He closed the distance anyway, watching for the glint of a rifle through the jaundiced twilight. The mud sucked at his boots, thick as soup. Lady Caladwen didn't falter, even when it meant stepping ankle-deep in the rutted track. She watched the world ahead, not the mess beneath her feet.

Mira motioned for Soren to stand left. She approached the door, gloves off, hand open. "We're coming in," she called, voice pitched for civility or a slow surrender—hard to say which.

A shuffle, then the door cracked open. A round, pink face blinked at them, eyebrows lost somewhere above the receded hairline. The man wore a guard's uniform, or a leftover piece of one, and in his hands, a teacup rattled faintly.

"Welcome to Northwind relay," the man said, attempting dignity but overshooting into a kind of helpless optimism.

Mira gave the official line, badge and all. "On order from Meridian. Three, passing through for the Tribunal." She waited long enough for the man to realize that the usual forms and signatures were not going to happen.

He gestured them in, apologetic. The inside was a squalor of obligation: triplicate forms in collapsing stacks, too many teabags drying over the stove, a wall calendar with something inked out on every single day. It smelled of thinning soup over old socks. Mira gave it the once-over and found nothing worth a second glance.

Soren scanned the posts, then the man, disarming, until you looked at the hands, which were heavy-knuckled and twitchy. "You get much traffic?" Soren said, more as test than question.

"None lately," the man answered, eyes darting to the back, where another presence hovered in the shadow of the door. Not another guard, but a woman, sharp-nosed and small as a mouse, who watched them with a dealer's suspicion.

Soren didn't relax. The Lady stood in the corner, frame perfectly still, as if she found the threat here almost ceremonial.

Mira accepted the man's offer of tea. Soren declined. When the second cup slid across the rough table, Caladwen ignored it.

The man tried small talk, failed, then pulled out a sign-in ledger with the resigned air of a cashier about to hand over the till. Mira signed. Soren wrote his name three times, each time a little more illegible. Caladwen didn't bother, her signature already haunting the ledger from years past, if the man's quiver at her name was anything to judge by.

Soren watched the mouse-woman as she poured tea from a chipped kettle. She observed every motion, never blinking, never venturing a word. Her coat was clean, almost new. Soren filed this away.

"You'll want to stay inside tonight," the man said. "Bad weather coming. Wind stings like knives."

Mira smiled, baring all her teeth. "We're used to containment, thank you."

He laughed like it had been mandatory. "Regulations, you know."

Soren took the excuse to wander, first to the cracked glass at the back, then to the posts outside. He felt the chill climb his spine as he counted the tracks frozen in the mud. Someone had tried to circle this place, but not from any road. The prints were small, deeper at the toe. Desperate.

He re-entered, fingers tingling from the cold.

Lady Caladwen had taken up a position near the stove, refusing to sit, her arms folded under the coat. Mira, still sipping the world's worst tea, shot Soren a glance, then nodded once toward the back.

He got it. The relay was just a stage. The real checkpoint was the night.

He found blankets for the Lady, a cup of old coffee for himself, and picked the least-exposed corner to keep watch. Mira took the other, and they spent the hours with the kind of soft-footed vigilance that only mattered if you intended to see morning.

Somewhere after midnight, the wind rose. The relay walls sang with the kind of hollow, animal noise that didn't feel entirely of this world. The woman—still unnamed—never left her post by the door. Soren could hear her breathing, shallow but regular, as if she had made a treaty with her own fear.

At the first hint of gray in the window, Soren roused the Lady. Mira was already up, already packed.

They stepped out into a morning that could have been the last day of the world. The trees leaned, branches whipped into a cartoon of surrender. North in the distance: the pale smudge of the city, waiting to receive the damned.

They made it five kilometers before Soren saw the first sign of pursuit—the notched pattern of boot-prints, irregular but closing fast from the east. He said nothing, only increased the pace. Lady Caladwen matched him step for step.

Mira's voice was a whisper. "You feel it?"

Soren nodded, not needing to explain.

They ran the rest of the valley, up the switchback, and into the wind. At the top, two figures waited: student blue, but the way they held their form—balanced, semi-casual—said there was nothing of the rehearsal about it.

