she looked final. The spirit was gone, though her vast body remained, heavy and unmoving, as if the land had not yet let her go.

Ahead, the Circle of Elders waited. A ring of stone seats carved with sun-lines and wave-marks, Steppe and Desert set side by side. The stones were old, heavy enough to feel permanent, rooted deep into the earth. Behind the Elders, a few mirrors hung on wooden frames, tied with red string, shivering faintly in the morning wind.

Liana inhaled slowly.

Toren muttered, “Feels like we’re about to be judged.”

“We are,” Liana said. Her voice stayed flat. She had faced Elders in worse moods than this.

People gathered in tight rows around the Circle, sitting, kneeling, or standing with stiff backs. The First Elder rose last, looked around the circle, and struck her staff against stone. Every whisper stopped.

When she spoke, her voice carried clearly, scraped clean of softness.

“We stand after a night of loss. Our Drommala has entered the smoke, on the path the Mother set for her.”

The crowd bowed. Even the wind fell silent.

She waited for the quiet to hold.

“We must find the Mother Drommala as soon as possible, and ask her to gift us her child. Only our voice matters to her. Only truth.”

Silence deepened.

Liana felt Toren tense beside her.

“Thirty years ago,” the Elder said, “the Forest Loteri marked her last known resting place. They keep the enchanted maps. They released them to us at dawn. The Mother was seen near the roots of the forests of Ashen Valley. That is where the search begins.”

People shifted uneasily. Ashen Valley was far from safe.

“We have asked the Great Council to send us a Mirrorwalker, and we pray the Great Sun does not turn them aside. They see reflection where we see only dust. They know the Drommala’s old tongue. Through them, we will find her and be heard.”

She looked across the gathered faces.

“Steppe and Desert Loteri. Our community needs you to guide the Mirrorwalker across the Loteri Lands. To stand before the Mother. To ask for her child.”

She let the words settle.

“Who will volunteer?”

No one stepped forward quickly. Not because the Mother harmed anyone. She did not. The fear was in failing her. Failing everyone. Or losing your way in lands you barely knew.

Nothing moved.

At last a dark-skinned Desert woman stepped forward. Her braids rattled with bone charms. A tall Steppe hunter followed. A rune-reader joined.

Then Liana.

She stepped forward with steady calm. She felt Toren watching her but kept her spine straight.

Toren’s feet moved before he thought. He stepped forward too, pale but steady.

Five more came. Ten in total.

“Speak your reason,” the First Elder said. “Say only truth.”

The Desert woman started. “I know signs in the sand. I saw the Mother’s shadow once, and I can read the marks she leaves behind.”

The hunter said, “I offer endurance. I can cross dunes for days, and I do not break when the heat rises or the wind turns.”

The rune-reader said, “My knowledge of stone paths is strong. I can read and understand old magic.”

Then Liana.

“I know the Steppe and Desert,” she said. “I travelled far with my father. I learned parts of the Forest paths and the River routes. I can guide the Mirrorwalker across all lands.”

Toren spoke next.

“My father is Forest Loteri,” he said. “I know Forest ground. I sense shifts in Steppe magic. I can protect and heal the Mirrorwalker if the journey turns dangerous.” His voice shook only once.

The remaining five volunteers spoke in turn. The Elders listened in silence to the best crossbow hunter, a skilled Steppe herbalist, a Desert protector with deep knowledge of magic, a quiet scholar, and a young but strong shaman.

The Elders conferred briefly.

“Ten will remain,” the First Elder said.

The chosen stepped aside. The rest returned to their work, relieved but guilty.

Liana glanced at Toren. “You volunteered faster than I expected.”

“I panicked,” he said.

“Good panic.”

Before she could say more, an Elder with sharp cheekbones put a hand on Toren’s shoulder.

“You,” she said. “Come.”

“Try not to collapse,” Liana murmured.

Toren managed a thin twitch of a smile and followed Elder Mother Elasya to a tent near the inner circle.

Inside, two other Elders sat cross-legged on woven mats. Between them knelt the Caretaker of the dead Drommala, a man bent low, shoulders shaking, breath breaking as he struggled to contain himself. One of the Elders lifted a hand toward Toren.

“Tell it.”

Toren hesitated. “Tell what?”

“The runes.”

He swallowed.

“When I was burning the herbs and walking the healing circle,” he said, voice steady despite himself, “I saw markings on her scales. Near the belly. Strange ones. Not part of her plating. Runes, half-hidden beneath the scales.”

Silence followed. Even the Caretaker’s breathing slowed, rough but restrained.

Elder Mother Elasya rose. “Come.”

Only the two of them went to the Drommala’s body.

The morning sun had burned away most of the smoke. Toren led her to the place he remembered, kneeling and running his fingers lightly along the scales.

The markings began to fade.

The lines thinned as he watched, sinking back into the natural pattern of the hide, as if the skin itself were swallowing them.

Toren froze, hand hovering uselessly.

Elder Mother Elasya acted at once. She pressed her palm flat against the scale and spoke a binding phrase under her breath. The air tightened. Light caught sharply along a single remaining line.

Only one rune held.

“We are fortunate to have preserved even one,” she said.

Elder Mother Elasya stood before the Drommala for a long moment in silence. The morning light caught on the great body, dull now, emptied of movement. She placed both hands against the hide, forehead bowed.

Toren heard her murmur softly, not to the Elders, not to him, but to the Drommala herself. An apology. A request for forgiveness for what had to be done.

Only then did she turn to Toren. “Help.”

With deliberate care, they loosened a single scale. No force. No haste. It came free cleanly, lifted as if it had been waiting, wrapped at once in clean cloth.

Then Elder Mother Elasya did something Toren had not expected. She moved to the Drommala’s trunk and drew a short, precise cut. Thick navy-blue blood welled slowly, heavy and luminous, dripping drop by drop from the incision. She deepened the cut just enough and produced a small glass jar from her leather bag, catching the blood with steady hands.

When the jar was sealed, she made one final cut and removed a substantial section of the trunk. It was wrapped carefully, the same cloth, the same respect.

Toren did not ask.

She spoke anyway, as if answering his thoughts. “We must try to understand how she died, Toren. We cannot place her daughter at risk.”

The scale, the blood, and the piece of trunk were carried back to the tent together, each treated as evidence, each handled with the care given to a relic.

Inside, the Elders examined the rune in silence. One of them tilted his head.

“It could be a natural pattern,” he said. “A coincidence of growth.”

Elder Mother Elasya’s reply was immediate. “No. I know the Drommala’s pattern well. This was placed.”

The Elder did not answer at once. At last, he looked to Toren. “You will not speak of this.”

Toren inclined his head. “I will not.”

“You are dismissed.”

Toren stepped out into the light, the tent closing behind him. Whatever had marked the Drommala had not wanted to remain.

Toren found Liana among the other volunteers, seated in a rough half-circle before the First Elder. She stood with her staff planted in the ground, posture unyielding, voice level.

“A Mother Drommala does not hear noise,” she said. “She hears weight. Stillness. Intention. Do not perform. Do not beg. Speak only what is true, and speak it once.”

No one interrupted.

When the words of guidance ended, small cloth pouches were passed into volunteers’ hands. Magic powder, fine and pale, faintly luminous even in daylight. The First Elder bowed her head once.

“She has already gone,” she said. “Now we help the body follow.”

The Elders moved first, touching flame from their torches to the dry grass circling the Drommala. As the fire took, they began the old chant, low and steady.

Morrawyn vel, na shara ven. Gone with the smoke.

The volunteers formed a wide open circle. One by one, they stepped forward and cast the powder into the fire. Each offering bloomed upward in colour. Blue, red, gold. Smoke thickened, rose, folded in on itself. The Drommala’s great form broke apart with unnatural efficiency, scales dissolving into light and ash as if they had never been solid at all.

By the time the last pouch was emptied, the body was gone. Only white ash remained. Magic had brought her into the world. Magic carried her out.

When the fires died down, the First Elder gathered them again. Pipes packed with sacred bud were passed out, along with parchment slips, feathers, and ink.

“You will write,” she said. “Not poetry. Not persuasion. You will write what you would say to the Mother, if she stands before you. Prepare yourselves.”

The circle loosened. Smoke drifted. Flatbread and honey were shared in silence, broken only by short, practical exchanges. Words were tested, discarded, reshaped.

Liana rose and moved away from the group. Toren followed. She sat heavily and dropped her head into her hands. “I hate speeches.”

Toren lowered himself beside her. He sat close enough to catch the scent of smoke tangled in her red hair, warm and herbal. Freckles dusted her nose and cheeks, familiar as something he had learned without trying.

“You can track anything,” he said. “Words just refuse to behave for you.”

“Tracking makes sense,” she muttered. “Words do not.”

He took the paper from her fingers and smoothed it flat. “Start simple. Say who you are. Why you came. What you offer. No flourishes. Just truth.” He handed it back. “The rest can wait.”

She grunted and bent over the page again. Toren stayed still. His fingers twitched. His breath caught on the way out. The sacred bud softened the edges of his thoughts, loosened the care he usually kept wrapped tight.

“Liana. There is something I need to say.”

She looked up. “What now?”

He hesitated, then lifted his eyes. When he spoke, it was stripped bare.

“I have feelings for you. I want you safe. We grew up together. You know me better than anyone. I do not know what waits for us out there, but I want to stand with you. I needed you to know that.” He swallowed. “Would you marry me?”

Liana blinked once. Her shoulders tightened, then eased.

“Toren. Now is not the time.”

The words landed hard, but not cruel.

She added, quieter, “It is not wrong to feel. Or to protect. But we help our people first. Then we think about the rest.”

He nodded. “All right.”

She looked back to the paper. “Now help me write, or go panic somewhere quietly.”

“I am not panicking.”

“You might,” she said, unimpressed.

They sat side by side, scratching words onto paper as the sun sank low, painting the Steppe red-gold. Behind them, the Elders spoke in low voices about runes, and the enchanted Forest map glowed faintly with the Mother’s old trail.

Everything was moving.

Whether the Loteri were ready or not.

Chapter 4

Dorian left the Great Council Administrative Office with his contract confirmed and the travel advance received. The formalities were complete. The Council had him now. Officially.

He tucked the paperwork into his coat and stepped back into Brassville’s Government District, all stone and glass. The building towered cold behind him.

Haven Tavern came next.

He slipped into a narrow side alley behind the Office. Warning posters advised citizens against employing unauthorised Mirrorwalkers. To Dorian’s surprise, Coyote’s face had not appeared on any of them.

“Progress, then.”

He scanned the alley for a mirror, a term Mirrorwalkers applied generously to anything that reflected well enough for crossing. Moving between worlds required blood. Haven did not.

A square, ordinary mirror had been set into the wall, its surface plain and well-maintained. The Haven emblem marked the frame: a broken mirror split through the centre. Such mirrors existed only in Steamhollow and led to Haven, nowhere else.

Dorian stepped closer, placed his hand against the surface, and focused. “Well, hello,” he murmured. The metal softened and accepted him. The transition was clean. It always was with Haven.

He emerged into the long corridor. Mirrors lined both sides, their frames collected across centuries. One Walker arrived through a neighbouring mirror a moment after him; another departed through the glass at the far end of the corridor. Mirrorwalkers used them as doors between Haven and Steamhollow. Reliably.

Dorian straightened his coat and walked towards the Central Hall.

Haven was a Brotherhood place. If you were a Mirrorwalker, you were welcome. The Tavern did not care who employed you or which laws you bent, as long as you could obey the Keeper’s rules. If you could not, you were corrected. Permanently, if required.

Haven lay between worlds, suspended in reflection rather than place. Nobody remembered when it had been built. The Keeper themselves were ancient.

On the way to his usual table, Dorian registered raised voices. A few Walkers at the bar were arguing fiercely but still civilised. Drunk Walkers argued. He ignored them.

Dorian sat. A moment later, a large man loomed over him. He leaned in close, filling Dorian’s space with the smell of cheap smoke and overcooked onions. “Corvell,” he whispered. “What a pleasant surprise.” Dorian looked up at him, expression mild. He did not return the greeting.

“I have some special artefacts.”

If this was meant as temptation, it had been misjudged. “Congratulations,” Dorian said. “Your friends will be delighted.”

The man laughed loudly. “Those cunts can’t even appreciate their own balls.”

“That is unfortunate,” Dorian replied. “I am broke.”

He removed the man’s hands from the table with care. The man swung once, missed, and steadied himself with visible disappointment. He stared at Dorian, then withdrew. Dorian did not watch him go.

A steady voice followed. “Some of the Walkers are far too enthusiastic about seeing you.” Mireal stood in front of him. Robust, copper-toned skin. Dark hair brushed with silver tied back in plain cloth. Her eyes were kind only when she allowed them to be. The faint scarlet beneath them marked her as immortal. A healer by trade. The Keeper’s Right Hand by fate.

“You are thinner,” she said. “When did you eat last?”

Dorian considered this. “Yesterday.”

She waited.

“Possibly the day before,” he amended.

“That is not an answer,” she said. “You will eat.”

“Yes, my lady.” He did not argue. He never had.

She turned and moved away, the matter concluded. Dorian smiled faintly. Old rules still applied.

He finished his meal just as the door to the Altar of Mirrors opened. The Keeper entered the hall. Tall, lean, ageless. Pale hair caught the light as they moved. Scarlet eyes reflected the room without participating in it. Their vampire origin was unmistakable. The hall adjusted, Mirrorwalkers stirred. One moved as if to approach, then stopped when the Keeper lifted a hand. No words were required.

They reached Dorian’s table and paused. They always paused.

“Dorian,” they said. “You look alive. That is encouraging.”

“Debatable, but acceptable.”

“What brings you to us today,” the Keeper asked, “leisure or business?”

“Leisure? Not with my luck.”

The Keeper inclined their head once, “Business, then.”

They passed through the curved glass doors and entered the Library.

Ink and metal polish settled around Dorian immediately. Rare maps and scrolls lined the shelves. Someone had nearly died for each of them.

Dorian placed the contract on the table. “They want me.”

The Keeper opened it with care. “For real?” they said. “After your previous performance, this is unexpected.”

“If they had a choice,” Dorian said, “they would avoid me.”

“They did,” the Keeper replied. “To begin with.”

Dorian smiled thinly. “I am now second on a very short list of people capable of retrieving their precious Drommala.”

The Keeper nodded.

“Ophelia is missing,” Dorian added. “That appears to have improved my standing.”

“Ophelia is missing indeed. My sources in the Loteri Lands are confident the Drommala is already dead,” the Keeper said. “Do not treat this contract lightly.”

“Ophelia never left for the Loteri Lands,” said Dorian. “Coyote still has her stuff, including her contract.”

The Keeper looked at Dorian. “It sounds more complicated than I thought.” They paused, “Right. I told her what I’m going to tell you now.”

“Any advice would be appreciated.”

“Follow their ceremonial rules exactly,” the Keeper said. “Ask Mireal if you must. Born Loteri once, always Loteri. Their Elders will tolerate you. Trust is not guaranteed.”

“I am very good at being tolerated.” Dorian’s mouth hinted at a smile. It did not reach his eyes.

The Keeper placed a thin brass tablet on the table. A Great Council licence to unseal a permanently closed mirror and, more importantly, to seal it again. “Use it wisely.”

“I will.”

“Ophelia picked a few scrolls with River Loteri spells.” The Keeper added.

“I will speak to Coyote. Maybe those scrolls are still in her stuff.”

The Keeper nodded once. Then they unfolded a map.

“This route leads to Veyr Sol,” the Keeper said, and tapped a mirror marked at the edge of the north-west of Steamhollow. The ring on their finger shimmered against the parchment. “Central Steppe settlement. You will meet the Circle of Elders there.”

Dorian leaned in. He recognised most of the marked mirrors. Some of them he saw for the first time. The Keeper tapped along the rest of the route, making short remarks. “Stable. Unstable. Sealed. Do not return through this one. Fatal if rushed. Safe.” Dorian stored the information.

“Do not be overconfident,” the Keeper said. “Keep your eyes open. Your mouth shut.”

“I will try.”

The Keeper sighed softly. They had known Dorian too long to believe that.

“One more favour.” They produced a sealed document. “Retrieve a scroll from the Desert Mirrored Library. Present this to their Senior Archivist.”

Dorian accepted it.

“Return with the scroll,” the Keeper said. “Return alive.”

“I will attempt to disappoint you as little as possible.” He inclined his head and left.

Dorian was tackled immediately.

R’Yussa, Haven’s resident guardian cat, launched himself from a pile of cushions with enthusiasm and limited coordination. White and red, violently fluffy, and tall enough to reach Dorian’s waist when standing, he landed poorly, recovered instantly, and charged. Dorian and R’Yussa went down wrapped in a ball of fur and snot. R’Yussa climbed onto his chest, purring loudly, breathing with profound satisfaction. If he decided to show affection, it was done without any consideration or consent.

He licked Dorian’s face.

“Yes,” Dorian said scratching R’Yussa behind his ears. “Later.” R’Yussa disagreed.

Mireal observed the scene, enjoying Dorian’s discomfort. She decided he had enough and called the cat’s name. R’Yussa obeyed at once, moving to her side, purring. Dorian stood. They walked down the corridor together.

“My clients are the Steppe Loteri,” he said. “I am going to Veyr Sol.”

“They will test you,” Mireal said. “Accept what they offer. Food, drink, smoke. Whatever is placed in your hands. Speak truth or not at all. Repeat their words when they judge you. Do not be greedy. Share what is shared. Always.”

“Reasonable enough.” He memorised it.

She pressed a small wrapped bundle into his hand. “Healing balm. Especially for River magic wounds. River Loteri had ties to the Mother,” she added. “At least, we believe so.” She straightened. “And do not be a heroic idiot.”

“I make no promises.”

“I know.”

She watched him leave and murmured softly, in the old River Loteri tongue, “Nal ven, sha’ri.”

The mirror returned Dorian to the alley behind the Council Office. He messaged Coyote. The reply came quickly. Coyote was home. Dorian unpacked Lucky and headed towards the outskirts of Brassville. Smog reduced visibility to little more than guesswork. He continued on foot.

Like any rough neighbourhood across the worlds, Rustwing Alley was not a place to draw attention.

Dorian noticed a cornered figure. At first, he thought it was a woman, but as he moved closer, he recognised a performer, likely from one of the sketchier places nearby. The dress was torn. The wig slipping. Makeup smeared with soot and blood. One eye closed. One finger bent wrong. He had fought until he could not. The three drunk men circling him muttered about refusal and entitlement.

Dorian approached quietly from behind. The first man turned. Dorian punched him in the throat. The second lunged. Dorian broke his arm. The third drew a knife. Dorian shattered his knee. Silence followed.

Dorian draped his coat around the performer’s shoulders and guided him upright. At the cab, the performer finally stopped shivering and looked at Dorian gratefully, “I don’t know how to thank you. Maybe ...”

Dorian stopped him with a look.

“Government District Hospital,” Dorian told the driver, uploading double the fare. Travel advance was very handy.

“Learn to fight,” Dorian turned to the performer. “Some defensive spells would help too.”

Then he headed back into the alley.

Coyote always did choose charming neighbourhoods.

Chapter 5

Dorian left Brassville in a foul mood and with an uncooperative machine.
He had fixed the Lucky before the trip. The Lucky took this personally. The machine misbehaved all the way across Steamhollow. A small oil leak appeared. Dorian noted it and stopped caring.

By the time the factory district came into view, he was thoroughly irritated. The factory had not collapsed. It had been consumed. He noticed it only because the Keeper had been precise with their maps and because Mirrorwalkers were cursed with sensing a reflective pull. They called it Mirror Call. From above, the place barely registered.

He brought the Lucky down near an abandoned washhouse.

