Four days vanished faster than any battle.
They filled up with details.
Lists.
Arguments.
Small, stubborn life.
Kairn spent mornings with the ward-mage, sitting in front of the Hall Stone while the old man chipped carefully at its base with tools that hummed.
"You're sure this is safe?" Kairn asked on the second day, as a thin crack of pale light appeared along one edge.
"No," the mage said. "But if we wait until I'm sure, we'll all be bones and your god will be very bored."
The Stone's hum never wavered.
It didn't like losing a piece.
It didn't break.
By the third day, a shard lay on the table—no bigger than Kairn's thumb, veined with faint light that pulsed in time with the Stone in the next room.
"Do not drop this," the mage said, pressing it into Kairn's palm. "Do not feed it to anything. Do not let it get eaten. And if you die, try to make sure it ends up somewhere that isn't falling into an endless void."
"Helpful," Kairn said.
He tied it with cord and hung it under his shirt.
It lay against his chest, warm, the hum syncing with his heartbeat whether he wanted it to or not.
Afternoons were for drills.
Not with weapons, mostly.
With thought.
Lysa invented new ways to make his brain trip.
She'd sit across from him, tapping uneven rhythms while telling stories that started harmless and slid sideways into King-logic.
"… and then the villagers agreed it was easier if no one made decisions anymore and they all just waited for the sky to tell them what to do," she'd say.
His teeth would clench.
"She's testing you," he'd remind himself. "Not him."
He'd force his shoulders down.
"No," he'd say aloud, for practice. "That's a bad story."
Fen worked on movement.
"Whatever that place is," he said, "it's not going to line up like a hall. It's going to be sideways. You need to move without relying on 'down' being where it usually is."
So Kairn spent an hour blindfolded in the yard, walking lines Fen called out while the knife-man moved things in his way.
"Left. Duck. Step. Now stop," Fen would say.
Sometimes Kairn obeyed.
Sometimes he didn't.
When he walked into a post and swore, Fen smirked.
"Better here than later," Fen said.
Nights belonged to the kids.
They drifted into his orbit like small moons.
Sia demanded stories and then critiqued his phrasing.
"That's not how you described it last time," she'd say. "You said the chains felt like cold mud then, not wire."
"They can feel like both," he'd protest.
"Pick one," she'd say. "Make it stick."
Tam listened without speaking much, eyes intent.
Once, he interrupted.
"What if it's not enough?" he asked.
"What?" Kairn said.
"Breaking his web," Tam said. "What if he has more. Under that. Or outside it."
Kairn thought about that for a long time.
"Then we break as much as we can reach," he said finally. "And we leave the rest to people who live longer than we do."
Mar stayed quiet as usual.
But whenever Kairn's gaze drifted toward the Stone, he'd find the boy already looking there, as if measuring something invisible.
On the fourth morning, Yselle called them to the yard.
The sky was high and clear.
Mornspire's peak was sharp against it.
The hall smelled of smoke and breakfast and oil.
It might have been any other day.
Except for the way everyone watched them.
Lysa checked her staff's wrap twice.
Fen spun his knives, flicked them back into sheaths.
Kairn adjusted the shard under his shirt and tried not to feel like he'd swallowed a small, humming heart.
Yselle stood in front of the gate.
Her hair was braided back tight.
Her coat was buttoned all the way.
She looked like she was about to lead a patrol and also like she wanted to knock their heads together.
"This is stupid," she said.
"Accurate," Fen said.
"We're doing it anyway," she continued. "Because all the smart options involve pretending this isn't happening, and I've never been good at that."
She looked at Kairn.
"You sure?" she asked.
"No," he said. "But I'm going."
She nodded once.
"At least you're consistent," she said.
She turned to Lysa.
"You sure?" she asked.
"Yes," Lysa said.
"Fen?" Yselle asked.
"The idea of not seeing what a god's brain looks like hurts me physically," he said. "So yes."
The ward-mage leaned on his staff.
"If you die," he said, "try to die interestingly. I'll be listening."
"That's the most mage thing anyone has ever said," Lysa muttered.
Greenfold rustled from a branch above the yard.
"You will not be alone," she said. "My root is in you. If he tries to pull you out of this soil entirely, I will feel it. I will bite."
"Thanks," Kairn said. "Try not to eat anything we might need."
