They had three days.
Ilan said it like a fact and not a command, and the Vault's low bones took the syllables and stored them like weather. Outside, the ridge smelled of dust and the slow, patient breath of men who keep ledgers. Inside, the air tasted of stone and wool and the faint copper tang of Owen's work.
Three days to turn a sanctuary into a trap, or a map, or a story that could not be catalogued.
Sofia took the first day like a map that needed new lines drawn across it. She moved through the Vault with a soldier's eyesight: doors that could be barred from within, low chambers that would funnel men into a single throat, niches that let light travel like a blade. She worked with Garr's men and Kest's old smuggling charts, making lists and soft arguments. "If they come with cages," she said once, "we do not let them get a host into it. We break the cage, or we never let it be built."