“I swear,” he said quietly, packing the Lucky away, “I will dismantle you bolt by bolt when I get back.”

Inside, the factory smelled of old oil and damp stone. The reflective signal stayed unhelpfully vague until he reached the stairwell. Then it sharpened. Not stronger. Just accurate. The cellar.

An irritating sound filled the space. Dorian drew his blade and went down slowly. That was when the rats decided he was a suggestion. Steamhollow rats were not creatures so much as urban policy failures. Large. Pale. Scarred. Far too confident. They came, convinced numbers would solve the issue.

Dorian disagreed. One died cleanly. Another lost its head. A third latched onto his sleeve and learned why that was a poor decision. He crushed the fourth under his boot and let the blade finish the discussion. Blood pooled. The survivors paused, recalculated, and retreated.

“Run along,” Dorian said. “I charge extra.”

The mirror he did not know waited in the cellar wall. Only when he came within a few metres did it pull at him properly. Dorian stopped short and sighed. “Of course you’re hungry.”

He rested his right palm against the mirror. The surface was cold, unresponsive. Like any unopened mirror. Then he turned the wheel on his bloodbound ring. The crystal darkened to scarlet. Dorian slid his left hand to the edge of his corset and pressed the ring against bare skin. He closed his eyes.

The needle deployed. A sharp sting. Clean. Efficient. His pulse jumped as adrenaline flooded his veins.

The mirror rippled at once. At first it drew only a few drops, thin threads stretching from his chest to the glass. Then the pull deepened. Blood lifted in a narrow stream, suspended between Dorian’s body and his reflection, drawn with steady appetite. The mirror drank.

Its surface softened, bending inward like heated metal. Recognition settled through the glass, quiet and unmistakable. This one knew Dorian now. From here on, a few drops of his blood would be enough to cross it.

“Happy now?” Dorian murmured.

He pressed the ring back to the puncture. The needle withdrew and folded itself away without resistance. The wound sealed immediately, leaving only a faint mark.

He stepped forward.

The mirror took him.

Heat followed at once. Dry. Relentless.

Dorian stepped out onto hard earth and coarse grass. He checked himself out of habit. Shirt intact. Corset clean. No blood. Neat work.

Light-headedness crept in anyway, and he paused to recover. He turned the wheel on his ring until the crystal shifted to deep blue. The stored reflective energy flowed into Dorian from the ring, threading in dark blue strands through his body. He exhaled slowly and waited. The blood draw for the crossing had been modest. The recovery was almost immediate.

Only then did he turn around and freeze.

A half-circle of people stood waiting for him in silence.

“Well,” he said, dry as dust, “this is new.”

Mirror crossings were famously unreliable. Even competent Walkers landed a few metres off. Arriving exactly on schedule was not one of the advertised features. He glanced down at the ground, then back at them.

“And you got the spot and the timing,” he added. “That’s annoyingly precise.”

A staff struck the earth. Once.

Liana stood at the centre. Tight braid. Bow across her back. Already unimpressed. “This is sacred ground,” she said. “Do not joke.”

He inclined his head, unbothered. “I’m not. I’m recalibrating.”

It was not just what he said, but how he stood there. His travel-worn clothes were handled with careless elegance. Dust was treated as optional. He was too relaxed by half. He spoke with a posh accent and carried himself, in Liana’s estimation, like an entitled twat. He did not behave like any Mirrorwalker she knew.

The volunteers moved in and guided him away from the mirror. No hands. No force. Just certainty. Liana walked ahead, clearly irritated. They took him toward the settlement and the Circle of Elders. Dorian followed, displeased despite himself, and quietly impressed.

The Circle waited. Stone seats formed a ring. Mirrors hung behind the Elders, tied with red string. Dorian stepped forward when indicated and stopped. One Elder raised a hand. Another lowered theirs. The Circle aligned.

They spoke together, voices layered rather than loud.

“Mirrorwalker.” Not a greeting. A naming.

“I hear,” Dorian replied.

“You cross by blood,” said one.

“Yes.”

“You pass by reflection,” said another.

“Yes.”

“You arrive where the land allows,” said a third.

“Usually.”

A pause. Dust shifted. The mirrors stirred.

The life water was brought forward in a shallow stone bowl, clear enough to hold the sky. Dorian took it with both hands and drank without hesitation.

A pipe followed, packed with sacred bud. He drew once, almost successfully suppressing the cough, measured, and breathed the smoke downward into the earth.

The Elders watched closely. Not his face. His hands. One Elder leaned forward.

“You stand where the Mother’s shadow rests.”

“I stand.”

“You will not bind what walks.”

“I will not.”

“You will not take what is not given.”

“I will not.”

“You will leave when told.”

“I will.”

A stone struck the ground once. “You are received,” the Elders said. “As guest. As Mirrorwalker.”

The Elders turned away, already moving on. “You will rest. You will eat. When the sun turns, we will send for you. You will meet those who would walk with you.”

“Understood.”

And the ritual was done. Dorian was quietly satisfied. Clear terms were a rarity.

The Desert woman stepped forward without ceremony. Dark-skinned and tall, braids threaded with bone charms. Pale ritual paint crossed her eyes and brow. She inclined her head and turned away. It was not a request. Dorian followed.

They moved between the outer tents, the ground hard-packed and warm beneath his feet. The settlement breathed around them now, purposeful rather than tense. People watched without staring. A Mirrorwalker was notable, not spectacle. She stopped beside a guest yurt set slightly apart from the others, opened the door, and stepped aside.

“For your face,” she said, indicating a basin of clear water and a folded cloth. “I will bring food.”

Dorian thanked her and went inside, passing her in the doorway. The space between them was narrow. Her shoulder brushed his sleeve. She breathed in Dorian’s scent. Oil first. Clean machine oil and brass. Beneath it, heat and skin. Not sweat. Something heavier. Alive.

She turned away at once and left, her breath catching despite herself.

Dorian set his gear aside and stripped with habitual efficiency. Dust clung to him. Dried blood marked one knuckle. He leaned over the basin and washed thoroughly, water running down his arms and across his stomach.

The door opened again. The Desert woman stopped. She did not retreat. She simply looked. Dorian’s body was lean and muscular, built for endurance rather than display. Scars crossed him without pattern or apology. Old ones faded pale. Newer ones darker, some poorly healed. Forearms, ribs, low on his belly. Her gaze lingered longer than politeness required. Appraising. Interested.

Dorian lifted his head.

“A knock,” he said mildly, “would have been courteous.”

She blinked once and straightened. “I will remember.”

He finished washing, dried, and dressed without haste. The Desert woman set the tray of food on the floor. Flatbread still warm. Honey in a small clay dish. Horse meat, carrying the scent of smoke. A cup of steaming herbal tea, sharp with bitter root and mint.

Dorian regarded the food, then gestured to the space opposite him.

“Eat with me.”

She sat beside him, close enough that their knees nearly touched. It was a deliberate choice. Dorian noticed. He ignored it. Curiosity followed Walkers. Proximity. Attention. Fascination. It came with the work. He treated it like heat or noise. A condition of the environment, not an invitation.

They ate in silence at first. She took her time with it, attention drifting back to him more often than hunger required. When their hands brushed reaching for the bread, she did not apologise or withdraw.

Dorian continued eating, unbothered. Only when he tore another piece of bread did he speak. “I will need a welder. My machine leaks oil. Brass seam.”

She nodded. “There are several. Any will do.”

He took another bite, then added without emphasis, “And who is considered the best guide in the Steppe?”

This time she paused. “Liana,” she said at last. “Of the Steppe.”

The name settled.

When they finished, she rose and motioned for him to follow. The welders worked quickly. They did not ask questions. The seam was sealed, reinforced, tested. The Lucky was returned intact. Dorian reached for his credits. They refused at once.

“You are a guest,” one of them said. “Guests are not charged.”

Dorian nodded and put his gearwallet away. Instead, he produced a small clear crystal, no longer than his thumb. The air cooled as he turned it.
“For melting work,” he said. “It lowers the temperature.” The welders accepted it at once, handling it with care.

Before leaving, Dorian asked again. “The best guide?”

“Liana,” they answered, without hesitation.

He thanked them and left. The name stayed with him.

When he came back to the guest yurt, a young runner waited nearby. “The Circle calls for you,” the boy said. Dorian inclined his head and followed.

When Dorian returned to the Circle, everything was already arranged.

The Elders sat as before. The mirrors stirred behind them. Around the outer edge, ten people stood waiting.

Volunteers.

Dorian was allowed to sit. Not among them. Near them. Close enough to hear. Close enough to be measured.

“These are those who have offered to walk with you,” an Elder said. “They will go with you to speak to the Mother.”

Ten was still excessive.

“They stand by choice,” another Elder added. “You will take who you need.”

Silence followed.

The volunteers stepped forward one by one. Names were given. Brief. Skills followed just as plainly. Hunters. Guides. A healer. People who knew the Steppe and expected it to answer back. Dorian listened. He did not comment. When the last volunteer stepped forward, Dorian stiffened slightly.

“Liana of the Steppe,” she said.

The name clicked into place with mild, unhelpful amusement. The tight braid. The bow. The expression that suggested she had disliked him on sight and seen no reason to revise that opinion. So that was her. The best guide in the Steppe. And already irritated by him. Of course.

The Circle waited. Dorian let his gaze move over them once. Slowly. Deliberately.

Then he spoke. “Liana.” Nothing else.

For a moment, no one moved. The Elders exchanged looks. Concern, not disapproval. “One guide?” an Elder asked. “The way to the Mother is not kind.”

“I know,” Dorian said. “That is why I chose her.”

Liana’s mouth tightened. She did not argue. Duty came before preference.

Behind her, Toren went very still. “No,” he said, before he could stop himself. “She should not go alone.” Several heads turned.

“You may choose more,” an Elder said. “For safety.”

“One guide,” Dorian replied. “I do not need an audience.”

Silence stretched. At last, a staff struck stone. “The others are dismissed.”

Reluctantly, the volunteers stepped back. Toren lingered a heartbeat too long before Liana looked at him sharply. He obeyed.

Only Dorian and Liana remained.

The Elders invited them inside the tent and brought the enchanted maps forward. Treated hide and polished glass layered together. The markings never quite stilled. Lines drifted when untouched. Distances adjusted themselves with quiet defiance.

“Thirty years ago,” an Elder said, “the Forest Loteri marked the Mother’s last resting place, near the roots of Ashen Valley.” The lines shifted inward. A murmur passed through the Circle. Unease, earned honestly. Liana said nothing.

“Far,” Dorian said.

“And not kind.”

Dorian nodded once.

When Dorian and Liana stepped outside the Elders’ tent, two groups were already waiting. One for him. One for her.

The women moved first. Barefoot, hair loose, long linen ritual robes cut with high slits. They circled Dorian, attention focused and unspoken. Among them, he recognised the Desert woman he had shared food with.

Across from them, the men closed around Liana. Barefoot, in linen trousers, Steppe- and Desert-born. They formed a loose ring, not touching, but clear in their intent. Dorian’s attention caught on Toren among them. The line of his shoulders. Blue markings following muscle and bone.

Without ceremony, the groups separated Dorian and Liana.

Dorian let himself be led, faintly amused. Liana turned and went with the men, stride quick, shoulders set. On the way, Dorian thought about Liana. She was the best. The dislike mattered too. Antipathy drew clean lines.

One guide. Competent. Furious.

Boredom was unlikely.

Chapter 6

By nightfall, the Steppe had shifted from mourning to preparation.

The women led Dorian back to the guest tent. One side of it stood open, the leather flap tied up to let in air and firelight alike. He noted it without comment and stepped inside when guided.

They began to undress him slowly.

It was done properly. Deliberately. Fingers loosened buckles, slid fabric from his shoulders, folded each piece away as if it mattered. Their voices rose together in a low song, old and steady, in the Steppe Loteri tongue. He did not understand the words, but the rhythm carried direction rather than prayer.

Dorian did what Mireal had told him to do. He accepted.

When they finished, they led him out again, barefoot, into the night air. They guided him down in the soaking tub until he sat. The first pour was mare’s milk, thick and warm, cut with crushed herbs and sacred bud. It ran over his shoulders, his chest, his arms, streaking pale against his skin. The women washed him with their hands, thorough and unhurried, leaving no part of him unaddressed. Inner thighs, hips, the most private lines of his body were treated with the same calm precision. It was procedural, designed by people who had never lost sleep over embarrassment.

For a brief moment, he allowed himself to notice the women properly. Different ages, different bodies, different faces. Attractive. And his body reacted. His timing, as usual, was poor.

Dorian exhaled, relaxed his shoulders, and let the thought pass. Control returned with some effort. The ritual continued.

After, they drew him up and stood him beside the tub. Life water followed, cool and clear, poured slowly to wash away the milk, the herbs, the residue of offering. Dorian felt as vulnerable and naked as he had not felt in a long time.

Inside the tent again, they dried and rubbed his skin with oil infused with herbs. The scent clung, sharp and green. Dorian noticed the rubbing grew more precise.

When they were done, they stepped back and formed a half-circle before him.

One of them stepped forward and placed a wreath into his hands.

It was made of small steppe flowers, pale and fragrant. Dorian stared at it, caught off balance for the first time that evening. The women waited.

“You must choose,” one of them said at last.

Choose whom, was his first thought. The most skilled? The best singer? The one who had taken most care?

His gaze moved along the line of them and stopped on the Desert woman he had met earlier that day. She had fed him and had been careful with him throughout the ritual. It seemed reasonable.

So he lifted the wreath and placed it on the Desert woman’s head. Her face lit with unguarded joy. The others nodded once and withdrew without comment, sealing the flaps behind them. The Desert woman stayed. She did not move closer, but she did not step back either. Her eyes held his openly now, desire plain and unashamed.

He paused. Of course. Another offer. Mireal’s words returned.

Dorian stepped closer and lifted a hand to the Desert woman’s face, touching her cheek gently. Her skin was warm beneath his fingers, slightly rough from wind and open days. She smelled of sun-warmed leather, herbs, and faint smoke. Dorian carried her to the mat, set her down with care, then settled opposite.

She smiled up at him at last.

“So,” she said softly. “You chose.”

He considered the statement for a moment. “I try not to disappoint,” he said.

She let out a brief, quiet laugh and reached for his hand, fingers warm and certain. “You are slow to read signals,” she said, guiding his hand to her knee.

Dorian’s mouth curved faintly. “But I learn.”

His hand moved as if confirming a theory, sliding along her knee and a little higher, stopping while it was still proper. The Desert woman met his glance briefly, then reached for the tray set nearby, already prepared. Food, tea, and a smoking pipe packed with sacred bud, set there in advance.

Time stretched while they shared the pipe, smoke passing between them until the tent softened at the edges. The sacred bud dulled urgency and sharpened sensation, turning moments elastic. Everything arrived a little late. Everything lingered.

They sat close, then too close to pretend it was accidental. Her tunic slipped from her sun-touched shoulders, revealing her breasts. Dorian’s hands traced her body with deliberate attention, following curves without haste. He enjoyed the sounds she made, the quiet laugh when his touch surprised her, the way her breath caught and settled again. There was no rush in him. Only interest.

She explored him in return. Fingers mapped his shoulders, paused over old scars with curiosity rather than caution, traced their paths without asking. She touched him everywhere with calm confidence, as if nothing about him required permission.

When his hand moved lower and firmly parted her thighs, she inhaled sharply. He stayed patient, letting the pause do its work. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. The slowness stretched further, then shifted. He changed the rhythm gradually, steadily, watching her control slip and fail to return.

The mat darkened beneath them as she arched, breath leaving her in a sound she did not bother to restrain. Dorian kept his hand where it was, calm and present, until the last tremor passed and her body finally slackened. He watched her face throughout. The disbelief. The surrender. The instant when she stopped caring how open she had become.

She pressed her face into his shoulder and laughed softly when it was over. He gave her a moment to recover, then moved his fingers deeper, setting the pressure and moving with intent now, carrying her to another peak. She came apart soon after.

“Mirrorwalker,” she murmured, voice rough and amused, once she could finally speak again, “no wonder people are curious about you.”

He smiled and waited, letting her gather herself again.

When she reached for him in return, it felt less like a request and more like a natural conclusion. Her hands were quick and certain. Dorian let go of what little control he had left and followed without resistance.

The Desert woman watched his release with fascination, surprise briefly flickering across her face. Even this marked him as other. A Mirrorwalker’s release carried a mirrored sheen, catching the oil-lamp light like newly polished metal.

Dorian landed on his back at last. She curled against him, warm and unguarded. They kissed, slow and close, and fell asleep without noticing when it happened.

On the other side of the settlement, Liana underwent the same ceremony. It was not smooth. Even men’s gentle hands could not soften her mood. When the wreath was offered, she did not look at anyone. Toren hoped anyway and was disappointed immediately. Irritation won out, aimed at the ritual, at Dorian, at the timing of it all.

Liana lifted the wreath and placed it on her own head, ending the matter.

She went to bed alone and slept.

Most of the settlement was asleep. A few Loteri moved through the half-light. Liana and Toren were already up.

Liana sat cross-legged beside her pack, tightening straps that did not need tightening. Toren knelt opposite her, sorting dried herbs into small cloth rolls with careful fingers.

They worked well together. Always had.

A quiet sound came from a yurt near the guest ring. Both looked up at the same time. Morning had settled fully over the settlement when a Desert woman stepped out, adjusting her loose tunic against the cool air. Her hair hung free now, her pace unhurried. She did not look back at the tent she had left.

Dorian’s tent.

Liana watched her go.

“Well,” Liana said, flat as old ash. “I am not surprised.”

Toren did not look up from the strap he was tightening. “You think we should be?”

“Do not pretend that you do not understand,” she said sharply.

He exhaled. “Liana. It was part of the ritual.”

“So was mine.” She folded her arms. “And I slept alone. The choice is part of it.”

“What he did is not the point,” Toren said. His hands stilled on the strap. He did not look at her. “Among the Loteri, this is how people choose each other.”

“That is not a rule,” Liana said. “It is a habit.”

“It is how people say what they want,” Toren replied. “And you did not choose me.”

Silence settled between them.

“I needed my head clear,” Liana said.

“And I needed to know if you saw a future with me.” He looked up at her then. “You did not answer.”

Liana hesitated.

“Maybe,” she said.

Toren nodded once. Not relieved. Not angry. Just careful.

He pulled the strap tight and lifted the pack onto his shoulder.

Elder Mother Elasya did not raise her voice. She did not need to.

“Toren,” she said.

He turned at once. Liana barely glanced up. She knew that tone.

“Yes, Elder Mother.”

“Walk with me.”

He obeyed, casting Liana a brief look that held apology and curiosity. She waved him off with two fingers.

Inside the Elders’ tent, the air smelled of ash, ink, and old fabric. The relics were already prepared: the preserved rune taken from the Drommala’s body, a section of her trunk, and a small jar holding her blood.

“You saw the runes more than once,” Elder Mother Elasya said. “More than anyone else.”

“Yes.”

“You may be able to recall them.”

“I am not certain,” he said carefully, “but I can try.”

“There is a man in Mossgrove,” she continued. “A monk. Aren Thal. Pain-Bearer. He understands bodies, magic, and damage done with intent.”

Toren’s breath caught. “The Pain Monastery.”

“Yes.”

“That is not a small request.”

“No,” she agreed. “Nor is it optional.”

She leaned forward. “You will travel with the Mirrorwalker and the guide into the Forest Loteri Lands. When the path turns, you will leave them and continue on to Mossgrove. You will ask Aren Thal for his help and return with what he learns.”

Toren nodded, hands steady as he accepted the relics.

By the time the settlement stirred awake, Liana was seated in the communal dining area, eating quickly from a bowl of grain and dried fruit, eyes scanning without focus. Dorian approached without announcement. He looked acceptably fresh. Dressed. Awake. Irritatingly so. Liana did not smile.

