They smelled the hall before they saw it.
Smoke, leather, steel, sweat.
Home-not-home.
The gate creaked open for them without challenge. Word had traveled faster than their horses; faces turned in the yard, eyes tracking Kairn's group, counting heads.
Four stones stood near the wall now.
Not graves, not yet.
Markers.
The Roadkeepers had laid their dead from Emberwatch beneath woven branches and cloth, each with a name carved into a temporary plank.
Mire dismounted without a word and went to straighten one that had started to lean.
Yselle met them halfway across the yard.
She took in the mud on their boots, the water stains on their clothes, the absence of new bodies on spare saddles.
"No corpses," she said. "Good start."
"No mushrooms where teeth should be," Fen added. "Also good."
Her gaze flicked to Kairn's marked hand.
"You're still shaped like you when you left," she said. "Better."
"Mostly," he said.
She jerked her chin toward the inner arch.
"Stone," she said. "Now."
The Hall Stone's chamber hummed before they even stepped into it.
Not wrong.
Just alive.
Cale waited by the table, map unrolled. The ward-mage leaned on his staff, eyes gritty with sleeplessness.
"You're late," Cale said.
"We're not," Barra said. "Your candle woke us early."
Kairn stepped up to the Stone.
He pressed his palm to it.
Greenfold's mark flared under his skin, eager.
The Stone's sense rushed up his arm.
He had expected it this time.
He let it unfold.
The world spread out.
Roads.
Villages.
Wards.
He felt Emberwatch like a pulled tooth—the socket empty, healing, no infection.
He felt Greenfold.
Her song thrummed through his bones, layered with the Stone's older hum.
The wrong static there had faded to faint, irritating sparks, already dying away.
He felt Mornspire.
It was no longer just a thin tug at the edge of perception.
The peak blazed in his inner sight—a knot of signal and wrongness, threads coiled tight around old weather-poles and signal stones.
The King's presence there pressed harder than before at Emberwatch or Greenfold.
Near it, the air itself in his mind's eye shimmered, like heat on stone.
He could almost hear fragments of Choir, distant and distorted.
*—yield—*
*—safe—*
*—order—*
He pulled his hand back.
The Stone's glow dimmed.
"Well?" Yselle asked.
"Emberwatch is clean," he said. "Greenfold's pulled most of him out. She'll handle the rest. Mornspire…" He exhaled. "He's building a Gate there. And a Choir-node. Like a tower-heart and a relay had a bad child."
The ward-mage's knuckles whitened on his staff.
"Mornspire's signal stones were always too good," he muttered. "Old war mages put half their clever into them. Thought they were making sure no one ever snuck an army over the ridge."
"Instead, they built him a better perch," Lysa said.
Yselle folded her arms.
"Can he come through?" she asked. "Fully."
"Not yet," Kairn said. "He's testing. There's… echoes. Not bodies. Flickers. If we wait, he'll widen it. If he finishes, he can put a piece of himself on that peak big enough to crush this hall from where he stands."
Silence settled.
Cale scowled at the map.
"I hate being right," he muttered. "Mornspire was always going to come back to haunt us."
Barra rolled his shoulders.
"So," he said. "We climb. We cut. We come back."
Yselle looked at him sharply.
"You're assuming you're going," she said.
"Better me than someone who hasn't already watched this man chew on god-things," he said, jerking his head at Kairn.
She switched her gaze to Kairn.
"You said before that if we march an army up there, we're just giving him more mouths to sing through," she said.
"Yes," Kairn said. "The air's already thin. People tired. Scared. He loves that. This needs to be small."
"Define small," she said.
Kairn glanced at Lysa, at Fen, at Barra.
"Us," he said. "Plus anyone who can keep us from falling off a cliff."
"The kids?" Yselle asked.
Sia stiffened where she stood near the wall.
Tam's fingers tightened on his staff.
Mar stared at the Stone, jaw clenched.
Lysa blew out a slow breath.
"No," she said.
Three heads snapped toward her.
"What?" Sia demanded.
"You're not climbing that mountain," Lysa said, voice steady. "Your legs aren't ready. Your lungs aren't ready. Your heads aren't ready."
"We helped in Greenfold," Sia shot back. "We clapped. We—"
"You nearly listened when he told you to lie down forever," Lysa cut in. "You did great to pull back. I'm proud of you. I'm not going to march you straight into the place where his voice is loudest yet."
Tam looked between them, eyes wide.