"No promises," she replied.
Sia marched up to them, jaw set.
She thumped the butt of her staff against the ground.
"When you come back," she said, "I want every detail. If you die, I'm going to be very annoyed."
"I'll try to avoid annoying you," Kairn said gravely.
Tam held out his hand.
The lucky stone lay on his palm.
"You keep it," Kairn said. "I've got this now." He tapped his chest where the shard hung.
Tam shook his head.
"It's not for you," he said. "It's for me. I'm going to be holding it while you're gone. If it breaks, I'll… know."
Kairn's throat tightened.
"Don't break it then," he said.
"I'll try," Tam said.
Mar didn't step forward.
He just said, "The Stone hum is different when you touch that line. I'll listen."
"Good," Kairn said. "If it hums wrong, tell Yselle. If it stops… shout."
Sia sniffed.
"If it stops, we'll know," she said.
"Still shout," he said.
Yselle looked at Barra.
"You sure you want to stay?" she asked.
He rolled his shoulders.
"Someone has to make sure they have a hall to come back to," he said. "And someone has to keep your temper from collapsing the roof while you wait."
She snorted.
"Good luck," she said.
She turned back to Kairn.
"All right," she said. "How does this work?"
He swallowed.
His mouth was dry.
"I don't… know exactly," he said. "Last time I went there, I was yanked. This time, I pull myself. I think… I sit. I touch the Stone. I grab the line. I fall."
"That sounds terrible," Fen said cheerfully.
"Don't fight the fall," the mage advised. "Guide it. Think 'arrive,' not 'escape.'"
"Not helping," Kairn muttered.
Lysa reached for his hand.
He took it.
Her grip was firm.
Fen clapped his other shoulder.
"On three," Fen said. "One, two—"
"We are not counting into a god's face like it's a spar," Lysa snapped.
"Fine," Fen said. "We'll just go on 'oh no.'"
Yselle pinched the bridge of her nose.
"I hate all of you," she said. "Now go before I change my mind and lock you in the pantry."
They moved to the Stone room.
It felt smaller than usual.
The Stone's glow brightened as Kairn approached, shard humming in his chest in answer.
He sat.
Lysa sat to his left, hand still holding his.
Fen to his right.
The mage stood behind, staff resting lightly on Kairn's shoulder.
Yselle leaned in the arch, arms folded, as if she could hold the doorway closed if something wrong tried to come back through.
Mar slid into his corner, eyes already half-closed.
Tam and Sia hovered at the threshold until Yselle jerked her chin, and they reluctantly stepped back.
Kairn put his free hand on the Stone.
It was warm.
Alive.
It thrummed against his palm.
He closed his eyes.
The world spread.
Roads.
Wards.
Forests.
Peaks.
His scars on it, glowing faintly.
Emberwatch.
Greenfold.
Mornspire.
The hall.
He found the line.
Thin.
Bright.
Wrong.
It stretched away from the Stone, not into ground or sky but into a place that was neither.
His stomach flipped just looking at it.
His heart stuttered.
He breathed with Lysa's beat.
Da-dum.
In.
Out.
He wrapped his will around the line like a hand on a rope.
He felt it quiver.
He felt something at the far end *notice*.
A vast, distant attention turned, slow as continents.
The line shivered.
"Kairn?" Yselle's voice came, distant and muffled.
"You still want to do this?" Lysa whispered.
He nodded.
He wasn't sure if the motion came out physically or only in whatever space he was already sliding into.
"On 'oh no,'" Fen murmured.
Kairn bared his teeth.
"Oh no," he said.
He pulled.
The world dropped.
Not like the mountain's fake fall.
Not like vertigo.
Like a trapdoor opening under reality.
The hall vanished.
The Stone's touch burned, then became cold.
Lysa's hand tightened on his, then dissolved into lines, then into something else entirely.
Fen's presence blurred, then snapped into focus, then stretched.
For an instant, Kairn felt everything.
The hall's hum.
The forest's root.
The kids' breaths in the doorway.
The shard on his chest sparking like struck flint.
The King's core at the far end of the line, enormous and wrong, flaring as it realized something was coming *toward* it, not away.
Then there was nothing under him but wire and will.
The hall, the Stone, the sky—all dropped away.
They crossed the threshold.