“Sleep well?” she asked, without looking up.

“Well enough,” Dorian said. “Still in one piece.”

She stirred the bowl once, though there was nothing left to mix. “Good. Thought you might be exhausted.”

Dorian shrugged. “I’ve had worse. At least this time no one tried to drown me.”

She didn’t answer. Not even a twitch.

He exhaled, realising the air between them wasn’t about to clear. “It was informative,” he said simply. “I enjoy learning by exposure.”

She looked at him then. Briefly. Her face tightened, then settled back into control. “Of course you do.”

Dorian sat opposite her. Not invited. Not challenged. He waited, which suggested experience.

“You settled in quickly,” Liana said.

“I find it useful to know where I stand,” he replied.

That earned him another look. “You had your choice of guides,” she said. “People who would please you.”

“Yes.”

“So why me?” The question was flat. No accusation. Just distance.

“Because you know the land better than anyone else here,” Dorian said. “And because pleasing me is clearly not on your list.”

“That is not flattering.”

“I am not trying to flatter you,” he said. “I need someone who will tell me when I am wrong.”

She finished her food and set the bowl aside. “You understand I am here out of duty?”

“Yes.”

Liana nodded once. “Then we understand each other.”

Dorian stood. “A rare luxury.”

Toren returned with a travel bag slung over his shoulder. Elder Mother Elasya walked beside him. The sight snapped Liana upright.

“What is this?”

The Elders gathered quickly.

“Toren will travel,” Elder Mother Elasya said. “With you. And with the Mirrorwalker.”

Dorian inclined his head. The Elders were law here.

“Toren will leave you when your path turns toward the Mother,” she continued. “From there, he will go to Mossgrove.”

Liana did not hide her relief. Having Toren with them, even briefly, settled something she had not realised was loose.

Dorian registered the arrangement without comment. Tolerable.

They left shortly after.

Two horses moved ahead, familiar and steady. Liana rode first. Toren followed, posture easy but alert. Behind them, the Lucky lifted with a restrained growl of steam and metal, hovered, then settled into a smooth glide. The Steppe opened around them, vast and indifferent.

Three travellers set out under a pale sky. Each carried a different understanding of what was coming.

Chapter 7

Snow and stone blurred as Coyote crossed into the Scarlet Valleys.

The snow scooter rattled under him and held. Cold pressed in at once. Sharp. Biting at his skin. Snow lay thin over rock and roots, packed down by time rather than traffic. This was a world of vampires and immortals. Cold, unchanged by centuries. Death existed here, but it did not hurry.

The inconspicuous, unofficial mirror closed behind Coyote. He did not look back. The scooter stayed quiet. Reliable enough. Questionably fast. Coyote had to pick up a package for his client in Steamhollow.

Two moons gave enough light to ride by. Snow reflected it cleanly, outlining trees, slopes, and shallow drifts. Enough to keep moving without slowing. Night travel in the Scarlet Valleys was unpleasant. Exposed. Empty. He aimed for the nearest trade city, its lights low and distant.

Staying too long in a place where immortality was common increased risk. Coyote preferred short jobs.

There was nothing wrong. But the Scarlet Valleys were uncomfortable, even when nothing was wrong. Coyote kept moving.

Velmora rose out of the dark. A trade city built for movement, not comfort. Stone packed tight along narrow streets. Snow blackened by soot. Light spilled from shops and taverns in narrow bands.

Coyote parked the scooter between two warehouses and killed the engine. He walked the rest of the way. Hood up. Hands visible. An unremarkable stride.

The tavern was easy to find. Inside, warm and dim. Smoke. Alcohol. Oil. Blood. Reflective surfaces were dulled or covered. Mirrors existed, but only as controlled objects. Decorative, sealed, or deliberately misaligned. Vampires disliked chaos. And mirrors, once active, were very good at creating it.

Coyote took a corner seat with a clear view of the door and the back wall. Habit. He ordered a shot. For warmth. He was early. A habit sharpened over years.

Vampires stood at the bar, voices blending into an indistinct hum. The bartender poured artificial blood into heavy glasses, different shades, different prices. The vampires drank openly, unbothered. Mortals stayed in the shadows, keeping to the edges.

Coyote checked the time. Three minutes late meant nothing yet but ten minutes did. Being late was exposure. He waited, shifting only enough to stay loose, resisting the urge to move. The courier did not arrive.

The tavern pressed in around him. Low laughter. A brief argument. Glass breaking, followed by a quick apology. Coyote kept his eyes on the door. He still had time. But he did not have much.

Someone stopped at his table. Coyote felt the shift in air before he looked up.

“You always did like corners, darling,” Samara said softly.

He raised his eyes. She was stunning. Annoyingly so. Amber hair, emerald eyes, and the sort of figure that made men go stupid.

“Samara,” he said, smiling.

She sat opposite him without asking. “You look busy.”

“I am waiting.”

She smiled. “You always were.”

They had known each other since Haven. Something had happened once, long ago. Something unfinished and wisely left that way. He had not expected to see her here.

“I did not know you moved,” he said.

“Yes. The Valleys,” she replied. “Six years now.”

Samara leaned back, posture careful, as if preparing words, she had rehearsed more than once.

“I am still an official Mirrorwalker,” she said. “Licensed. Registered. I work crossings.”

“For locals?” Coyote said. “Interesting.”

She exhaled sharply. “Trying my luck.”

Ah. That explained it. He looked into Samara’s eyes carefully. No red undertone. No trace of it. She was mortal. Still.

“Not successfully,” he commented.

“Not yet,” she replied.

Coyote kept looking at Samara. He had never understood her fear of ageing. She was willing to try anything to outrun it. Unfortunately, Mirrorwalker blood did not cooperate with anti-ageing magic. Elixirs failed. Spells slid off. Reflection resisted preservation.

Vampires could grant immortality, but rarely, and only with official permission, in front of a crowd of witnesses. For reasons that had nothing to do with beauty or fear of time. It happened. Just not to someone like Samara.

“I tried,” she said. “For years.”

Coyote said nothing. He could picture it easily. Poor thing had tried to seduce vampires and failed.

“I did everything right,” she continued. “But vampires are as cold as your mate Corvell.” Her eyes flickered with dislike.

Coyote laughed under his breath. “Corvell turned you down?”

“Maybe I am not his type,” she said quietly. “His money would have helped. It could make things go faster.”

“Corvell does not have a type,” Coyote said mildly. “Or money. He is a lord who refuses his inheritance. Do not mourn losses that never existed.”

Then he added, with a brief, dry laugh, “And I would pay to see you try to bribe a vampire.”

She shook her head. The playfulness drained from her face.

“I took a contract,” she said firmly. “A feeding partner contract. Official.”

Coyote stared at her. Being born a Mirrorwalker was not a choice. Crossing worlds was work. Feeding was something else entirely. Submission by agreement. Blood given on schedule to immortals. Protection in return guaranteed. Benefits optional.

“I feed my Master,” she said. “That is the arrangement.”

Her Master. Coyote nearly choked on his drink. The stories made sense. Feeding partners spoke of pleasure felt while feeding, intense enough to confuse obedience with devotion.

“And you hope,” he said carefully, “that one day he will ask for official permission to turn you?”

“Yes.” She did not smile.

“I serve him, cross mirrors for him, and stay useful enough to matter.” A pause. “If immortality ever happens, this is the only path.”

Coyote did not comment. Other people’s obsessions were none of his business.

She was quiet for a moment, then asked, almost abruptly, “Have you seen my brother lately?”

That caught his attention. He shook his head. She frowned. “He visits every month. I have not heard from him in three. Haven knows nothing.”

Mirrorwalkers vanished rarely. Ophelia had. Now this. The thought stayed with Coyote longer than he liked. It sat wrong, scratching at the back of his mind. He told himself it was coincidence.

Samara’s attention shifted without warning. “He is calling me,” she said. Coyote did not ask who. She stood, hesitated for a beat, then let the smile return, careful and controlled.

“Try not to disappear,” she said. “Stay safe, Coyote.” Then she was gone.

Coyote sighed and checked his watch. The courier was half an hour late. Inconvenient. Dangerous. He waited, nerves tightening despite himself. A few more minutes passed before the courier finally appeared.

No greeting followed. The courier placed a small package on the table between them, kept one hand on it for a moment, then released. Coyote checked the weight with two fingers, the seal with his thumb. Satisfied, he slipped it under his coat. No names were spoken. The courier stood and left.

Coyote counted to five before rising and taking a different path through the tavern. He did not rush. He did not linger. Outside, the cold hit at once. He mounted the scooter and set off.

Velmora fell away behind him, lights shrinking, noise swallowed by distance. The road narrowed. Snow returned to its proper colour. His destination lay in the mountains. A non-official mirror. Quiet. Unregistered. Reliable enough. He leaned forward and pushed the scooter harder than it liked. The scooter responded with angry gurgling. Night closed in.

The road narrowed as stone gave way to snow. The scooter laboured but held its pace. Coyote eased off only when the terrain made it impossible. He did not like to arrive rattled.

The mirror sat where it always had. A polished stone between two trees, half-buried in snow. No markings. No guards. No reason to draw attention. Coyote slowed anyway. Something was off. Not danger. Not presence. The Mirror Call was there, but extremely weak. Thinner than it should have been, like a voice speaking through a wall.

He brought the scooter to a stop and dismounted. Up close, the problem was obvious. The stone had been coated in black polish, applied carefully and evenly. Pressed into the centre of the surface sat the Great Council emblem. Sealed. Recently. The Council rarely sealed stable, unofficial mirrors. When they did, it meant there had been a reason, and reasons like that were never small.

Coyote swore under his breath, a long string of filthy curses.

A sealed mirror was useless. Crossing it was impossible without unsealing, and unsealing without a licence was illegal. More importantly, it took time. Time he did not have. The alternative was worse. The mirror he had entered through lay far back, past Velmora, past routes he had no intention of retracing. Using the same mirror to leave a world broke one of his rules. It increased exposure and drew attention. He avoided it whenever possible.

He stood still for a moment, calculating distance and fuel, then reached for his pack. As he unfastened it, something caught his eye in the branches above the stone. He stepped closer and pulled it free. The remains of a bracelet. Polished mirror beads strung on a broken thread. Cold to the touch. Too cold. It had been there for a while.

He recognised it immediately. Ophelia made those. Wore them. Gave them away. Said they helped with balance. With grounding. Said mirrors listened better when you treated them kindly. Coyote closed his hand around the beads. The cold bit into his palm. He stood there a second longer than necessary, then slipped them into his pocket.

He turned back to the mirror. No more delays. He laid out his tools and began to work.

The first sound cut through the trees low and layered. Not wolves. Coyote froze with one hand on the scrubber. The noise was off. Too thin, too many throats overlapping without rhythm. Growls slid over each other, not as warning but irritation, a pack already arguing over a meal.

Broken Wardens.

Wolf-shaped, but subtitle details didn’t match. It seemed they were not moving, but sliding between the trees, pale and almost transparent. Moonlight passed straight through their forms, catching on internal lines that never quite held still.

It was believed they had once guarded the mirrors. During the Mirror Wars, those mirrors were destroyed or damaged. The Wardens endured. But their purpose did not. Sealed mirrors still drew them by instinct.

Coyote swore once and moved. He grabbed the scooter and his pack in a single motion, leaving the unsealing tools scattered in the snow. The engine protested as he forced more speed out of it than it was built to give. It was not enough. The pack flowed after him, faster than the machine. One surged close and clipped Coyote as it passed. Claws tore across his side. Pain flared sharp and immediate. Fabric ripped. Coyote hissed, nearly lost control, then forced the scooter straight and slammed the button on his coat, triggering the reflective field.

Light snapped tight around him, thin and precise. The next strike glanced off with a shriek and sparks. Thirty seconds. That was all it ever gave him. He twisted, brought up his pistol, and fired. One Broken Warden folded inward and collapsed, its shape breaking apart and pulling back on itself. Another went down moments later. But they did not slow, immortality made them careless. The shield flickered. Five seconds.

Coyote reached into his coat and came up with a small vial. Mirror dust. The last of it. He waited until one leapt, then shattered the vial against its head. Dust burst into the open maw. The Warden inhaled. Its scream cut off mid-sound. The body collapsed inward until nothing remained. No corpse. Just cold air and the faint bite of ozone. The others hesitated, but only for a moment.

Another Warden reached Coyote and snapped at his side. Teeth tore in. Pain flared again, hotter this time, warmth and wetness spreading along his ribs. He did not have time. He had to decide. Now. Coyote recalculated and chose. He veered hard toward the nearest official mirror, a massive geometric surface cut into stone, the Great Council emblem engraved deep at its centre. Crossing without clearance almost guaranteed arrest. As a smuggler, he sat on more than one Council stop list.

The alternative was simple - get torn apart. He chose arrest.

Coyote fired again as he rode, to slow them. One Broken Warden dropped. Another tripped over the collapsing body. The mirror loomed close. As he reached it, warmth seeped from the wound along his side. The mirror drank a few drops from him. The surface opened. Coyote crossed.

Steamhollow hit hard. Metal. Oil. Fog. The mirror snapped shut behind him. The Scarlet Valleys were gone.

Chapter 8

They had crossed the Steppe for days under Liana’s guidance, fast and safe by her standards, which meant everyone was tired and nobody was dead. Acceptable.

By dawn, Lucky came down in a controlled descent, steam hissing as the wings folded back into place. The engine dropped into its ground tone, still holding heat from the long push across the Steppe. Dorian steered the machine where he wanted it and tested the casing with the back of his fingers.

Toren watched him do it. Not the machine, not the horizon, but Dorian’s hand and the way he used it, the calm certainty of the movement, the habit of checking heat.

Dorian left Lucky standing to cool. The Steppe kept heat close to the ground, and the machine retained it longer than expected. He waited, checked again, and found it still too hot to fold into the capsule without burning himself or damaging the storage.

Liana secured the area and built a fire with quick, efficient movements. They ate without talking.

After dinner, Toren moved around the edge of the camp and burned a pinch of smoking herbs in a shallow dish. The scent was sharp and unpleasant, the kind that worked precisely because nothing liked it. He murmured the protective spell under his breath, placed the dish upwind, and watched the smoke crawl low along the ground.

Only then did he relax. His posture eased, his face softened, and for a moment he looked younger than he usually did. Dorian noted it and labelled him privately. Forest boy. He did not say it out loud, he had standards.

Lucky remained where it stood. Dorian intended to pack it later, but he fell asleep first.

Morning arrived cold and bright. The horses were ready for the road. Dorian went straight to Lucky and started it. The engine caught, coughed, and died. He tried again. The result was the same, with the added insult of a hiss that definitely did not belong there.

Dorian stared at the machine for a moment, mildly offended, then opened a panel.

A small fluffy animal stared back at him from inside the housing. It had round eyes, no fear, and no sense of guilt whatsoever. It looked warm. Comfortable. That was unacceptable.

The intruder bolted past Dorian’s wrist and vanished into the grass. Dorian watched the movement in silence, then looked back inside. The damage was obvious, and Dorian did not appreciate it. Grass packed into the tubes. Fluff wedged where pressure was supposed to move freely. A nest built where it should not have been.

Toren stepped closer, careful, and examined the mess with the same quiet focus he used on wounds. “It wanted warmth,” Toren said. “It is harmless.”

“Your harmless mate has clogged my engine,” Dorian replied, closing the panel. “Which suggests your protection did not work.”

“It was for predators,” Toren said, patiently. “This is not one.”

Liana intervened. “You left a warm hollow in the Steppe. Something took it. This is not complicated.”

Dorian exhaled through his nose. “I need water, a proper place to work, and tools I do not have.”

He rolled up his sleeves and felt Toren’s attention settle on him again. Dorian told himself it was simple curiosity. Toren watched everything; that was part of his nature. It was also about building trust, Dorian decided, a quiet form of measurement. Toren was assessing him. A sensible conclusion, which made it easy to keep.

Liana scanned the horizon, adjusted the route she kept in her head, and nodded, and nodded. “There is a settlement nearby.”

Dorian followed her gesture. “On the route?”

“Near it,” she corrected. “Off to the side.”

Toren glanced at her. “Raven Kin.”

“Yes,” Liana said. “Ravens. Not Loteri. We live in peace with them.”

She cut a sharp look at Dorian. “They value discipline. You will be quiet. If you feel the urge to be clever, swallow it.”

Dorian’s mouth twitched. “A personal challenge.”

Liana ignored him.

They approached the settlement on foot. Dorian and Toren kept Lucky moving behind Liana, pushing it along while she led the horses without looking back.

A low clay wall rose out of the Steppe, then movement, then two sentries stepping forward as if they had been there all along.

Raven Kin.

Hatchets hung at their sides, feathers tied to the handles. Their stance was loose, unguarded in a way that suggested the opposite.

“Travellers,” one of them said in the common tongue.

“Steppe Loteri,” Liana replied. “We ask for help.”

The sentry’s gaze moved from Lucky to Toren and finally to Dorian, where it paused, measuring the coat, the metal at his arm, and the way he stood.

“What help,” the sentry asked.

“Water,” Liana said. “A place to stay. Tools, if you have them. Our machine needs repair.”

The sentries leaned together and spoke in their dialect. It ran close enough to Forest speech for Toren to follow but was stripped down and hardened by Steppe rhythm. He listened, then answered carefully in the same tongue. Not fluent. Correct. Respectful.

Permission followed.

Inside, the settlement was narrow and cosy. Clay buildings pressed close together, roofs uneven, fires burning low. People watched them openly. Children stared at Dorian’s brass cuff and the unfamiliar cut of his coat. Dorian ignored it with professional ease.

They were given a small clay shed near the edge of the settlement. Water, food, a stable for the horses.

Dorian rolled his sleeves again and got to work with a quiet focus. Panels came off one by one. Tubes were loosened and flushed. The nest came out in damp clumps of grass, fluff, and stubborn fibres.

Toren helped without commentary, holding parts when Dorian handed them over and passing tools when asked. He watched him. Dorian became aware of it when he looked up and caught Toren studying his face. Toren looked away a moment too late. Dorian returned to the bolt with more force than strictly necessary. He told himself, again, that Toren was learning, building trust, confirming that Dorian was competent.

Ravens brought tools in silence and left the same way.

By mid-afternoon, Lucky stopped smelling like a damp nest and started smelling like metal again. Dorian checked the pressure lines, tapped the housings, listened for the correct tone. He left the panels open so the remaining water could dry. Without asking, Toren burned herbs around the machine and murmured a spell. Dorian assumed the adjustment accounted for fluffy idiots. He almost smiled.

The three of them ate afterwards. The food was simple and practical - grain wraps with wild meat and thin-sliced Steppe roots.

The message came near evening, when the light thinned and the settlement fires became brighter than the sky. A woman appeared at the shed.

“The Ash Ravens will see you.”

They were led to the communal fire.

There were no raised seats. No centre. The Ash Ravens sat among the others. Authority did not need arranging. Old eyes watched from the firelight, steady and without curiosity.

Ravens moved freely through the circle. Real ones. Dark-feathered and unafraid. Tribe members fed them strips of meat as they passed. The difference from the Loteri needed no explanation.

One of the Ash Ravens spoke. “Steppe Loteri. You are welcome.”

Liana inclined her head. “We thank you.”

The elder’s gaze shifted to Dorian and remained there. “You are their guest. Mirror Man.”

“I am,” Dorian said.

Silence held. Brief. Measured.

Another Ash Raven spoke. “We have heard of your Drommala.”

The Ash Ravens did not bow. Instead, one by one, they raised their hands, palms open, angled upward, fingers spread as if weighing something unseen. The gesture was quiet. Practised.