"I don't… want to go," he admitted. "But I don't want you to go without me either."
Kairn crouched so he was at Tam's eye level.
"Do you trust me?" he asked quietly.
Tam nodded, hard.
"Then trust this," Kairn said. "On that mountain, the main job is biting. Every time I bite him, I need to know the people behind me aren't going to get knocked over by the echo. Here, you can train. You can learn to stand. If something happens while we're gone, I want you three alive in this hall with people who know how to fight."
Sia's eyes shone.
"That sounds like 'stay put and be safe while the adults do everything,'" she said, voice tight.
"It's not," Barra said.
She glared at him.
He shrugged.
"While they're climbing rocks, this hall still needs eyes, hands, and quick feet," he said. "Yselle will be moving people, tightening wards, watching the Stone. You think we won't need runners, watchers, staff-hands who don't trip, someone who can hear if the sky hums wrong? You want to help? You help here."
Mar finally spoke.
"What if you don't come back?" he asked.
Kairn didn't lie.
"Then someone has to be here who knows what we were doing and why," he said. "Someone who can tell the story to the next person with teeth."
Mar swallowed.
"… okay," he said.
Sia wiped her face with the heel of her hand, angry at herself for the wetness.
"Fine," she said. "But if you die somewhere stupid like falling off a rock, I'm going to find your bones and kick them."
"Deal," Kairn said.
Tam sniffed.
"Me too," he said.
"Good," Fen said. "We'll die just to experience that."
Yselle's mouth twitched despite herself.
"Kids stay," she said, formal now. "Under my roof, under my rules. They'll drill with my staff-sergeant until their arms fall off. They'll run messages. They'll listen when the Stone hums. They'll be three more reasons I don't let your mountain plan go wrong."
She turned to the ward-mage.
"Any way we can make Mornspire less of a gift-wrapped altar for him before they even get there?" she asked.
The mage grimaced.
"I can lay dampening veils over some of the old signal-lines from here," he said. "Blunt his ability to listen through them. But the stones on the peak itself… they're out of my reach without a conduit."
He looked at Kairn's marked hand.
"No," Kairn said automatically.
"I wasn't going to ask to use you as a lightning rod," the mage said. "Not yet."
"Good," Kairn said.
Cale tapped the map.
"The mountain itself hasn't moved," he said. "Old paths are still where I drew them—ridge trail, scree slope, goat-track that might kill you before any god does. I'll mark them again. You pick how much you like your knees."
Yselle inhaled.
"All right," she said. "Small team. Kairn, Lysa, Fen, Barra, and…" She looked at the ax-man, who had leaned silently in the doorway through the whole talk. "Joren. You climb better than anyone else I have who isn't already half broken."
Joren shrugged.
"Rocks don't move," he said. "I like that about them."
"Rocks also fall," Fen said.
Joren smiled.
"Only if you ask badly," he said.
Kairn's Brand pulsed.
Mornspire tugged at the edge of his sense like a hook sunk into the sky.
He pushed the feeling aside long enough to breathe.
"Do we have time to rest?" he asked.
"Tonight," Yselle said. "Tomorrow you don't leave. Tomorrow you train, hard. I want you to know how your lungs feel when they're half-empty before you're on a ledge. Next dawn, you go."
Lysa nodded.
"Reasonable," she said.
"Rare compliment," Yselle said.
"Don't get used to it," Lysa replied.
The meeting broke.
The kids were swept away by a staff-sergeant with a scar across her nose and a drill voice that could probably make trees stand straighter.
"Staves," she barked. "Feet, then hands. If you drop anything, you run."
Sia shot Kairn a look that said this was absolutely his fault.
He spread his hands.
"If she doesn't terrify you, the mountain will," he said.
She huffed and went.
Tam trailed after, glancing back once, as if to memorize them.
Mar didn't look back at all.
Fen watched them go, then shook himself.
"I suppose I should learn how not to fall into holes," he said.
"Long overdue," Barra said.
The next day blurred.
Training.
For Kairn: the hall's upper walkways became a test—he and Barra ran laps along the inner wall until Kairn's lungs burned and his legs felt like sand.
"Thin air will lie to you," Barra said between breaths. "It'll tell you you're dying when you've still got steps left. Learn the difference now."
Kairn grimaced and kept running.
For Lysa: the ward-mage had her sit with the Hall Stone, tapping rhythms while Kairn brushed Mornspire's thread lightly with his sense.
Every time the King's pattern tried to spike, she slipped beats sideways, jamming the echo.