Soren scanned, then moved upwind, drawing the Lady tight against the curve of the rock.

Mira went forward, as if her presence alone could negotiate the rules of engagement.

The first figure, female, hair cropped to the skull, eyes pale as glass—raised a hand. Her badge read "Cadet Supervisor," but Soren didn't know her. The second, a head taller, carried the deltoid patch from the Academy's competitive team, though it looked like it had been sewn on by a drunk.

"Orders from Meridian," the woman said, loud enough to flatten the wind. "Hand her over, and we let the rest of you finish the run."

Mira's mouth made a thin line. "That's not going to happen."

The woman shrugged, as if she'd already prepared for that answer. "Pearl suits themselves, but you know what the city wants."

Lady Caladwen stepped forward, ignoring Soren's reaching hand. Her voice was dry as kindling. "You think you can keep Meridian together by feeding it the same story, Supervisor?"

The woman smiled, but the eyes never changed. "That's not my job. My job is to make sure the memory never leaves the room."

Caladwen laughed, short and sharp. "Your job is to try."

The fight was quick, brutal, and almost beautiful. Mira feinted forward, locking the tall one with a wrist snap that made Soren's own knuckles ache. Soren closed the distance, using the ceramic blade to catch the edge of the woman's collar, then used his other hand to jam the wrist back, hard. Lady Caladwen slipped through the gap the moment it opened.

There was blood, less than he expected, and more than he'd hoped for.

In the end, all four of them were upright, but only Soren and Caladwen looked like they remembered what day it was.

The woman wiped her mouth, checked her own blood on the glove, and said: "You'll regret this."

Soren believed her.

Mira spat on the ground, then motioned up the trail. "No time for lectures. We keep moving."

Caladwen looked back only once, eyes brighter than before. Soren thought she might say something, but she just shook out her braid and started up the hill.

They reached the Tribunal grounds with an hour to spare. The city's edge shivered under the wind, each flag on the parapet taut and snapping.

A single banner hung above the approach: white, with the blue star at the center. Soren's breath caught, but not from the cold.

The protocol at the gate was cursory. They were the first to arrive, and the guards—real city watch this time, treated them as both honored guests and walking liabilities.

Inside, the hall stretched wide, hung with banners for every district, every old grudge. At a long table near the center, Mira dropped her pack, then looked back at Soren with an expression he couldn't decipher. Relief? Warning? Maybe both.

Caladwen crossed the marble like it owed her, checked the schedule pinned to the rail, and dismissed the rest of them with a soft, "Go clean up. No shadows for the first address."

Soren went, washing the blood from his hands in the nearest basin, letting the memory of the climb burn itself out of his muscles.

He looked in the mirror. The cut above his jaw was already clotted, but the bruise at his neck promised to bloom for days. He left it, a mark of record.

When he returned to the hall, the Lady stood at the dais, back straight, hands light on the railing. A crowd was assembling, peers, sponsors, the stratified mess of what passed for Meridian's political class. Nobody looked at Soren. He took a seat at the end of the aisle, close enough to see but not to be seen.

The speech, when it came, was not a call to arms, or to peace. It was a story, and Lady Caladwen told it well, a story of the city, of the way it never remembered the sacrifices, only the result. The room listened, each word another stitch in the quilt of collective guilt and pride.

He didn't hear the end. He was already rehearsing the next four days, and the four after that.

The city would keep ringing its bells, louder every time. Soren knew that much, at least.

He wondered, when the story was told again, if anyone would remember his name.

He left the Tribunal early. Mira was waiting at the gate, hair still sharp, eyes a little less guarded.

"You did good," she said, handing him a fresh coat. "Next time, wear the armor."

Soren nodded, fitting the coat over the bruises. "You think there'll be a next time?"

Mira smiled, just once, and just for him. "In this city? There's always a next time."

He walked the colonnade alone, boots echoing on the cold stone.

The first bell of evening was sounding, each note crisp enough to never need an echo.

Soren liked that.

It meant the world was still watching, waiting for someone to test the silence.

And maybe, just maybe, waiting for someone willing to break it.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.