They began to speak. Their voices overlapped in a low chant, more breath than sound. Toren caught fragments. She who carried water. She who walked until her legs failed. She who did not turn aside.

The chant ended without a signal. Hands lowered. The moment closed.

The oldest Ash Raven shifted. Age had left his hands unsteady, the tremor carrying into his voice.

“Where does your path lead?”

“Forest Loteri Lands,” Liana said.

“Why?”

“We are searching for Mother Drommala.”

The circle stilled. The Ash Ravens exchanged brief looks. A breath passed between them and was gone.

One inclined his head. “Our birds saw her route. She walked beneath them.”

The oldest Ash Raven looked from Liana to Toren, then settled his gaze on Dorian.

“We pass into the minds of our birds,” he said. “We send them into the sky and see through their eyes. What they see, we see.”

“The birds followed the Mother’s path,” another added. “They saw where she walked. They saw where she returned to earth.”

A pause.

“They lost her,” the elder said. “Not because she hid. Because she crossed. The birds do not know mirrors.”

His gaze remained on Dorian.

“You do, Mirror Man.”

Silence settled.

Another Ash Raven spoke, voice firm. “But you are not Loteri. You are not Raven Kin. You do not pass into the minds of our birds.”

“Ravens’ minds are not open to strangers,” a third said. “Not even in need.”

The fire shifted.

Then the oldest bird stepped forward. Grey feathers threaded with age. A white spot marked one eye. It came to stand before Dorian and stared at him without blinking, a challenge.

The Ash Ravens watched the bird, then exchanged looks. They lived on the Steppe as well. They relied on the Drommala. On the Loteri. Between those truths stood an older law. They spoke among themselves in low voices. No haste. No interruption.

At last, one Ash Raven rose and faced Dorian directly.

“There is a way,” he said. “We accept him. Not as a guest.”

A deliberate pause.

“As Raven Kin.”

Liana leaned slightly toward Dorian. “Do not agree until you understand what that costs.”

“I agree,” Dorian said. Too fast. Too careless.

Toren closed his eyes for a brief second, then exhaled. “If he accepts anything without asking,” he murmured to Liana, not quite looking at her, “we are in trouble.”

Across the fire, the Ash Ravens did not react. They had heard Dorian’s answer.

One inclined his head again.

“Then he will try and earn his feather.”

Dorian was brought back to the communal fire and shown, with a brief motion of the hand, where to sit. Just ground. Liana watched him lower himself without hesitation. She did not look at his face. She watched his hands.

The Ash Ravens sat opposite in a half-circle. They did not speak. They watched. Their gaze moved over him.

The settlement stood quiet behind them. Smoke held low within the ring of firelight.

One of the Ash Ravens rose. He was not the oldest, but authority rested on him easily. He turned toward the gathered Ravens and spoke in their dialect. Toren followed most of it. Liana followed the cadence. Toren began translating it to Liana without being asked.

“He is naming the terms,” Toren murmured. “Not asking.”

The Ash Raven continued. “He says the stranger came to learn their ways. That he agreed to become one of them without hesitation. Without asking what would be required.”

A low shift moved through the ring. Approval.

The Ash Raven spoke again, slower this time. “He says the Mirror Man will bring the Drommala.”

The Ash Raven finished and turned back toward Dorian. The watching narrowed. Dorian lifted his chin slightly. Nothing more.

Movement stirred at the edge of the ring. Younger Ravens stepped forward, carrying something long and heavy between them. At first it resembled a frame. Rough timber. Dark bindings. Then the firelight caught it fully.

A cross, formed from two heavy beams set in an X. Built for load, not reverence.

They set it into the prepared hole at the centre. The base was driven down and secured with ropes. The timber struck once as it settled. No one spoke.

The younger Ravens approached Dorian. A hand gestured. He rose. No resistance. No questions. They led him to the timber. His brass arm and coat were removed first and set aside. The corset followed, unbuckled with practised precision. His shirt came last.

Dorian remained still.

When they turned him and pressed him against the wood, the firelight caught his back fully.

The scars were layered. Old and newer. Some healed cleanly. Others not. A map of mirrors and blood. Doors that had never opened gently.

Liana forgot to breathe. Something in her shifted. Not affection. Not softness. Reluctant respect, earned the hard way. Dorian had agreed without knowing the cost. Not for pride. For the Loteri.

They bound him with old rope to iron rings fixed at the ends of the beams. Wrists drawn wide first. Secured. Ankles pulled down and fixed. The rope was rough. Well used.

Dorian drew a slow breath as the last knot was set. His shoulders shifted once under the strain, then steadied. He did not turn his head.

A leather single-tail whip was brought forward. Used. Practical. Its handle ended in a carved bird’s head. A woman with grey hair bound tight took it and tested the weight.

She stepped close.

“Mirror Man may stop us at any time,” she said in the common tongue. “He must say the word. If he does, the rite ends unfinished and must be attempted again. Is this understood?”

“Yes,” Dorian said.

She nodded. She formed a loop and touched his back without striking. Tap. Tap. Tap. Measured rhythm.

As she spoke in dialect, Toren translated quietly. “She names what he is. Mirror. Guest. Stranger. She asks the Steppe to witness him.”

The Ash Raven stepped back, measuring the distance, and then struck.

The first stroke landed across Dorian’s left shoulder blade. A long red mark rose at once. His breath caught. His chest pressed into the wood. The rope creaked once.

The second stroke followed, striking the opposite side. The third came precise.

The Ravens began to count in their dialect.

Each Ash Raven delivered three strokes. No more. No less. The whip passed from hand to hand. Words spoken between turns. Weight shared.

Dorian breathed through it. At times his shoulders jerked hard against the rope, then steadied again.

Toren translated in fragments, his voice controlled despite the tension in his posture. “They say he is seen. That his body speaks truth. That he came without force.” Liana watched the rise and fall of Dorian’s back, muscles tightening and releasing as endurance settled into acceptance. She lost the count somewhere between strokes, her attention drawn instead to Toren’s voice, low and nearly intimate. In the firelight she caught Toren’s profile, intent and unguarded, and something in her shifted again. Toren’s eyes were fixed on Dorian. He did not notice her watching. He was holding too much at once: the urge to stop the rite, to step forward, to heal. And in his terror, he also recognised indecent thoughts.

At the midpoint, Dorian’s head tipped forward with a low, involuntary sound. An Ash Raven stepped close.

“What is your name?”

Dorian lifted his head. Breath uneven. “Mirror Man.”

The whip passed again.

By the final count, thirty-nine, his back was swollen and dark, thin lines of blood tracing older scars along the curve of his spine.

A younger Raven approached with a small pot.

“What is your name?”

“Mirror Man.”

She pressed the white mixture into the wounds.

Dorian’s body broke then. A raw sound tore from him. His shoulders sagged against the ropes as pain stripped discipline clean away.

“Salt with ashes,” Toren breathed.

When the mixture was worked in fully, the Ravens loosened the ropes and lowered Dorian to the ground. He nearly folded. Caught himself with shaking hands. Forced his spine upright.

One of the Ash Ravens leaned forward.

“Pain purged your body. Suffering shaped your spirit. You are one of us.”

A pause.

“What is your name?”

“Corvell,” Dorian said, too fast.

The elder extended his hand. “Give me your arm.”

The brand was lifted from the fire, dull red at the edge. The smell came first. Burned metal. Burned flesh.

Then the iron pressed down.

“Your name is Mirror Raven.”

Dorian jerked once, held for a heartbeat, then collapsed.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Toren was already on his knees. Liana followed.

Dorian lay on the hard-packed earth, back burned and bleeding, arm branded, finally still.

Chapter 9

Dorian lay on the hard-packed earth with his cheek pressed into grit and the taste of iron at the back of his throat. He was not unconscious, merely reduced to fewer, less cooperative parts. The brand in his arm pulsed like a second heartbeat. His back burned raw. When he drew breath, his body answered with a slow, offended tremor.

Around him, the Ash Ravens waited. They did not hurry to rescue him from his choices. Heat and pain had sealed the rite. What followed belonged to him alone.

Dorian shifted his fingers against the earth and managed a small lift of his head. His vision swam. Firelight doubled.

Then Toren was there. He dropped to his knees, fast and silent, as if the Steppe itself had thrown him forward. His hands hovered above Dorian’s shoulders, suspended between instinct and discipline.

“Do not,” Dorian rasped, “look at me like that.”

Toren stilled. “Like what?”

“Like you are about to do something reckless.”

Toren’s hands settled at last, one at Dorian’s shoulder, one near his ribs, careful of the fresh welts. His touch was warm, grounding. It tightened something low in Dorian’s stomach that had nothing to do with medicine.

“I am not the reckless one,” Toren said.

From behind him, Liana’s voice cut through. “He is alive.”

Dorian exhaled sharply, the sound almost a laugh. “Technically,” he murmured, “I remain operational.”

Toren ignored the comment and leaned closer, studying his face for signs of fading. Dorian stared back, half-lidded, determined to remain inconveniently present.

The Ash Ravens moved at last. Two younger ones lifted Dorian without ceremony. They carried him to the low clay house set aside for travellers and lowered him onto a mat. Toren adjusted Dorian’s shoulder so the weight settled evenly. Dorian’s breath caught. Toren did not apologise. He adjusted again until the rhythm steadied.

A young Ash Raven woman entered without knocking. Her eyes were steady and unyielding.

“You heal?” she asked in the common tongue.

“Yes,” Toren replied.

“Salt and ash stay till morning.”

“It will burn all night.”

“It should.”

She handed him a small jar of dark oil. “Bud oil. A few drops only to pass the night. In the morning, you clean and heal. Not before.”

Dorian murmured, eyes closed, “I am glad we have agreed that my back is none of my business.”

After she left, Toren tipped a few drops of oil to Dorian’s lips. The effect was swift. Dorian’s breathing eased. His brow smoothed.

“Did I say anything…” Dorian whispered.

“What?”

“Embarrassing. During the performance.”

Toren’s mouth twitched. “Not yet.”

“Excellent,” Dorian murmured. “Give me time.”

He slept.

Liana and Toren kept watch in turns. Liana stayed until the sky paled. She disliked the new feeling settling in her chest. Appreciation for a posh inconvenience. And something dangerously close to respect.

At dawn she nudged Toren’s shoulder. “Your turn.”

She crossed the room and dropped onto the mat. “Wake me if you need help.” Within moments, she was gone.

Toren sat alone beside Dorian as he slept. He stared at the grey crust pressed into torn skin and felt anger rise, clean and bright. Not at the Ash Ravens. They followed their law. The anger was for Dorian. For agreeing too quickly. For standing there without asking the cost and still managing a trace of sarcasm.

He checked Dorian’s pulse again. Steady. It should have reassured him. It did not.

Dorian woke like a man returning from a long argument with his own body.

“Good morning,” he rasped.

“How do you feel?” Toren asked.

Dorian took a careful breath. His back objected. His arms objected. His existence objected. Then a small, unappealing smile appeared.

“I feel,” he said, “like I have been accepted into a charming community that expresses trust through violence and seasoning.”

“You got your feather.”

“Yes. Apparently I am now officially branded.”

“Do not move too much.”

Toren held water to his mouth. “Drink.”

“Is this an order?”

“It is advice.”

Dorian drank slowly. Toren watched the effort in every swallow and felt an unwelcome flicker of something that was neither anger nor fear. Dorian was trying to remain composed. He always was. It was infuriating. And quietly, dangerously attractive.

When the cup lowered, Dorian stayed still for a moment. “I require a brief negotiation with my body.”

Toren blinked once. Then understood.

“You cannot walk far.”

“I can walk enough.”

Toren pretended not to hear. He slid an arm carefully under Dorian’s shoulder and helped him sit, then stand. They moved outside toward a screened corner set aside for practical needs.

“I am capable,” Dorian muttered.

“I know,” Toren replied. But he did not let go.

Toren’s hand moved on instinct to unfasten the trousers.

Dorian raised a brow. “Trying a new treatment?”

Toren froze. “That isn’t… I wasn’t…”

“Excellent,” Dorian murmured. “I feared for your patients.”

For a heartbeat too long, Toren’s hand had slipped lower than intended. Heat rushed to his face. He pulled back too quickly.

“I did not…”

“No,” Dorian said calmly. “You absolutely did not.” Then, he added softer, “Thank you. I will manage the rest.”

Toren turned his back, suddenly very interested in the opposite wall.

Back inside, Dorian lowered himself with a slow exhale. Toren brought water, cloth, and herbs.

“Do not move,” Toren said.

“I am considering retirement from movement entirely.”

Toren ignored him and studied the hardened salt and ash pressed into torn skin.

“Thank you,” Dorian said quietly.

Toren did not answer. Dorian’s hair was close, carrying the faint scent of clean oil, dust, and something beneath it that Toren could not name. He steadied himself and pressed the damp cloth to the first welt. Dorian stiffened. The salt had dried hard; lifting it pulled at raw flesh.

“You may swear,” Toren said.

“I am conserving energy.”

When the wounds were clean, Toren moved Dorian onto his stomach and placed one palm against the earth. Toren’s breathing deepened. He drew power from the ground and laid his other hand against Dorian’s back. Heat followed, dense and steady. It sank into torn skin and swelling muscle. Dorian exhaled before he meant to.

Toren paused, gathered himself, and drew again. The worst of the pain dulled. The tightness eased. With each attempt his pauses lengthened. His fingers began to tremble.

“Toren,” Dorian said.

No answer. Another weaker pulse of heat followed.

Dorian pushed up on one elbow and caught his wrist. “Enough.”

“One more,” Toren said, breath strained.

“No.” Dorian held his gaze. “I feel nearly fine.”

“You will exhaust yourself,” he added. “And Liana will finish what the Ravens did not.”

Toren’s mouth twitched. He withdrew his hand from the earth, the magic thinned in the air. Dorian released Toren’s wrist slowly.

“You have done enough,” Dorian said.

Toren studied the reduced swelling, the calmer breath.

“Nearly fine,” he murmured.

Dorian eased upright, testing the movement. It hurt less.

“I prefer nearly,” he said. “It leaves room for improvement.”

Their eyes held. Neither looked away first.

They rested until afternoon, when the same young Ash Raven woman entered without knocking. She let her gaze settle on Dorian, who looked better than she had expected. Then her attention shifted to Toren, and something like approval flickered in her eyes.

“You heal well.”

Toren straightened slightly, caught off guard. “I try.”

Without any change in her voice, she added, “The Ash Ravens will see you.”

Dorian’s mouth twitched faintly. “They miss me already.”

“They did not finish.”

Dorian pushed himself upright and tested his balance. Pain flared, but he held it. Despite his protests, Toren helped him dress properly. The corset and brass arm were left behind.

On the way back to the communal fire, the settlement felt different. Raven Kin stepped aside as Dorian passed. A few younger Ravens inclined their heads.

“Mirror Raven,” one of them said. The name moved quietly through the air.

Only the Ash Ravens and a handful of the young waited near the fire. No crowd this time. Dorian was guided forward.

“Mirror Raven,” the oldest Ash Raven said. “Sit.”

A soft mat had been laid before them. Dorian lowered himself without comment. Toren and Liana remained slightly behind and to the side, close enough to reach him.

A pipe was placed in Dorian’s hands. It was old, its stem carved with a raven’s head, the bowl darkened by long use. The scent was familiar at first. Sacred bud. Beneath it, something sharper. Earthier.

“And the button,” Toren murmured under his breath.

The Ash Ravens watched without explanation.

Dorian inhaled. The smoke moved slow and warm through his lungs. The first pull was bud alone. Dorian’s shoulders loosened. The edges of pain softened. The brand throbbed, then dulled. He drew again, unhurried. No one rushed him. The rite moved at its own pace.

The chant began before the smoke had fully settled in his lungs. Low. Layered. Not loud. The Ash Ravens spoke in dialect, voices folding over one another. Calling. Inviting.

Toren caught fragments. “They ask the oldest raven,” he whispered to Liana, “to accept him.”

In time, the button began to take hold. Dorian felt the shift behind his eyes first. The firelight thickened. The air stretched. His hands seemed further away than they were. His pulse climbed, then dropped into something slower.

The chant deepened. The oldest Ash Raven stepped forward and laid a hand briefly over Dorian’s brow.

“Open,” he said.

The old bird Dorian had seen the previous night landed before him, the white mark over one eye stark against its grey feathers. The branded feather on Dorian’s arm burned suddenly, sharp and deep. His eyes rolled white and his body slackened.

Toren hesitated, unwilling to break the rite. The oldest Ash Raven spared him the decision, “Healer. Hold him.”

Toren lowered Dorian carefully, bracing his shoulders. Dorian’s breathing changed. Not shallow. Not strained. Elsewhere. The last thing Dorian felt of his own body was Toren’s hand at his ribs. A thought flickered, inappropriate and vivid, sharpened by altered perception. It vanished as something vast and feathered tore upward through him.

The ground dropped away.

He was not in his body. He was above it.

Wind. Cold, clean air burned Dorian’s lungs. The pull of muscle not his own. Wings cutting air. He did not see the raven. He was the raven.

The Steppe spread wide beneath him. He flew south first. The land shifted from open grass to harder ground. The border between Steppe and Forest came not as a line but as a thickening.

The raven circled twice. Dorian searched instinctively for mirrors. He saw none. Only felt a thin Mirror Call.

The bird turned.

The Forest rose beneath him, dark and dense. The canopy swallowed light. The raven dipped lower. Something below flickered. Not glass. Not surface. The Mirror Call sharpened, stronger than before. Then it was gone.

The raven shifted direction and followed the river. Water flashed silver between trees. It widened. Narrowed. Widened again. The raven did not hesitate. Dorian followed the current as if it were a road. He tried to remember as many details as his mind allowed. It was nearly impossible. All the way, a cleanness stayed with Dorian, as if everything had just been washed.

Inside his mind, something settled.

Follow the clouds. Follow the water.

It was not in a common tongue or any local dialect. It was in pure reflective language.

The river broadened into a slow, wide stretch broken by low islands. Sand and stone. Thin trees clinging to edges. The bird circled three times.

There.

The Mirror Call struck hard enough to feel almost physical. It was not visible. Not truly. But it was present. Deep. Buried. The strongest yet.

The raven held the circle longer, banking wide, then tighter.

Dorian fixed what he could in memory. The bend of the river. The shape of the islands. A cluster of trees leaning west. Light breaking through cloud.

Rain began without warning. Hard. Sudden. Dorian flew straight into it. The world blurred. The way back fractured. Direction dissolved. Forest thickened. Steppe thinned. Dorian tried to hold the path in his mind. It washed away.

Darkness came too quickly. He could no longer tell where they were. Then the ground rushed up.

Dorian gasped and dragged smoke into his lungs instead of wind. His eyes snapped open. Evening had fallen while he was gone.

He was lying on the mat. Toren’s body was warm and solid behind him. An arm lay firm across his chest, another braced his shoulder as if anchoring him to the earth. At some point they had shifted from sitting to lying. Dorian had no memory of it. Toren’s breath moved steadily against the back of his neck. The faint scent of crushed herbs clung to him, sharp and clean beneath the warmth of skin. A blanket covered them both. Liana sat nearby, watching quietly.

Dorian’s head felt split.

“He returns,” said one of the Ash Ravens.

Dorian tried to sit. The world tilted violently. Toren tightened his hold.

“Slowly,” he said quietly.

Dorian swallowed. The taste of iron returned.

“How long?” he asked.

“Hours,” Liana replied.

Dorian closed his eyes. The river remained. The islands. The call. He could not yet separate memory from illusion.

A Raven woman stepped forward and handed Toren a small cup. The liquid inside was dark and pungent.

“For the mind,” she said. “He must empty.”

Dorian looked at it suspiciously.

“You will hate it,” Toren said. “Drink.”

Dorian drank without comment.