"It muffles him," the mage said, eyes wide. "Not fully. But enough that his signal arrives… garbled."
Lysa grinned, sweat sticking hair to her forehead.
"Good," she said. "Let him choke on static."
For Fen: Joren dragged him up towers, along narrow ledges, and down again, making him move with blades out and eyes, not feet, paying attention.
"If you look down all the time, you miss the hand that shoves you," Joren said.
"For the record, I hate you," Fen panted.
"You'll thank me when you don't die," Joren said.
"For the record, I hate that too," Fen said.
For the kids: staff drills, footwork, running messages between the yard and the Stone room, learning where water barrels were, what bell meant what.
Kairn caught glimpses—Sia knocking a grown Roadkeeper on his ass with a neat sweep, Tam keeping his staff up against a rain of gentle taps, Mar standing very still in the Stone room, eyes closed, listening as the hall hummed.
That night, Kairn found himself on the wall beside Yselle, looking out into the dark.
Mornspire was a jagged silhouette on the far horizon, barely visible against the stars.
"You're going to try more than cutting that last anchor," she said without preamble.
He didn't pretend not to understand.
"Yes," he said.
"You're going to try to find where this thing lives," she said. "And break that."
"Yes," he said again.
She snorted.
"Of course," she said. "You don't know how to do anything halfway."
He leaned on the stone.
"I can't live with leaving him half-alive," he said. "If he survives this sky, he'll find another. If I'm already at his throat, I might as well bite down."
"You might die," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him.
"Do you ever answer any of these with 'no'?" she asked.
"Sometimes," he said. "When people ask if I want more chains."
She huffed a laugh.
"I can't stop you," she said. "Even if I wanted to. You're not mine to order. All I can do is make sure my roads don't make it easier for you to fail."
He glanced at her.
"You'll move them," he said. "If the sky starts to crack over Mornspire."
Her jaw tightened.
"I'll move what I can," she said. "People, not stone. We can build new walls. We can't build new families. I love this hall, Kairn. But I've already marked too many places never-again. I won't add my own roof to that list if I can help it."
He nodded.
"Good," he said.
Dawn came cold.
Kairn woke before the call.
Muscle memory, maybe.
Lysa was already up, braiding her hair back tight, fingers quick.
Fen grumbled as he strapped his knives on, half asleep until he was fully armed, then instantly sharp.
Barra checked straps on packs and ropes three times.
Joren oiled his hooks and hummed something tuneless under his breath.
In the yard, the kids waited.
Sia's staff leaned against her shoulder.
Tam held a small, smooth stone in his palm.
Mar stood with arms folded, face set.
Kairn walked to them.
Tam thrust the stone at him.
"It's lucky," Tam said. "It survived the mine and Farbridge and you sitting on it once."
Kairn took it.
It was just a river rock, worn smooth.
It fit his hand.
"I'll keep it," he said. "Try not to sit on it again."
Sia stepped forward.
"Bring back stories," she said. "Real ones. Not 'we climbed, we cut, we came back.' I want details."
"You'll get them," Lysa said. "Annoyingly many."
Mar didn't move.
Kairn looked at him.
"Watch the Stone," Kairn said. "If it hums wrong, shout louder than anyone."
Mar nodded.
"If it stops humming," he said, "I'll scream."
"Good," Kairn said.
Yselle waited by the gate.
She looked them over like she was counting tools and deciding which might break.
"Kairn," she said. "You bite, you don't swallow more than you have to."
"I'll try," he said.
"Lysa," she said. "You keep him from vanishing into his head."
"Always," Lysa said.
"Fen," she said. "If you fall, you better bounce."
"I'll do my best," Fen said.
"Barra, Joren," she finished. "You bring back news, even if all you have left is your tongues."
"Yes, Captain," they said together.
She stepped back.
The gate opened.
Cold air poured in, carrying the faint, sharp scent of high stone.
Mornspire was a darker knife-edge against the morning sky now, outlined in pale gold.
Kairn felt the King's attention stretch from that peak, a thread drawn tight into his chest, humming with anticipation.
He stepped forward.
The rock in his palm was warm from Tam's hand.
Greenfold's mark thudded in his chest.
The hall hummed behind him.
The road ahead climbed.
"Forward," Lysa murmured.
"Forward," he agreed.
They walked out of the gate, small against the walls, smaller against the mountain, and very large against the thin line in the sky that thought it could close its hand on every road.