The taste was foul. Bitter root and something metallic. It burned down his throat. For a moment nothing happened. Then his stomach revolted. Toren rolled him to the side just in time. He retched hard onto the earth beside the mat. The first wave left him shaking. The second was worse. With each purge, something cleared. The pressure behind his eyes eased. The trembling lessened.

When it ended, Dorian lay still, breathing hard but steady.

“Better?” Toren asked quietly.

“Yes,” Dorian said hoarsely. “Delightful.”

Later, when the fire had burned lower, Dorian, Toren, and Liana stood before the Ash Ravens and inclined their heads.

“You showed the path,” Liana said.

The oldest Ash Raven looked at Dorian. “You followed.”

“The Loteri thank the Ravens. Mirror Raven stands with them,” Liana continued without looking at the exhausted Dorian, who was trying to stand straight beside her.

They were dismissed without ceremony.

Back in the clay shed, Dorian sat carefully. His head still throbbed, but the pain was manageable. Toren knelt behind him and pressed warm hands lightly against his back, drawing a small measure of the earth’s strength. The healing was brief and controlled.

When Toren withdrew, Dorian remained seated, staring at the wall as if it might rearrange itself into riverbanks.

“Well?” Liana said at last.

Dorian closed his eyes and forced the fragments into order. “Some. I will try to recall them. The border first. Steppe to Forest. The pull was there. And Ashen Valley. I recognised it.”

“And?” Liana pressed.

“The river,” Dorian said. “The direction is clear enough. Something is buried there. A mirror, if it still counts as one.”

“Do you remember details?” Liana asked.

“Some,” Dorian repeated. “Not many.”

“We should start with the border.” She was already mapping the route in her mind.

Dorian considered that. “Yes. If we follow the path, we might increase our chances of finding a trace.” He added quietly, “Mirrors, if I am lucky.”

The path had been shown. Now they had to walk it.

Chapter 10

The Steppe thinned until the change became obvious. Grass shortened. Dust cooled beneath the horses’ hooves. Liana rode ahead, guiding them toward the Steppe–Forest border Dorian had seen through the raven’s eyes.

She felt the shift first through Ineya. The mare slowed and tested the softer ground. Damp air brushed against Liana’s legs. The smell changed. Resin. Wet bark. Less dust.

Behind her, Toren breathed in slowly. The Steppe magic he knew so well faded from his senses, clean and hot. In its place he felt the forest. Deep. Heavy. It did not guide him the way the Steppe did. It simply existed.

Dorian slowed Lucky and let the machine roll behind the horses. The air felt thicker against his skin, carrying the scent of sap and damp leaves. The terrain matched what he had seen through the raven, but memory borrowed from another creature’s eyes was never precise.

Liana halted Ineya. Toren brought his horse beside her. Dorian stopped Lucky behind them and stepped down, the engine settling into a low hum.

Dorian packed Lucky away and moved ahead. A Mirror Call might appear as pressure beneath the skin. Or a shift in reflection.

Hours passed. Nothing answered.

Liana adjusted their direction quietly, guiding Ineya around roots and dips in the soil. Toren walked beside Dorian, clearing branches where the ground narrowed. His eyes drifted toward Dorian more than once before he forced himself to look away.

They circled the border in widening loops. The forest remained silent.

At last Dorian stopped.

“It is gone.”

Liana studied the darkening trees. “Then we follow your memory. The path to Ashen Valley goes through the Forest from here.”

Toren checked the horses, running a hand down each leg. After a moment he shook his head.

“They will not survive that terrain.”

“We leave them at the Steppe Outpost,” Liana said. “It is close. We camp there and enter on foot in the morning.”

Dorian exhaled slowly. No call. No trace.

They turned back toward the Steppe. By the time the Outpost appeared ahead, night had already settled.

The Steppe Outpost was simple. A well, a shelter wall, and a fire pit blackened by years of use. Two Steppe guards kept watch beside a small lantern. They watched the travellers arrive. Asked no questions. Liana greeted them with a brief nod. The guards returned it and remained at their post.

The horses drank before being tied nearby. Night settled quickly once the sun dropped. The last warmth of the Steppe faded with it.

They built a small fire and sat with their backs to the wind. Flatbread warmed on a stone while strips of horse jerky passed between them. The flames threw slow shadows across the ground.

After a while, Dorian asked, “You’re half-Forest, right?”

Toren nodded. “Father’s from there. Mother’s Steppe.”

Dorian studied him across the fire. “Did you grow up in the woods or on the plains?”

“Both,” Toren said. “Depends on the season.”

One of Dorian’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Is that a Forest trait? Evasion.”

Toren expected the usual edge. It never came. He allowed a small smile. “If you like.”

Dorian leaned forward slightly. “How do you move through it? The forest. Not the stories. The real thing.”

Toren paused, then answered. “You listen. You don’t take what isn’t meant for you. If you hunt or gather, you ask permission first. Be polite. And thank the forest for what it gives.”

“And if you don’t?”

Toren met his eyes across the fire. “You regret it.”

Dorian held the look a moment, then nodded. “Makes sense.”

Something tightened in Toren’s chest. Holding Dorian’s gaze felt like standing too close to fire. He finally looked down at the flames.

Across from them Liana nudged a log with her stick. “We leave early,” she said. “Save your secrets for the trees.”

Dorian leaned back against the post behind him. Toren said nothing.

In the morning the Outpost guards agreed to keep the horses for them. They waited while Liana and Toren said their farewells. Neither Liana nor Toren rushed it. Both pressed their foreheads to the warm hide, hands steady on neck and mane, murmuring thanks in the Steppe dialect. Fingers traced old scars and familiar muscle, gentle and brief.

Dorian watched from a polite distance. His cynicism died on contact. The bond between the Loteri and their animals was not sentimental. It was practical. Lived. Earned.

The guards led the horses away, hooves muffled in the grass. Liana nodded once, more to herself than to anyone.

That was all.

Liana and Toren loaded their supplies onto Lucky. Dorian adjusted the packs, checked the straps, then looked at them both.

“If either of you fancies a rest, there’s room behind me,” he said. “Not dignified. But it moves.”

Liana gave the machine a hard stare. “I’ll trust my own legs.”

Dorian smiled. “Suit yourself.”

Toren hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “I’ll try it.”

Liana rolled her eyes and muttered something about men and their machines again.

Lucky hissed softly as its gears settled. Dorian set off, guiding the machine along the rough path. Toren climbed on behind him, leaving careful space between them. The machine jolted over uneven ground, and after a moment Dorian glanced back over his shoulder.

“Best hold on. The road’s rough, and the trees are too dense for Lucky to take off. Regrettably.”

Toren wrapped an arm around Dorian’s waist. His hand settled near Dorian’s belt as he steadied his balance. “Understood.”

The closeness was immediate. Toren breathed in without meaning to. Dorian smelled of oil, worn leather, skin, and something sharper beneath it. The sensation unsettled Toren more than the movement of the machine. He tightened his grip slightly, unsure whether it was practical or something else entirely.

Dorian did not comment. He only leaned back a fraction, enough for Toren to feel the warmth of him through fabric. Toren fixed his gaze on the passing grass and convinced himself he had noticed nothing at all.

They had not gone far when the undergrowth shifted. At first it seemed like wind moving through the brush, but the movement was wrong. Slower. Deliberate. Shadows thickened between the trunks, and roots rose where roots had not been before, lifting from the soil and weaving together until a living wall stood across the path.

Dorian stopped Lucky at once and stepped down, moving in front of Liana without thinking, his hand already drifting toward the tools at his belt. Liana noticed. Her eyes narrowed slightly before she gave a small nod, approval or respect, hard to tell.

“Step back, Mirrorwalker,” she said calmly. “You’re too valuable to lose in some forest brawl. Let us do what needs doing.”

Toren stepped forward with his hands open. His breathing slowed as he faced the wall without blinking. When he spoke, the words came in the Forest dialect, quiet and steady.

The sound moved through the roots like ripples across dark water. Each phrase reached the wall and the bark flexed slightly, as if the forest listened through the wood itself. The roots loosened. They did not retreat. Instead the wall unmade itself, strands separating and sliding back into the soil until the path opened again.

Dorian watched in silence.

Toren seemed different in the forest. Older. Certain.

Only when the last root disappeared did Toren breathe again. His shoulders dropped slightly, revealing the effort it had taken to remain calm.

They moved on.

Behind them the shadows shifted again. Not following exactly. Remembering. The Rootbounds repeated the travellers’ shapes in their slow movement, as if committing them to memory.

They made camp at dusk. Liana circled the clearing first, checking the ground for tracks before dropping her pack beside the fire ring. Toren gathered kindling nearby, working quietly. Dorian packed Lucky back into its capsule and sealed it.

After a moment, Toren spoke.

“The Rootbounds accepted us as harmless guests.” He glanced toward Liana. “In return, we don’t hunt.”

Liana nodded.

A short walk from the clearing they found a spring where warm water rose into a basin deep enough to stand waist-high. They washed in turn. Toren glanced at the healing whip marks across Dorian’s back.

“I’m fine,” Dorian said. “Disappointingly.”

They returned to the fire as the forest darkened, sitting close to the flames and eating quietly, glad for the warmth.

Liana fell asleep almost as soon as she reached the travel mat. Toren walked the edge of the camp with smoking herbs, murmuring requests to the forest. When he finished, he checked on Liana, tucked the leather cloak around her shoulders, and set a flask of water within her reach.

Dorian stepped away from the fire and leaned against a thick tree, watching. He studied Toren in silence and named him the Forest boy again. The care. The quiet ease. Always there. Toren’s bond with Liana was old and strong. Dorian had noticed it from the beginning.

He closed his eyes, arms crossed, face tilted toward a patch of moonlight between the branches. The air was cool and heavy, nothing like the Steppe heat, settling through him slowly. A sleeping mat waited on the moss nearby.

Toren lingered at the edge of the clearing. Dorian sensed his approach before hearing a step and kept his eyes closed.

“Something on your mind?” Dorian asked evenly.

Toren shook his head. “No. Just making sure.”

Dorian’s mouth twitched. “Making sure I haven’t escaped into the night already?”

“Maybe,” Toren said. The smile didn’t quite hold.

Dorian opened his eyes and looked at him. Toren met the gaze and, for a moment, lost himself in it. Neither of them spoke. The quiet stretched between them. Toren reached for a nearby branch and murmured a spell. The air thickened, drawing a sphere of stillness around them, sealing them from sight and sound.

Dorian watched him with one eyebrow raised, a half smile returning. “Do explain.”

Toren paused, gathering breath and magic.

“We’ll part soon. I don’t think I’ll have another chance.”

He fell silent.

Then Toren stepped forward and touched Dorian’s face. Dorian caught his wrist, gentle but firm.

“Well,” Dorian said mildly, “this is already a questionable decision.”

His grip loosened but did not fully release.

“Are you certain?”

Toren nodded.

Dorian studied him for a moment longer, as if offering one last chance to reconsider. Toren didn’t move.

Dorian let go.

The space between them disappeared. Toren kissed him first, tentative at the start, lips tight with nerves. Dorian answered with unexpected softness and let him lead. The tension eased as the kiss deepened, Toren’s hands sliding over Dorian’s shoulders and beneath his shirt as curiosity replaced restraint.

For a moment, Toren paused. Dorian’s body was not entirely unfamiliar to him. He had seen it before while tending the ritual wounds. But touching it now felt different. His fingers brushed across the thin scars along Dorian’s ribs.

Toren dropped to his knees without grace, the moss damp and itchy beneath him, hands sliding down to Dorian’s hips. He fumbled at the fastening of Dorian’s trousers, fingers shaking slightly. The button resisted. He tried again, determined not to look up.

Dorian watched him with quiet amusement before reaching down and covering Toren’s hands with his own, guiding the fingers until the fastening gave way. Toren glanced up briefly. Dorian’s gaze was patient.

Once the fabric loosened Toren slipped his hands inside, fingertips tracing warm skin. He leaned forward, mouth moving lower, cautious at first while he tested Dorian’s response. Dorian exhaled slowly in approval, resting one hand in Toren’s hair and letting him explore.

Toren moved with too much care, every motion deliberate, desperate to do it correctly. Dorian noticed and filed it under nerves. Toren pushed himself deeper until he choked and had to pull back, breath catching.

Dorian’s hand tightened gently in his hair.

“Easy… Forest boy,” he murmured, voice low and rough.

The words slipped out before Dorian noticed. He caught himself, surprised, but did not take them back. Toren looked up, eyes wide, holding the moment as if committing it to memory.

Dorian’s control nearly slipped, but he kept it. In one motion he pulled Toren to his feet and pressed him back against the tree. Dorian undressed him slowly, exploring Toren’s body unhurriedly. Toren closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of Dorian’s hair, his pulse racing.

Then Dorian guided Toren down onto the sleeping mat. Kneeling over him, Dorian watched for the slightest sign of hesitation. Toren gave none.

Toren leaned up, hands working clumsily at Dorian’s shirt until skin met skin again and their mouths found each other, impatient now.

Dorian’s hand moved between Toren’s thighs, pushing them apart. Toren held his breath as Dorian’s fingers tested him.

Dorian paused, gaze sharpening. “Ever been with a man before?”

Toren nodded too quickly.

He lied.

Dorian studied him a moment longer before saying nothing. The scent of clean oil lingered as he eased his fingers inside Toren, slow and careful, opening him without pain. The sensation made Toren gasp. Sharp at first. Then warmth spread through him.

As Dorian leaned over him, Toren felt the firm pressure of Dorian’s erection brush the inside of his thigh, steady and impossible to ignore. Dorian’s other hand moved over Toren’s arousal in an even rhythm until tension snapped into release. Toren shuddered, breathless, clutching the moss beneath him.

Dorian held him until the shaking passed.

Only then did Dorian rise and guide Toren back toward him. Toren finished what he had begun earlier, taking Dorian into his mouth and swallowing the metallic taste as Dorian released.

Afterward, Dorian placed a brief kiss on Toren’s temple before dropping beside him on the moss. They lay side by side in silence, catching their breath.

Toren spoke first, voice rough. “That wasn’t how I imagined it.”

Dorian watched the branches above. “I rarely match expectations.”

Toren smiled faintly. “Very much the Mirrorwalker way, I suppose.”

Dorian glanced at him. “That would be an exaggeration.”

Toren rolled onto his side and traced a slow line along Dorian’s cheek and down across his scarred chest. “Why didn’t you take me, Dorian?”

Dorian froze at the sound of his name, then relaxed again beneath Toren’s hand.

“I don’t have a habit of breaking people,” Dorian said mildly. “Especially useful allies.” He kept the rest to himself.

Toren curled closer, murmuring, “I’d love you to break me.”

Dorian laughed quietly. “Loteri are the most stubborn folk I’ve ever met.”

He buttoned his shirt and wrapped them both in Toren’s cloak. Neither spoke again.

Dorian lay awake, watching the branches above. Idiot. He had broken his own rule. Never be someone’s first.

It’s fine, he told himself. They would part ways soon. One night. Nothing more. The thought satisfied him enough to drift off beside Toren.

Morning came cold and quiet. Toren was already awake. Clean and composed, as if the night had not happened. He checked the packs with efficient movements. Liana crouched by the fire, poking at a pan with her usual unimpressed expression as the smell of something edible drifted through camp.

Dorian sat up and watched them both.

The world had already moved on.

On the road, Liana agreed to ride behind Dorian for a while. She lasted ten minutes before climbing down again, muttering about machines and personal dignity. Toren took her place, arms settling around Dorian’s waist.

After a while, Dorian felt the pressure of Toren’s erection.

He inhaled quietly but kept his eyes on the road ahead.

Entirely his own fault.

Chapter 11

The cell stank of piss, mould, and the metallic trace of old blood. Coyote could taste it at the back of his throat, foul, damp, lingering. He had been in worse places. The thought brought no comfort. Only irritation.

He had been arrested less than an hour after crossing illegally from the Scarlet Valley into Steamhollow through an official mirror. Efficient pricks, when annoyed. Now he sat in a prison cell built for common criminals and fitted for Mirrorwalkers. A suppression field hummed through the walls, low and constant, designed to stop Walkers from drawing reflective energy to heal, fight, or damage property. Broken ribs, apparently, were acceptable. Council property was another matter.

The Council medics had done the minimum. His side was wrapped badly. A cut along his ribs pulled every time he breathed too deeply, and the bruising across his shoulder had settled into a thick, hot ache. He chewed another ironberry from the strip hidden in his sleeve. Rare, expensive, and only mildly useful. It helped with blood loss a little. Not enough to improve his view of anything.

Across the cell three men watched him with the lazy interest of people deciding whether he was worth the effort. One of them, thin and sharp-faced, leaned back against the wall and grinned.

“Thought that was you.”

Coyote glanced over. “How unfortunate.”

The man laughed through his nose. “Talvek says you still owe twenty.”

“Then Talvek continues to be a dull man with an excellent memory.”

That earned a few snorts from the others. Not friendly. Just appreciative in the way bored criminals appreciated anything that might turn unpleasant.

The thin man pushed off the wall. “Prison does not clear debt.”

“No,” Coyote said. “Though it does lower the quality of collection.”

The man smiled without warmth. “We collect in other ways too. Men short on credits usually find themselves useful.”

A couple of the others laughed.

Coyote looked him over slowly. “If that is Talvek’s idea of repayment, I begin to understand his financial troubles.”

Another prisoner lifted a hand before things went further. Big fellow. Shaved head. One ear half gone. Thick fingers wrapped round one knee. He sat by the bars, looking like a man who let others start trouble so he could finish it.

Coyote took the hint and said calmly, “Tell Talvek that Vesk will cover it.”

That changed the air.

The thin man gave a short laugh. “Vesk?”

“Yes.”

The big man looked at him properly then. “You haven’t heard?”

Coyote frowned.

“Vesk vanished,” the thin one said. “His gang announced the new leader not long ago.”

Someone muttered from the straw that there had been no body, no message, no trail worth a damn. By rumour, Vesk had been missing since last year. His people had searched, asked questions, and broken a few men over it, but found nothing. They kept it quiet, hoping to find him before Brassville noticed.

Coyote disliked the sound of that.

Vesk ran one of the ugliest gangs in Brassville. Loud when it suited him, greedy by nature, and not the sort of man who simply vanished. More irritating was the pattern. Vesk. Then Eric. Then Ophelia, recently. Three Walkers gone in a row. And those were only the ones Coyote knew about.

The sensible part of his mind told him it proved nothing. People disappeared all the time. His instincts disagreed. Quietly.

“When was he last seen?” Coyote asked.

The big man narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Curiosity,” Coyote said. “One of my more expensive defects.”

Before the man answered, keys rattled outside the bars. A mirror officer stopped in the corridor, grey coat and brass buttons catching the weak light. The Great Council emblem was stitched over the breast in dull silver thread.

“Coyote. Up.”

That improved the room.

The thin prisoner clicked his tongue. “Lucky bastard.”

Coyote stood carefully, mindful of his ribs. “Not luck. Administrative charm.”

The officer ignored him and led him out.

The corridor beyond smelled different from the cell. Less piss. More oil, damp stone, and stale paper. Brass pipes ran along the ceiling, hissing softly where steam leaked through old seals. Wire-caged lamps cast weak yellow light over iron doors and grey-painted walls. The officer’s boots rang against the metal strips bolted into the floor, the sound carrying farther than it should have.

They stopped at the discharge office. Coyote’s belongings lay on a scarred wooden table beneath a hanging lamp: his ripped coat, a half-empty backpack, the gearwallet, and the package. The clerk behind the desk had yellowing cuffs and the expression of a man who considered mercy a filing error.

“Your bail has been paid,” he said.

Coyote raised an eyebrow. “How generous.”

“You may leave now,” the clerk said, “or remain to complete the original term of three months for unlawful mirror crossing from the Scarlet Valley.”

“A difficult choice.”

The clerk slid the forms forward. Coyote pressed his brass ident plate to the registry box, then checked his things one by one. His backpack was missing only the instruments he had lost near the sealed mirror. The gearwallet was intact. When he picked up the package, he felt a small private satisfaction. The reflective encryption still held, untouched.

The Council rarely troubled itself over suspected smuggling unless someone brought proof. A protected package alone was not worth the time or paperwork of decryption.

Coyote shrugged into his coat, tucked the package inside, and stepped back into the yard. Cold air hit him first, clammy with soot and rain. Steam hissed somewhere beyond the outer wall.

His client waited by the gate, expensive coat and bad temper arranged neatly under the iron arch.

“You took your time,” the man snapped.

“You paid for release, not efficiency.”

“Not here.”

They walked two streets to a narrow service lane between a boiler shop and a boarded tavern. Wet brick, coal smoke, oil, and the sour, stale smell of old cabbage leaked from some unseen kitchen.

The client turned on him immediately.

“Do you have any idea what this delay cost me?”

“Yes,” Coyote said. “One bail payment and whatever remains of your nerves.”

“You were arrested.”

“I had noticed.”

“You were meant to deliver discreetly. That bail comes out of your reward.”

Coyote looked at him with quiet contempt. The man was desperate and they both knew it. Coyote drew the package from his coat and held it out. The client grabbed it and tried the latch. Nothing. A faint reflective shimmer slid along the seam.

“What did you do?”

“Reflective encryption.”

“Open it.”

Coyote held out his gearwallet. “Payment first.”

The man frowned. “I paid your bail. I’ll cut it from the amount.”

Coyote looked at him mildly. “No. And the price has changed.”

The man stared. “What?”

“Double.”

“That was not the deal.”

“It is now.”

“You little shit.”

Coyote grinned. “You are welcome.”

The client held the package as if rage alone might open it. It did not. At last he swore, transferred the credits, and stepped back. Coyote checked the sum, took the parcel, broke the reflective seal with a brief pulse of light, and handed it over properly.

The client snatched it like an insult and left in a fury. Coyote adjusted the poor bandage at his ribs and decided the day had not been entirely wasted.

Coyote called a cab and turned toward one of the few places in the city where he could arrive without explanation. The cab dropped him two streets away. The cab dropped him two streets away. The brothel was one of the oldest and cheapest in Brassville. It had never liked unnecessary attention, and neither had Coyote. He walked the rest of the way.

The building stood exactly where it always had, pressed between two taller houses that leaned toward it like tired neighbours. The sign above the door had faded into polite anonymity. Only the shape of a painted bird remained.

Inside smelled of soap, cloying perfume, and kitchen grease. A few of the birds looked up as he entered. One of them blinked, then laughed softly.

“Well,” she said. “You look like something disagreed with you.”

“Professional misunderstanding,” Coyote said.

No one asked for details.

Birds led him upstairs without fuss into his mother’s old room. Coyote had been born in this place and bought the room after she died. Nostalgia, perhaps. Or habit. He had never examined the distinction closely and saw no need to begin now.

The doctor the house used arrived soon after, stitched what needed stitching, and wrapped his ribs again with the calm efficiency of someone who had done this work for years.

“Nothing dramatic,” the doctor said. “Try not to get stabbed again today.”

After he left, Coyote pressed a small button on his brass bracelet. Reflective energy began the slow work of healing. Then came the hot bath, the finest bud and silence. A few hours later, he came downstairs acceptably clean and functional again. The brothel looked as it always had. Soft light over old wallpaper. Powder hiding cracks.

Someone placed tea in front of him.

“You did not come only for the hospitality,” one of the birds said.

“No.”

He asked about Eric. The birds thought for a moment.

“Haven’t seen him in months,” one said.

That matched what Coyote expected.

“Did he come with anyone unusual?”

At first there was nothing. Then one of the birds leaned back.

“Actually… there was a man once. Eric was talking to him outside.”

“What do you remember?”

“Not the face,” she said. “But the collar.”

“The collar?”

“Purple. Silk, maybe. Or something pretending very hard to be silk. It caught the light strangely.”

Coyote said nothing.

“That’s why I noticed it,” she added. “Most men around here dress like damp laundry.”

“You heard them speak?”

“Only a few words as I walked past. Enough to hear the accent.”

“Not from Steamhollow?”

“No. Definitely not local.”

That was all she had. And all Coyote had to work with: a bloody foreigner in an elegant collar.

Which might not be a clue at all. Eric did official crossings most of the time, but occasionally took illegal work on the side. Birds were his expensive hobby.

Vesk, at least, might leave a better trail. Bigger men left bigger shadows.

The factory on the edge of Brassville had once belonged to industry. Now it belonged to the gang.

The building took up most of the block. Broken windows. Exposed iron supports. Brick dark with soot and damp. The whole place leaned slightly. Inside, the air smelled of oil, cold metal, and old smoke. Rusted walkways crossed the open space overhead. Dead machines stood where they had failed, some stripped for parts, others left where they dropped.

The gang had made the ruin usable. Gambling tables sat under hanging lamps. Crates, tarps, and old blankets had been pushed into corners to make sleeping spaces out of the draught. Smoke drifted up through the broken rafters and hung under the roof.

Many of the people moving through the factory wore the usual signs of Steamhollow’s cheaper solutions to expensive problems. Improvised limbs hammered together in workshop metal. Glass eyes. Reinforced jaws that clicked faintly when they spoke. Bad surgery patched with practical engineering. The kind of repairs people got after fights, bad deals, or desperate visits to the wrong sort of surgeon.

Contraband was there, certainly. Strange devices. Rare materials. Goods that had clearly crossed mirrors without permission. Vesk had been a Walker, which meant his gang handled things from other worlds more often than most. That made the stock valuable. It also made it dangerous. Other gangs wanted it. The Great Council wanted to confiscate it. Vesk’s people had long since become used to both.

One man watched from a broken conveyor platform above the floor. Half his skull was bare bone. The other half had been replaced with glass. Under the clear casing, artificial tissue pulsed faintly, threaded with pale metal. Every so often a spark jumped inside when he moved or spoke.

Ugly work. Expensive survival.

More importantly, no one else spoke over him.

The welcome was not warm, but recognition moved through the room quickly enough. Coyote had dealt with Vesk’s people for years, moving certain goods through the black markets. That history kept the knives where they were, at least for the moment.

“What do you want?” someone asked.

“I’m asking about Vesk.”

Suspicion sharpened at once.

“Who sent you?”

“No one,” Coyote said calmly. “I heard today that he vanished.”

A few faces hardened further, weighing that.

“He mattered to me,” Coyote said. “We did business for years. I’m only trying to find out what happened. Same as you.”

The room stayed quiet for a moment while that settled.

“We already looked,” someone said.

“Everywhere,” said another.

“Asked questions.”

“Found nothing.”

Then the man with the glass skull spoke after a long pause, his voice slightly warped by the machinery in his head. “There was one thing. If you find anything, you’ll share it with us.”

Coyote nodded.

“People saw someone following Vesk before he disappeared.”

“How many?”

“Two. Maybe three.”

“Why remember them?”

The man tapped the glass side of his head.

“The collars.”

“What collars?”

“Purple,” someone said from the back. “Dark purple. Shining oddly under the lamps.”

“Identical,” another added. “Too neat for fashion. Too coordinated for coincidence.”

“Magic?” Coyote asked.

“Maybe.”

A woman near the weapon bench wiped her hands on a rag. “We looked for them. Markets, docks, gambling halls. Anywhere Vesk’s enemies might hide. Nothing.”

The man with the glass skull gave a small shrug.

“They didn’t belong here.”

“Meaning?”

“Travellers,” he said. “From somewhere else. Another world.”

Coyote left the factory with almost nothing. Except the collars.

Coyote turned the pieces over in his head and got nowhere useful. Instinct had carried him as far as it could, but no further. That got on his nerves.

Corvell would have assembled the fragments into something resembling sense. He had always been good at that, even back when Coyote had been a little street brat and Dorian the polished son of a wealthy house.

Unfortunately Corvell was not here.

Which meant Coyote needed the Keeper.

He headed for the nearest mirror that led to Haven.

It was time to ask for help.

Chapter 12

By the time they reached Old Town Mossgrove, the forest had taken on the shape of a settlement. A proper Forest road ran ahead of them now, flat stones laid between the roots, slick with moss and old rain. The air smelled of wet bark, fern, woodsmoke, and mushrooms. Water moved somewhere under stone. Ahead came voices, footsteps, a door shutting, wind in the canopy.

The first people they passed looked as though the forest had dressed them. Hair braided with feathers, bone, beads, and copper. Paint and old tattoos curled across skin like leaves. Leather, woven cloth, fur, cord, metal. Nothing polished. Nothing careless. No one stared. They simply noticed everything.

Dorian noticed the change in Toren at once. Not much. Just enough. His stride loosened. His shoulders settled. Something in him answered the place without effort. Dorian smiled to himself. Forest boy suited Toren rather well.

Liana stayed sharp as ever, eyes moving over people, doors, paths, exits, the sort of things sensible travellers noticed before trouble introduced itself.

Old Mossgrove gathered around them in bark, root, and living wood. Houses were set into trunks and moss-dark stone so naturally they seemed grown rather than built. Amber light glowed from round windows. Fungal lanterns cast pale gold over the paths.

The tavern stood inside a vast tree, sunk into root and stone beneath a shelf of pale fungus. Inside, the air was warm with food, ale, smoke, damp wool, and pine resin. Low voices drifted. Cups touched wood. A chair scraped.

They took two rooms. Toren would stay with his father.

Liana decided they needed supplies. Dorian stood.

“No,” she said.

He looked at her. “A charming tone. Very hospitable.”

“You are noticeable from across a room.”

“That sounds like a flaw in other people.”

“It sounds like a problem for me. Sit down. Try not to become memorable.”

Toren, the traitor, looked amused.

Then they left together, and Dorian was abandoned in the tavern with his boredom, which had never once improved any situation.

Dorian washed properly, which was already generous by the standards of travel, changed into cleaner clothes, and went back downstairs instead of surrendering himself to his room like an obedient invalid.

Amber light filled the tavern. Low voices drifted by the hearth. Cups touched wood. Smoke, ale, resin, and hot food hung in the air. Dorian chose a dark corner where he could watch without being obliged to join in. Travel-worn and bored, he was not at his best.

That was when he noticed the music.

A man stood at the far side of the room with a lute in his hands, singing as though he had no need to demand attention in order to keep it. Hard to place his age exactly. Black hair. A face built for trouble. The sort that tended to create unnecessary complications in otherwise manageable evenings.

The song was about love. Passionate without becoming embarrassing. A rare achievement. Dorian listened at first because there was nothing better to do. He kept listening because the man was actually good.

By the end of the song, half the audience looked as though they wanted to be him, and the other half wanted to shag him.

The bard looked local enough, but his coat was entirely wrong for Forest fashion. Cut close through the body, with clever fastenings and boots made for roads rather than roots, it belonged somewhere beyond bark, moss, and fungal lanterns.

Interesting. Inconvenient, but interesting.

At some point the bard’s gaze found the corner and lingered. Not long. Just long enough. Dorian, naturally, did nothing about it. When the set ended, the bard spoke to someone by the hearth, and crossed the room toward Dorian. Up close he was prettier still. Also, annoyingly, self-possessed.

“I was beginning to think you’d vanish before I finished,” he said.

Dorian leaned back in his chair. “I was merely bored.”

The bard smiled. “And now?”

“Less so.”

“Good.”

He rested a hand on the empty chair. “I finish in a couple of hours. If you are still here, I’d be happy to share a drink with you.”

Dorian looked at him for a moment, then inclined his head. “Very well.”

The bard returned to the centre of the room as if he had not just improved the evening. Dorian stayed where he was, listening with actual attention now. Waiting a couple of hours, he decided, might not be the worst use of his time.

Liana and Toren crossed into the market beneath roots and fungal lanterns. Liana bought what they needed with her usual efficiency. Food, lamp oil, cord. Toren gathered his own things for the monastery, then slipped several packets of herbs into her satchel.

She caught him at it. “I am not carrying all that.”

“You are taking them.”

“I will be travelling with a Walker.”

Toren’s hand stilled. “Yes. But not with me.”

That took the argument out of it. A moment later he lifted part of the weight onto his own shoulder, and they turned back toward the tavern together.

A couple of hours passed. Dorian remained where he was in the dark corner. When the bard finished, he came back exactly as promised and settled beside the table with the same easy confidence as before.

“You are still here,” he said.

“You sound surprised.”

“Pleased,” the bard corrected. His gaze travelled over Dorian with open interest. “You stand out badly, you know. Wrong clothes. Wrong manner. Wrong face for Mossgrove. You look like a man who has never once been overlooked in his life.”

“A terrible burden,” Dorian said.

The bard smiled, then looked at him more closely. Properly this time. “I have seen eyes like yours before.”

That caught Dorian’s attention.

“The last man I knew with eyes like that was a Walker,” the bard said. He did not lower his voice. He did not need to. “Are you one?”

Dorian gave him a faint look. “Afraid so.”

The bard’s interest only sharpened. “My room is upstairs,” he said. “I have drink there. Better company too, I hope.”

Dorian rose.

At that exact moment, Liana and Toren came back into the tavern with their supplies and saw more than enough. The bard was already turning for the stairs, and Dorian was following, because of course he was.

Liana took it in with a single glance that confirmed, with irritating efficiency, exactly what she had already known.

Toren went still for half a beat. Not long. Just long enough to feel it. Then he shifted the weight in his arms and said, a touch too evenly, “Right. I’m going to my father’s now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He left.

Liana watched him go, then glanced once toward the stairs where Dorian had already vanished. Of course. Leave him alone for one evening and he immediately found a new way to become administratively inconvenient.

The room was small, warm, and smelled faintly of old wood, ale, and skin.

Dorian had half a mind to laugh. Here he was, kissed against a tavern wall by a black-haired bard with warm hands and questionable instincts.

“I’m Finn, if you care,” the bard murmured.

“Dorian. In case you want to remember it.”

The kiss began clumsy with haste, then deepened properly. Finn tasted of ale and something sweet. Dorian’s hands slid under his shirt, over warm skin dampened by the heat of the room. When he touched the corset beneath, Finn stepped back.

“Before we go further,” he said, and pulled the shirt off.

The leather was harsh, tightly laced across his chest. Brutal enough to explain the flatness of his tone when he said, “True-soul. That’s what Loteri call people like me. Wrong body, still a man. If that ruins your evening, best say so now.”

Dorian looked at him for a moment. Then his gaze moved, calm and thorough, over the line of Finn’s throat, the stubborn leather, the narrow waist, the strength held tight under all of it.

“You’re a man,” Dorian said. “I had managed to gather that.” A faint smile flickered across his face. “And you chose me. I see no cause for complaint.”

Finn’s mouth twitched.

They undressed each other without hurry. The corset took time to undo. Dorian did it carefully, fingers working the laces while Finn stood close enough for their breath to mix. When the leather finally loosened, Finn let out a long breath, and Dorian kissed him again, slower this time, sweat already beginning to gather where skin met skin.

Then Dorian slid his hands down Finn’s body. “You tell me what I can touch.”

Finn’s eyes were already blurring. His “yes” came out low.

Dorian moved him to the low bed and knelt on the creaking wooden floor between Finn’s thighs. Finn’s fingers traced Dorian’s scars. He didn’t ask. Just touched, careful, like he was memorising.

Once Dorian’s hand slid to Finn’s low belly, Finn inhaled and froze. “Wait. Too much.”

Dorian adjusted without comment. Finn’s reactions were plain enough after that, and Dorian read them right. He stroked the swollen length, gentle, then took it in his mouth - steady, lips working up and down. Finn’s fingers twisted in Dorian’s curly hair. “Bloody hell, Walker.”

Dorian slid lower, tongue exploring. He pulled back a fraction. “What do you want?”

“Front first,” Finn murmured. “Then the rest.”

Dorian did. Mouth and fingers until Finn came first: bitten-off curse, thighs locking hard.

Dorian eased Finn onto his belly. Impatient. Finn felt the blunt heat of Dorian pressing against him, skin already wet and fevered. Dorian entered him slowly, front first, deliberate and controlled, his lips trailing warm, possessive kisses over Finn’s shoulders. He built the rhythm in small shifts, attuned to every catch in Finn’s breath, every unconscious arch. When Finn’s hand slipped beneath to stroke himself, matching the steady pulse, Dorian answered with deeper rolls of his hips.

Finn flinched, sharp, and Dorian stilled for a heartbeat. Then he eased out. His oiled fingers found Finn’s tighter place and started gently but firmly stretching it, pressing in slow. When Finn’s hips rocking back for more, Dorian oiled himself generously once again and pressed in, inch by careful inch. He held still until Finn’s breathing steadied, then asked, voice rough, “All right?” Finn’s voice broke open, raw exhale, half curse, half plea. “Don’t stop.”

Then Dorian started with slow glides that gradually sharpened. He kept the pace even, relentless, until Finn’s thighs began to shake with the new wave. Only after Finn came did Dorian let himself follow, the last few thrusts losing what little restraint he had left. He released deep inside Finn and ended with his face buried in the crook of Finn’s shoulder, breath rough against sweaty skin. He stayed there for a moment, then pressed a kiss between Finn’s shoulder blades.

He collapsed onto the bed beside Finn. Once he was composed again, Dorian gently stroked Finn’s hip. “Well then. Still alive, are you?”

Finn snorted, still catching his breath. “Apparently. Better than usual.”

That, Dorian thought, was close enough to praise. He passed the waterskin and started to get up.

“Stay,” Finn said.

Dorian paused. Considered for a moment. Then got back into bed. Finn curled into Dorian’s side with a soft sigh. Dorian drew him close at once, until their legs tangled and Finn’s cheek rested over his heart.

Morning light slipped through the shutters. Dorian woke to the sound of leather being pulled tight. Finn stood by the window, lacing himself back into the corset with the flat concentration of a man performing a daily irritation. The fit looked cruel. Familiar, too.

Dorian watched for a moment. “That looks barbaric.”

Finn let out a breath that might have been a laugh. “Very perceptive.”

“No magic for it?”

“Not the kind that lasts.” Finn tied one section off and pulled again. “That takes a proper surgeon. In a proper city.”

He hesitated just enough on the last part. Dorian recognised it at once. Not self-pity. Money.

“Expensive,” Dorian said.

“More than I can afford from taverns.”

Dorian watched him a while longer. Then reached for his coat, found the crystal, and held it out.

Finn looked at it. “What is that?”

“A cooling crystal. Same sort welders use in Steamhollow. Useful. Not cheap. Keep it or sell it.”

Finn stared at him. “You are serious.”

“Regrettably.”

He took it carefully, as though it might disappear if handled too roughly. “That is an absurd gift after one night.”

“I have always had poor judgement.”

That earned a quieter smile. Finn tucked the crystal away, then stepped back to kiss Dorian. Brief. Warm. Unfeigned. When he drew back, he looked at Dorian differently.

“That was dangerously decent of you.”

Dorian sighed. “A serious error in judgement.”

By the time Dorian came down, breakfast was already on the table. Liana and Toren waited. He looked passably fresh, which was close enough.

She gazed at him, unimpressed. “Planning to sample the local talent across the Loteri Lands, are you? Do let us know when you intend to resume the actual journey.”

Dorian sat, reached for tea, and ignored that entirely. Across from him, Toren said nothing. He looked composed enough, but quieter than usual. Dorian noticed. Liana noticed. Toren would probably have preferred neither of them did.

After a moment Toren set down his cup. “My father insists we see him before we leave. Ashen Valley is dangerous. He does not think you should go there without protection.”

Liana’s expression sharpened. “What sort of protection?”

“A ritual,” Toren said plainly. “An old one. For travellers crossing into the valley routes. It is meant to turn aside certain things and make others less eager to notice you.”

Dorian buttered a piece of bread with great attention. “How flattering. I do enjoy being less noticeable.”

Toren let that pass. “Liana is not going toward the valley without it.”

Liana opened her mouth, then thought better of it.

Then Toren added, still looking at the table, “And the Walker is valuable too.”

Practical wording. Sensible enough. The tone betrayed him anyway. Dorian heard it. So did Liana. She said nothing, which was louder than comment.

At last she gave a small nod. “Fine. We go to your father first.”

Dorian sipped his tea. “Splendid. Breakfast, ritual protection, probable doom. A very balanced morning.”

No one smiled, though Liana looked close.

They finished eating, gathered their things, and left the tavern together, the road delayed now by one more necessary stop before Ashen Valley.

Chapter 13

The house stood at the edge of Mossgrove, where the path gave up and roots took over. Toren knocked once and waited. Dorian caught smoke, broth, damp bark, wet earth.

The door opened at once.

His father looked like Toren thirty years older. The same curls, gone grey. The same green eyes, only sharper. Dorian looked once, then again, and privately decided the Forest bred unfairly well.

“Liana,” the man said, warm as ever. Then his attention shifted. “And you must be Dorian.”

“Toren has spoken of me, has he?” Dorian asked.

“A little,” Eryn said, his eyes resting on Dorian a moment longer than necessary. Then he stepped aside. “Come in before the food gets cold.”

Toren had changed already. Not much, but enough. His voice was quieter. His movements more careful. He stepped in after his father and went straight for the bowls without being asked.

They ate first. The broth was hot. Mushrooms, herbs, dark bread. Liana answered the familiar questions easily. Eryn asked after her health, her work, the road. Most of his attention settled on Dorian after that. Where he had travelled from. How the Loteri Lands had treated him. There was something about Eryn’s soft voice that made Dorian feel far too comfortable for his taste. He mistrusted that at once.

Dorian answered with perfect manners and very little substance, while Toren served, cleared, wiped the table, and put everything back where it belonged. Dorian noticed that too. Toren belonged here.

After the meal, Eryn said it was time to begin the ritual that would protect them in Ashen Valley. Then he took them behind the house.

The yard thinned into moss, roots, and wet earth until it stopped being a yard at all. The forest had come close here. House and trees stood together. A little farther in, the ritual place waited.

It was ready.

The seats had been shaped into the roots themselves, set in a circle. Not cut rough and forced into place. Guided. Grown that way. Dry herbs lay around them in a careful ring. Dorian saw old black marks in the soil where other circles had burned before. Symbols had been cut into the nearest trunks long ago. Bark had grown over part of them since.

Inside the circle stood a shallow basin made of stone and root. Dark liquid rested in it.

Eryn changed as soon as he stepped into the clearing. The warmth stayed, but his focus sharpened. He moved through the circle with the ease of a man who knew every mark in the ground and what it was for. Toren had gone quiet too. Not uneasy. Familiar.

Liana looked around once and said nothing. Dorian looked longer.

Eryn showed them the seats. Liana sat. Dorian followed her, the root hard beneath him, the herbs close at his feet, the basin waiting in the middle.

The house already felt far away.

Eryn stood outside the circle. Without a word, Toren crouched and touched flame to the herbs. The dry stems caught at once. Smoke rose in thin pale lines, then thickened, climbing around them instead of drifting into the trees.

Dorian watched the ring close and recognised the effect at once. The clearing held. Everything beyond it fell back. An intimate memory flickered through his mind, Toren shutting the rest of the world out around them with that same quiet forest magic. Dorian pushed it away at once.

Eryn looked at them both. “Listen to my voice. Do not force anything. Do not hold anything back either.”

His tone remained even. Practical. As if he were giving instructions for some ordinary task instead of sealing them into a smoke-filled circle in the woods.

“I will speak in Old Forest,” he said. “Liana understands. Dorian does not. Toren will give you what matters.”

Toren moved behind Dorian without a word. Close enough that Dorian could hear his breathing.

Eryn dipped the ladle into the basin and offered the dark liquid first to Liana, then to Dorian. One measured swallow each. “Drink.”

The decoction was bitter enough to feel insulting. Earth, shrooms, and something sharper underneath. Liana drank without complaint, and Dorian did the same.

Eryn began again, slower now, the old dialect low and steady. Toren translated in short fragments near Dorian’s shoulder.

“Memory is the protection. Let it pass. Do not resist.”

Then Eryn’s voice shifted, only slightly.

“The circle will keep what rises,” Toren murmured.

Dorian fixed on the words, not Toren’s voice, not his breathing close behind him. The memory of Toren’s mouth and hands was distraction enough without being invited back into a ritual. It took effort to keep his mind where it belonged.

The smoke thickened. The air turned warm and close.

Dorian kept his eyes on the basin and waited for nothing good.

Liana slipped first.

Not all at once. Eryn’s voice still moved through the smoke. The root pressed against her back. Bitter taste clung to her tongue.

Then the clearing dropped away.

Her father was dying.

The yurt was close and stale. Blankets. Thin breath. His face already half gone. Liana tried to move towards him, but memory pinned her where she was and made her watch.

Then fire.

The burial ground. Heat against her face. Smoke rising hard into the sky. Mirrors catching dull light in unsteady hands. The farewell song low and slow, then silence. That was the worst part. Not his last breath. The silence after.

The ritual pulled her back.

Steppe wind. Sun. Dust in her teeth. She had sworn she knew the route. Her father let her lead until she did not. Shame came hot and fast. He said nothing cruel. Only stepped beside her and pointed down. Bent grass. Broken crust of earth. A track half-lost to wind.

Look there, Liana. Not where the eye wanders. Where the truth is.

Another memory.

The bow was too big for her then-small hands. They already had enough food, and still she loosed at the second hare. The arrow struck badly. Her father made her kneel beside it and finish the kill properly. Then he taught her the apology. Gratitude for the life taken. Respect for prey. Respect for the Steppe. Never kill carelessly. Never take more than need.

Firelight. A blanket around her shoulders. His voice teaching her wind, stars, distance, direction.

Further back still, his shadow covered her from the harsh sun. Tall grass brushed her arms. His hand closed around hers. He showed her where to step. She had never had her mother. There had only ever been him.

Death stayed where it was. So did grief. Underneath both sat the rest of him. The lessons. The habits. What he had left in her.

Not around her now.

Inside.

Eryn’s voice kept moving through the smoke. The circle held.

So did Liana.

Dorian held longer than Liana.

For a while he managed it. Smoke in his lungs. Root digging into his thighs. Toren’s voice just behind him, low enough not to disturb the rhythm of Eryn’s words.

Then Toren translated softly. “Do not follow fear.”

The workshop at Steamhollow.

Cold air. Metal filings. Oil soaked into wood. Dorian knew the room by smell before he saw it clearly. He turned towards the bench, towards the door, towards the empty corner where Marek, his father, should have been.

Nothing. No movement. No tools in hand. No curse from the next room.

Only a box left on the workbench. Inside it, Marek’s bloodbound ring. A rare mirrorwalking artefact. Valuable enough to matter. Personal enough to wound.

The absence hit Dorian all at once.

Another line from Toren, close to his ear. “Let memory do its work.”

The workshop thinned. The old Corvell mansion took its place.

He was smaller there. Case in one hand. Gloves too stiff. Collar crooked. Marek crouched in front of him, fixing it with rough fingers, saying something about schooling, chances, the sort of future that could not be built in hired rooms and workshops. Dorian remembered the words. What he had heard then was simpler.

You are staying. I am leaving.

The floor beneath that memory shifted.

Haven Tavern.

Warm bread. Lamp oil. Paper. The Keeper’s voice somewhere beyond a half-shut door. Mireal’s hands sorting something on a table. Dorian sat on the floor with a book, his back against R’Yussa’s great warm side while soft purring rolled through him. Safer than the mansion. Kinder too, though Dorian had not trusted kindness much even then. Marek was leaving him there. Only for a while, he said. Work first. Back soon.

Dorian had believed him because he had wanted to.

Then the oldest part opened.

A sting in his arm. Sharp enough to shock, not enough to understand. He looked down and saw blood welling bright against skin. His sisters leaned over him. Curious. Wide-eyed. Interested. Not frightened. Not sorry. Watching the drop slide towards the mirror’s edge.

Then shouting. His mother and aunt. His father arguing with both. Servants. Feet on polished floor.

Rain on his father’s coat. Iron on his hands. The hard grip of his arms lifted Dorian before anyone else could. Dorian remembered pressing his face into damp wool and leather while the mansion lurched away behind them. At the time he had understood only that he was being taken.

Now the rest came with it. Taken out. Taken away before the house could decide what to do with a child who bled into mirrors.

Toren translated again, quieter now. “Memory is the protection.”

That was when the pieces turned.

Marek had taken Dorian from the mansion. Kept him. Worked where he could. Taught him what he knew. Left him in places he judged safer when he had no better choice. Brought him back when Dorian needed more than he could provide. Then vanished only when Dorian was grown enough to stand without him.

For years, Dorian had remembered only the insult of it. Being left. Sent away. Put aside.

The ritual gave him the rest.

Not comfort. Not gentleness. Something rougher than that. A protection built badly, unevenly, and still lodged deep enough to last.

Not around him now.

Inside.

Eryn’s voice kept moving through the smoke. Toren’s followed it, close and careful, giving him only what mattered.

Dorian sat very still inside the circle and hated the truth for arriving so late.

Dorian came back slowly. Like surfacing.

The root seat was still under him, but for a moment he did not trust it. The clearing looked almost ordinary. The herbs had burned down to ash. The smoke was gone. The forest stood quiet around them, as if it had never closed at all.

It could not have been long. It felt like hours.

A blanket lay over his shoulders. Another was around Liana. Toren crouched beside them with a cup of pure water in each hand, practical as ever. He offered Liana hers first, then Dorian.

“Drink,” he said softly.

Eryn waited until they were both properly back. Then he stepped to Liana, touched her forehead with two fingers, and said, “Va theryn lo, saelen vey.”

When Eryn lowered his hand, a small blue mark glowed at the centre of her brow.

Then he came to Dorian and did the same. “Va theryn lo, saelen vey.”

Toren’s voice followed quietly. “What was opened is now closed.”

The touch was cool. Final.

“You stay here tonight,” Eryn said. “Sleep first. Leave in the morning.”

Neither of them said no. They were too worn out, and not yet ready to put themselves back together. The protection had taken hold.

Chapter 14

They left the house quietly.

Toren came out last, carrying the wrapped Drommala remains. With a familiar gesture, he checked the green shimmer of the seal still holding rot and corruption back. Satisfied, he passed the bundle over while Dorian unfolded Lucky and fixed the bags onto it.

Toren’s father was waiting just outside. Toren stepped to him and was pulled into a brief, warm embrace. A hand to the shoulder, a few quiet words in the forest dialect, Toren’s soft answer, and that was all.

Dorian watched it with a calm face. He took hold of Lucky and rolled it out behind Liana and Toren rather than riding it. The path through Old Mossgrove was too uneven, and in any case he preferred walking just then.

Ahead of him, Toren and Liana moved through the damp morning. The living houses fell behind them bit by bit. Roots sank back into the earth. Moss and bark replaced the last signs of the town. The fungal lamps were dim in daylight now, hardly more than pale shapes between the trunks. Soon even those were gone.

Dorian kept his eyes on the path and thought, against his will, about Toren. The way he had leaned into his father’s arms without hesitation. The ease of being loved without having to earn it. Toren carried warmth as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Something in that boy had got under Dorian’s skin. And he didn’t like it.

The three of them stayed together until the road divided.

One path cut east towards the monastery through denser trees. The other bent away for Dorian and Liana. Toren stopped at the fork.

“This is me,” he said.

Liana went first. Toren hugged her with easy familiarity, then bowed his head and gave her a quiet blessing in the old tongue. She answered softly and stepped back.

He turned to Dorian. There was the slightest hesitation before Toren stepped forward and embraced him too.

Dorian stiffened, then returned it. Toren’s hold was warm, steady, uncomplicated. The blessing came low against Dorian’s ear. He caught the scent of smoke and herbs in Toren’s hair, and for a moment he lost the thread of everything else.

When Toren stepped back, Dorian cleared his throat. “That was almost enough to improve my opinion of people.”

A small smile touched Toren’s mouth. “Safe road, Dorian.”

Dorian’s mouth twitched. “Try not to scandalise the monks.”

Liana had already started down their path. Toren took his pack, gave them both one last look, then turned and headed towards the monastery.

Dorian stood for a moment longer than necessary, one hand still on Lucky’s frame. Then he rolled it after Liana.

Toren travelled alone for the rest of the day and through the night. By late afternoon the next day, the forest began to change around him. The path widened. The ground softened under his boots. The air cooled against his face and carried not only wet bark and crushed leaves, but the bitter edge of boiled herbs. He knew he was close from that alone.

The Pain Monastery stood inside the trees as though it had been persuaded into place over years rather than built all at once. Dark timber curved round living trunks. Roots had been shaped into steps, rails, low walls, and narrow paths worn smooth by long use. Platforms sat among the trees at different heights, joined by walkways. Everything looked made to bear weight, to be washed, and to be used again by morning.

Toren slowed once, then went in.

The first open space inside was the receiving area for patients. A few waited there, while pain monks, helpers, and apprentices moved quietly around them.

Regular Loteri healers did what they could in their communes and villages. When a case went beyond medicinals, stitching, setting bone, or healing magic, it was sent here. Toren had done it himself twice. He knew what pain monks did here. They studied pain as others studied pulse or breath, learned its patterns, and healed by taking it into themselves.

Toren paused near the entrance and watched the routine.

Monks bent over a boy on a stretcher. One touched chest and belly, went still, then gave a silent sign, and helpers moved at once, carrying the boy beyond the root wall into the dim passage. Urgent, then. Toren read it from the speed alone.

Only after that did the monks turn to the others. A woman with an injured arm was checked and sent to the side rooms. A man holding his ribs was examined next and sent after her. A few more patients still waited.

The smells were stronger here. Herbs. Oil. Old linen. Fresh water. Blood recently washed from wood. Smoke from something bitter burning low. Under it all sat the thick green smell of the forest, rich and steady.

Everything moved with the same calm. No one hurried unless the body in front of them demanded it. No one stood idle.

One of the helpers noticed Toren and came over, asking softly what his business was.

Toren’s heart thudded once, hard. “I’m from the Steppe. Elder Mother Elasya sent me on an urgent matter. I’m looking for Aren Thal, the Pain-Bearer Monk.”

The helper led Toren deep inside the monastery.

The passages narrowed after the receiving area. Root walls thickened on either side, trained so tightly together they let in only thin strips of light. The air changed too. Heavier here, the damp forest smell cut with the sharper bite of cleansing tinctures.

At the end of the passage, the helper stopped before a plain door and knocked once.

A voice from inside answered at once, low and calm. “Enter.”

The helper opened the door and stepped in. Toren followed him.

He stopped at once.

Aren Thal hung suspended in the middle of the room, his bare torso lifted clear of the floor by several hooks set through the skin of his back. Toren saw that much at once, healer’s eye moving faster than thought. The hooks held cleanly, precisely, with the practised judgement of someone who knew exactly where the body could bear strain and where it could not. Aren’s eyes were closed. His arms hung at ease by his sides. Nothing in him suggested struggle.

Toren stopped at the threshold, seized by the absurd sense that he had walked into something private, though the man hanging before him looked less exposed than self-contained. The hooks should have made the scene brutal. Instead it felt measured. Deliberate. Disciplined in a way that unsettled Toren more than violence would have done.

The suspension lines ran upward into the frame above. Beneath Aren, the floorboards were clean apart from a few dark drops already drying. A table stood against one wall, laid out in exact order with folded cloths, metal instruments, unfamiliar devices, oil, and salves. The bed in the corner had a reinforced frame beneath it.

Aren opened his eyes. Grey-green, clear, and entirely awake. They settled on Toren first, then on the sealed bundle in his arms.

The helper inclined his head. “Brother Aren. A visitor from the Steppe.”

Aren kept his gaze on Toren.

Toren spoke too quickly. “I’m Toren. Elder Mother Elasya sent me. I’m looking for Aren Thal, the Pain-Bearer Monk.”

Aren’s mouth shifted, not quite a smile. “You found him.” His voice was low and even, with no strain in it at all.

Then he lifted one hand. Toren felt the movement of magic before he understood what it was doing. The lines above Aren loosened. Slowly, smoothly, the suspended body descended until his feet touched the floor. His weight settled. A moment later the hooks released themselves with small wet sounds that made something at the base of Toren’s spine pull tight.

Aren stepped forward out of them as though this were no stranger than stepping out of water. When he turned to clean the hooks, Toren saw his back properly for the first time. The skin was marked over with old scars, pale and settled, crossed by fresher punctures that still ran lightly with blood. Not torn. Not mangled. Clean openings, placed with exact knowledge and repeated often enough to leave their pattern. Blood slid in narrow lines over his back and down towards his waist.

This was no rare ordeal. This was practice.

Toren looked away out of manners, then back again out of habit. He was a healer before he was anything else.

The helper bowed once to Aren and withdrew, shutting the door softly behind him. Silence settled again.

For a moment Toren did not know where to put his eyes. Aren, bare-backed and bleeding as if this were a perfectly reasonable state in which to receive visitors, seemed entirely at ease.

“Do you need help cleaning your back?”

Aren looked at him then with a brief, warm smile. “Healer’s nature,” he said, and nodded once.

After Toren cleaned the blood from Aren’s back, Aren pulled on a loose bark-thread robe and nodded to the chair opposite him.

“Sit.”

Toren sat.

Only then, with nothing practical left to do, did Toren look at the monk properly. He knew who Aren was. Every forest healer did. An orphan of the monastery, raised among pain and taught to carry what would break other men. The stories had never quite prepared Toren for the sight of him.

Up close, Aren looked younger than Toren had expected. Perhaps sixty. Hard to tell. His head was shaved, his beard short and silver. A pain-bearer’s pendant rested against his chest. The robe hid little. Enough remained visible to show that his back was not the only place he carried marks. Rows of metal rings through the skin. Ink. Burns. For one foolish moment, Toren thought of Dorian.

Aren sat very still. Not stiff. Just settled. His grey-green eyes rested on Toren with a calm that was difficult to read and harder to hurry. The room matched him. Everything seemed to be in order. The smell of metal and clean blood still hung in the air.

Toren became sharply aware that he was sitting opposite Aren Thal himself, the legend every forest healer knew by name and most preferred to discuss in a lower voice.

Aren glanced at Toren’s hands. “Steppe and Forest blood often make for rougher hands. Your touch is gentle. Keep it that way.”

The comment caught Toren by surprise. What he had meant to say next failed him. He only adjusted the sealed bundle across his knees and, to his annoyance, found nothing to say.

Aren noticed, of course. “So, Toren,” he said softly, “what brought you all the way from the Steppe?”

Toren cleared his throat and forced himself back to the reason he had come.

“The Drommala died,” he said. “I brought some of the remains.”

Aren kept his gaze on him. “Why send you? Why did Mother Elasya not come herself?”

Toren drew a breath. “I discovered the strange runes on the Drommala’s scales before most of them were lost. Elder Mother Elasya managed to preserve only one. She thought I might remember enough to be useful.”

Aren said nothing.

“She knows you,” Toren added. “But not all the Elders agree. Some do not believe there was interference at all.”

“A difficulty for Elder Mother Elasya, then.”

Toren nodded. “If there is even a chance someone helped the Drommala die, the Loteri need to know. We have already sent a guide with a Mirrorwalker to ask Mother Drommala for her daughter.”

Aren’s attention sharpened at once. “Open it.”

Toren broke the shimmering seal.

Aren looked down at the remains for a long moment, silent and intent. Then he said, more gently, “Tomorrow. You will rest now. In the morning, we’ll look at this properly and go through everything you remember.”

He reached for the rope beside the wall and pulled it once. A few minutes later, a helper knocked at the door.

Tomorrow, then. Toren rose and followed the helper back through the narrow passages. Somewhere in the distance came the measured tread of monks and one low, human sound that did not last long.

Chapter 15

Toren woke before the bell. For a moment he did not know where he was. Then the hard narrow bed and plain room reminded him. He washed, put on the guest robe left for him, and went to the hall certain he was already late. Everyone was seated.

Long tables filled the room. Green robes with rune stitching. Pendants at their chests. Women and men sat together without distinction, monks, helpers, and apprentices alike. In his guest robe, Toren felt separate at once.

He stopped in the doorway.

Aren looked up, smiled, and gestured him forward. He sat among the others with nothing to mark his rank.

No one spoke.

After a moment, Aren rose and bowed his head. In the old forest dialect he gave thanks for the food, the day, shelter, protection, and pain borne with meaning.

When he finished, the monks stood. Each took hold of the pendant at the chest and pressed its carved edges into flesh. Toren watched metal touch lips, cheek, throat, chest, belly, forearm. Marks rose in the skin. No one flinched.

Silence settled again.

They held it for several moments, then lowered the pendants, sat, and began to eat.

When the meal ended, Aren rose and looked at Toren. “Come with me.” Toren followed. The true work of the morning had only just begun.

The passages beyond the hall were quieter. The air turned bitter and metallic, with hot oil lingering beneath it. When Aren opened a door and stepped aside, Toren stopped short.

The chamber’s shelves climbed from floor to ceiling. Jars. Bottles. Powders. Preserved pieces of things Toren could not name. Some floated in cloudy liquid. Others had sunk into dark sediment. On one long table stood a glass-and-brass construction so intricate it barely looked real, flasks, tubes, and narrow valves joined like some mechanical root system. Small oil lamps burned beneath parts of it. In one flask the liquid had gone black and thick. A faint foul smell hung above the machine. Beside it stood a jar of Drommala blood, already half empty.

On another table, broad enough for a whole body, lay part of the Drommala’s trunk, opened with terrible neatness. Thin slices had been laid out on thick prepared glass. A larger section rested beside them. Nearby lay the preserved rune, copied in careful lines onto paper.

Nothing here had been left sacred by distance. Aren had handled it all as evidence. Something shifted coldly inside Toren.

Aren studied the blackened flask before he spoke.

“From what I have seen so far, I do not believe your Drommala died naturally.”

Toren said nothing.

Aren continued, precise and calm. “The evidence points to killing. Most likely by magic. But I do not yet know what craft it came from.”

He crossed to the other table and laid two fingers beside the copied rune. “The greater question is how. That matters as much as the death itself. If we do not understand the working, your people will not know how to guard against it when the new Drommala comes.”

Aren tapped the copied rune lightly. “This is not enough. I need more of the missing pattern. You saw the runes before they were lost. You may be the only one who still carries them in memory.”

Toren looked at the neat lines on the page. He remembered the feel of the scales under his hands, the shock of seeing the marks there. Not the marks themselves. Not clearly.

Aren saw enough. “We will try to recover what you saw. Carefully.”

He looked at Toren as though weighing not courage, but understanding. “We begin with magic.”

Toren nodded once.

“It may work. It may fail. If it fails, we try something else.”

False confidence would have been easier to resist.

This time Aren took him past the working rooms and into a part of the monastery Toren had not yet seen. The chamber he opened was bare even by the monastery’s standards. Cold stone. A few oil lamps burned in wall brackets, their low light glinting off iron rings fixed neatly into the wall. A mat in the corner. A low table held bowls of dried herbs and polished metal instruments Toren did not like the look of. Near the wall stood a rack of chains, ropes, and flagellant tools arranged with the care of surgical instruments.

Nothing in the room threatened him openly. That made it worse.

Aren led Toren to a heavy chair fixed to the floor at the room’s centre and told him to sit. He lit herbs in a shallow dish. Bitter smoke rose at once, thick and resinous, catching at the back of Toren’s throat. Then he opened the jar of Drommala blood, dipped a finger into the dark thickness, and pressed it to the centre of Toren’s forehead.

The touch was cold.

Aren spoke in the old forest dialect, low and steady, not quite a chant but close enough to work under the skin. As he moved around Toren, he fed more herbs to the flame and touched two fingers to temple, throat, neck. Each touch carried a measured pulse of magic, precise and searching. Smoke thickened. Burnt herbs and warm blood filled the chamber.

“Let the memory rise,” Aren said. “Let me receive it.”

For an hour they worked that way.

Toren slowed his breathing and let the chamber fall away. Again and again he reached back to the Drommala’s belly, the scales, the first shock of seeing the marks there. Sometimes he thought he had one, only for it to twist as soon as he reached for it. Sometimes only fragments came. The shape of a pattern without the pattern itself.

In the end he gave Aren only one rune, and even that with doubt.

Aren stood still a moment, then drew his blood-marked thumb lightly across Toren’s brow, as if sealing the working shut.

“Va theryn lo, saelen vey,” he said quietly. What was opened is now closed.

Only then did he copy the rune onto paper. Disappointment crossed his face, brief and controlled. “It is too broken beside the preserved one.”

Toren looked at him.

“You are a healer,” Aren said. “Your mind does not take magic cleanly. It has been trained to bend it, shape it, use it, not simply receive it. What should have risen plainly came back distorted. You did not resist me on purpose. Your nature did it for you.”

He paused. “In other circumstances, that would be an advantage. Here, it means the gentler method cannot reach deeply enough.”

Toren said nothing.

“There is another method,” Aren said. “Discomfort and pain strip distraction away. Used carefully with magic, it may force the mind into sharper contact with what it has buried.”

Toren watched Aren’s face in silence.

“It is often effective,” Aren said. “If we do this, you must open yourself to it fully. Half-measures will bring pain only, not memory.”

He did not soften it or dress it as bravery or duty. Only a choice.

“You may stop here,” Aren said. “Or we may try the harsher method and see whether memory opens. If you choose to continue, you may still stop at any point. Agreeing now does not bind you to every moment after.”

Toren went still. Then, to his own surprise, he gave a slow nod. Something inside him screamed that he was making a mistake, but he put that voice aside.

Aren studied Toren’s face for any sign of hesitation. Seeing none, he drew his chair closer and sat opposite him.

“Then hear it plainly,” he said. “I will cover your eyes and head and bind you to the chair. If that loosens the mind enough, I will use magic and try to draw the memory clear. If not, I will put the body under greater strain until something gives, or we stop.”

Aren’s gaze did not leave Toren. “I will stay with you throughout. If uncertainty comes over you, speak to me.” He paused. “If you would have me stop, what word will you give?”

Toren answered too quickly. “Boy.”

Aren nodded. He brought a cup of water to Toren’s lips and waited until Toren had drunk enough. Only when the cup was empty did he set it aside and rise.

After that, he did exactly as he had said.

First came the cloth over Toren’s eyes, firm and close. Then the hood settled over his head, close and heavy, leaving him only two small breathing holes.

At once the darkness pressed against Toren’s face. The cloth sat tight over his eyes, and the hood trapped the heat of his breath until the air around his mouth felt used already. He smelled leather at once, and the sweeter scent of old sweat held in the dark.

Aren’s hands stayed calm, never fumbling, never rough. A sleeveless binding garment followed, close and heavy, meant for control rather than comfort. Then came the straps.

At first they were light. Enough to keep Toren in the chair. Enough to take choice from his hands and body, but not yet enough to force strain. Aren left him like that for a while, hooded and blind, letting the darkness work first.

“Breathe slowly,” he said.

Toren obeyed.

The hood warmed further against his face. His own breath came back at him. With nothing to see and little to hear, his body began listening too hard to itself. His pulse. The pull of leather. The weight of his arms. The shape of the chair beneath him.

“Do not rush against it,” Aren said from somewhere near his shoulder.

So Toren sat and breathed. Time thinned. He had no measure for it.

Only then did Aren begin to tighten the bindings. One strap, then another. Not much. Just enough for Toren to feel it. His shoulders were drawn a little farther back. His spine kept straighter than comfort allowed. His thighs lost another inch of ease.

That was what he had not expected. He had thought restraint meant stillness. But Aren did not merely secure him. He arranged him.

The discomfort came quickly after that, not sharp, but spreading. A growing knowledge that nothing could settle where it wanted. Aren’s hand touched his shoulder briefly.

“Do not fight it,” he said. “Let the body spend less on struggle.”

Toren tried. He let one breath out slowly and settled as best he could within the straps. Aren waited, then tightened another buckle, then another. It built with patience. That was the worst of it.

At first it was not quite pain. Only wrongness. Muscles forced to work without relief. Joints held where they would rather not be. The slow protest of every limb.

Aren stayed close. Toren heard straps checked, buckles tested, the quiet sounds of someone watching carefully. Fingers brushed his neck once. A hand settled against his ribs, feeling the pull of his breathing.

“Better,” Aren said.

Toren was not sure that was true.

More time passed. More pressure followed. One strap tightened, then another. Discomfort deepened into pain, not sharp or sudden, but full and deliberate, settling deep in the muscles.

Then something in it turned wrong in a different way. The pain carried a flicker of pleasure through him, brief but undeniable. Terror hit first, then shame. He forced his mind back to the task and dragged a breath through his teeth.

Aren did not leave him alone with it. More pressure followed. At the edge of that deepening hurt, when the body had grown loud and the mind begun to loosen, Aren’s hand came to the side of his head.

“Now,” he said quietly.

Magic moved through the dark, cool and narrow. It touched the sore place in Toren’s mind where the memory had twisted away before.

He reached for the Drommala again. Scales. Blood. Belly beneath his hands.

For one sharp instant, a mark flared clear.

Then another, harder won. Aren’s hand stayed at his head, the magic cutting through the blur until the rune rose sharp enough for Toren to feel Aren catch on it at once.

Two runes.

After that, the pain changed. What had lived in shoulder, back, and thighs gathered into one deep, agonising ache. Toren could no longer tell where one hurt ended and another began. The hood pressed close. His breath sounded far away. The chair, the straps, the dark all seemed to tilt.

He thought he heard Aren say his name. Then again, nearer this time.

“Toren. Still with me?”

He tried to answer. A hand caught at his chin, steady and warm through the hood. The pain pulled him under before he could make a sound.

Chapter 16

When Toren opened his eyes again, the hood was gone.

He lay on a mat, a blanket drawn over him. For a moment the room looked wrong, too wide, too bright, until his mind caught up with it. His limbs felt heavy and hollow at once. The ache remained, but dulled now, as though it had been pushed farther from the skin.

Aren sat beside him.

Not across the room. Not standing over him. Beside him, close enough that Toren could see the strain held carefully out of his face.

“You came back,” Aren said quietly. His hand rose and settled against Toren’s forehead.

Toren swallowed. His mouth was dry. “Did it work?”

Aren looked at him a moment, then gave a small nod. “Yes. I got two.”

The words should have sounded like victory. They did not.

Toren tried to move, but his body would not obey. Even lifting a hand felt uncertain, as though the effort had too far to go.

Aren saw it at once. His gaze dropped to Toren’s trembling fingers and stayed there only a moment before he understood.

“Toren,” he said softly, “you will not heal yourself properly now. Let me do it.”

Toren closed his eyes and gave the smallest nod.

Aren shifted down onto the mat to face him. Then he drew Toren in with careful strength, until Toren’s temple came to rest beneath his chin. He held him close, one arm firm across his back, the other bracing him at the shoulder. There was nothing hurried in it, nothing uncertain. Only warmth, steadiness, and the quiet fact of another body bearing what his could not.

At first Toren noticed only the heat of Aren’s skin through cloth and blanket, and the smell in his hair and beard, sharp as metal and burned herbs.

Then something deeper began.

It felt as though everything within him, blood, pain, exhaustion, had found another path to follow. A hot current moved through him, real enough to catch his breath. It seemed to pass from his own body into Aren’s by degrees, as though some hidden channel had opened between them.

Aren’s mouth brushed Toren hair. “Do not hold it,” he murmured.

Minute by minute the ache in Toren’s muscles began to loosen. The burning around his joints eased. The stiffness locked into his shoulders and thighs softened enough for breath to come easier. And at the same time, pressed close against him, Aren changed.

His body grew hotter. Not feverish. Not weak. Tight. Braced. The muscles beneath his robe hardened like drawn cord. Toren, dulled as he was, felt a faint, tired amusement at the exchange. His own limbs slackened while Aren’s took on what had been tormenting them.

They stayed that way a long while.

At last Aren let out a low sound, almost a moan, and his hold loosened by slow degrees. He did not let Toren go at once. Only eased him back enough to look at him.

“There,” he said, his voice rougher now. “Enough for now.”

Then he rolled onto his back and breathed slowly.

Toren looked at him with gratitude and something harder to name. He had never witnessed pain-bearing magic so closely. Aren took Toren’s pain into himself with the ease of long practice.

Aren lay with his eyes closed, breathing through what he had taken. He felt Toren’s gaze and smiled faintly without changing position. “You will get used to it, Toren. One day.”

Then, as if to head off the reply before it came, he added, “And no, I do not need your help. What we both need is rest. We made good progress, but we cannot go further today.”

He pointed to the cup of water on the floor. “Drink and try to sleep.”

Toren closed his eyes. His body was tired, but the pain had almost gone.

Toren woke late in the afternoon and found Aren still beside him, unmoving, only his eyes open.

Toren said his name once, then again when no answer came. Aren still did not respond.

Only then did Toren reach for him and place a hand on the monk’s chest. The heart beneath it beat slowly and steadily. Warmth met his palm at once, deep and living.

“Your healer’s instinct is very strong.” Aren covered Toren’s hand with his own. His palm was large, firm, and so warm that Toren felt the reassurance of it before he knew what to do with it. “Did you ever want to become a pain-bearer?”

Toren paused, but did not pull away. There was something unsettling in how easily Aren kept him there, not through force, but through calm alone. The nearness made Toren too aware of the chest beneath his palm and the quiet strength of the hand resting over his own.

“I never thought about it. Your magic is remarkable. But I do not think it is for me.” The words sounded less certain than he wanted. Heat rose in him at the memory of his own response, and he hated the suspicion that Aren had sensed that too.

Aren paused. “Do not dismiss what your body tells you. The mind can lie. The body does not.”

He let Toren’s hand remain where it was for one breath longer than necessary, then released it and sat up. Toren could not see even the slightest sign of strain in his posture.

Aren read the look on his face perfectly. “It was not much.”

Toren stared at him. From his side of it, it had been excruciating.

Aren held his gaze a moment, seemed to consider something, then said, “I was six when they first put another person’s pain into me.”

Toren went still.

“Not enough to do harm,” Aren said. “That was the reasoning.”

The calm of it made Toren’s skin tighten.

“They began with sick children then. Fevers that would not break. Falls. Burnt hands. Small hurts first. The sort this place called safe.” His mouth shifted slightly. “Safe meant survivable.”

Toren said nothing.

“When I bore those well, they gave me more. By ten, I was taking pain from grown bodies. By twelve, they had stopped sending me away before the screaming began.”

The words sat between them with a hard, ugly weight.

“Did no one object?” Toren asked.

Aren turned his head and looked at him properly. “Who should have objected? The monks who trained me? The families whose sick walked home because I remained standing?” He paused. “Pain buys forgiveness quickly.”

Toren did not like how true that sounded.

“We do not teach children now,” Aren said. “When I became High Brother, I ended it.”

Toren frowned. “Just like that?”

Aren’s expression barely altered. “No. Not just like that. But I ended it.”

For the first time, something colder entered his face. The silence after that felt different.

Then Aren rose. “If you feel rested, I need your help with something in my garden. If that is all right with you.”

Toren nodded and followed without comment.

What Aren called his ‘garden’ was a clearing cut deep into the forest. The trees around it stood close and old, their trunks linked with ropes darkened by weather and age. From those ropes hung pieces of bone, some white and clean, some still stained. Old sacred runes were cut into the bark itself. They were almost invisible until something disturbed the boundary. Then they caught the light with a faint, sick shimmer, as if the trees had opened one watchful eye.

The clearing had been divided into sections. Some were already marked out with lines of salt and burned herbs, each with a post and a small wooden plate beside it. In several of them, things lay half-sunk in the earth, already softening with maggots. One patch shimmered with unstable colours that sat wrong in the eye, so that Toren had to look away almost at once. Another held something unrecognisable beneath a cover of thick black smoke that clung low to the ground. It did not drift. It did not thin. It crouched there over the hidden thing as if feeding on it.

The whole place was unnaturally quiet. No birds called overhead. No insects hummed in the grass. The wind still moved through the trees, but nothing living answered it. He had spent the morning in a monastery built around pain. This frightened him more.

Aren gave him a small spade.

“Dig there,” he said, indicating one of the empty sections. “Do not cross the borders of the others.”

Toren did not ask what would happen if he did. He did not want the answer.

The soil was dark and damp, threaded with roots fine as veins. It yielded easily enough at first, then grew heavier below, thick with the deep wet smell of the forest floor. Toren worked in silence.

By the time Aren returned, Toren had finished.

The monk carried a tray. On it lay the rest of the Drommala’s trunk. Beside it was a wooden plate like the others.

Aren stepped into the section with perfect care, as though he had done so a thousand times and respected every inch of ground all the more for it. He knelt and lowered the flesh into the hole.

Then he spoke a few words in dialect, quiet and precise. Toren caught enough to understand them. A request to the Forest itself. A formal asking that truth be shown, that hidden damage declare itself, that whatever had worked in secret upon the flesh would now be made visible.

When the words were done, Aren covered the trunk with earth.

He did not fill the grave carelessly. Each movement remained exact, the soil returned evenly, the surface pressed flat with the back of the spade. Then he set a sheet of thick glass over the top so that what lay beneath could be watched without being touched. After that he fixed the post into the ground and attached the plate.

Toren stepped close enough to read it.

Specimen number 7932/13
Seeding date and time: 12th Day of Falling Mist, Sunfall

The wording tightened something in him.

Seeding.

As if what had been buried here was not simply dead flesh but something planted. Something expected to answer.

Aren took up a pouch and marked a border around the grave with salt and burned herbs, laying the line with the same calm attention a careful man might give to sowing a kitchen plot. The bitter smell of the herbs rose at once, dry and sharp enough to sting the nose. It mixed badly with the damp sweetness of turned earth and the faint, rotting taint drifting from the older sections.

“We must study the speed and shape of corruption,” Aren said. “It takes time.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that the chill of the place went deeper into Toren. There was no drama in it, no attempt to frighten. Only the flat certainty of a man who had spent long years watching bodies yield up truth in ugly ways.

Toren looked again at the divided ground, the marked plots, the silent evidence of other examinations still at work beneath glass, smoke, crystal, and rot.

Garden, Aren had called it.

Aren glanced at him then and perhaps saw more in his face than Toren had intended to show.

“We need to eat,” he said. “I have duties to fulfil. Tomorrow we will try again to recall your memory. You may have the rest of the day to yourself. But if you would like to help with the patients, the brothers and sisters would be glad of your hands.”

Toren glanced towards the section where the Drommala remains lay buried beneath glass, swallowed, and said, “I am meant to help.”

Aren smiled softly. “If it becomes too much, come and find me.”

Toren nodded. The answer should have comforted him. Instead it left him wondering whether he had crossed that point already.