Sawyer knew they were close before anyone said it.
The road changed first.
It widened—not by design, but by use. Ruts layered over older ruts, wagon scars pressed so deep into the earth that grass had long since surrendered the attempt to reclaim it. The Song adjusted around the change without comment, stretching thinner, its guidance shifting from forest spacing to foot traffic and axle width. It felt tired doing it. Or perhaps resigned.
Sawyer walked with the wagons, not ahead of them.
That alone would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago. He had led because the road bent more easily when he did. Now he let it bend around him instead. Let the pull of civilization do what the forest no longer cared to.
The trees thinned in stages.
First the undergrowth retreated—less clawing brush, fewer roots reaching across the path like hands that wanted something. Then the canopy broke apart, letting light spill in wider sheets that revealed fence posts half-rotted at their bases, marker stones worn smooth by passing boots, and the occasional abandoned sign whose paint had peeled down to wood and silence.
People began to appear.
Not close. Not yet. Just distant figures moving along side roads—farmhands with tools slung over shoulders, a pair of traders arguing softly beside a stalled cart, a patrol that watched the caravan pass without waving or challenging. Eyes lingered longer than they should have. Not on the wagons.
On him.
Sawyer did not meet their stares.
He had learned what came of that.
The Song murmured at the edge of his awareness, smoothing pace, adjusting gaps. It felt smaller here. Not weaker—just constrained. Like sound pressed into cloth. The land did not resist it, but it did not amplify it either. Too many lives. Too many overlapping rhythms. Too much noise that was not afraid.
Agnes rode near the front now, posture straight, expression set in the way it always became when responsibility eclipsed exhaustion. She had not spoken to Sawyer since the road widened. He had not tried to fill the silence.
Behind them, the caravan moved with practiced competence. Wheels creaked. Harnesses shifted. Guards rotated positions. Routine reclaimed its territory quickly once danger receded. Grief was folded away where it could be managed later, when the road no longer demanded attention.
The child slept.
She was bundled near the center wagon, Aluna's cloak wrapped around her small frame, breath even and shallow in the way exhaustion forced upon those too young to refuse it. Sawyer watched her only once before turning his gaze forward again. Sleep did not mean peace. It only meant delay.
The walls came into view by midday.
They were not tall. Not by fortress standards. Stone reinforced with timber, practical rather than imposing, built to discourage trouble rather than announce power. Time had darkened the blocks, weathered the mortar, softened the edges where countless hands had brushed past without thinking about it.
A settlement built to last, not to impress.
A banner hung above the main gate—faded blue, threadbare at the edges, its emblem worn to near-abstraction by sun and rain. Sawyer recognized it anyway. He had seen it stamped on ledgers, stitched into cloaks, etched into seals that closed contracts and opened graves.
Aria.
The name surfaced without ceremony.
It did not feel like arrival.
It felt like accounting.
Traffic thickened as they approached. Wagons queued ahead of them. Foot traffic split around the caravan in practiced flows. The Song adjusted again, this time retreating inward, its influence reduced to little more than balance and spacing. Sawyer felt the loss of reach immediately. Not pain. Absence.
The gate guards called out routine challenges. Names. Cargo. Purpose.
Agnes answered for them.
Her voice carried the weight of Guild authority without raising its volume. Papers were exchanged. Seals inspected. A runner was sent ahead at a jog, instruction already shaping his stride. Sawyer did not need to hear the words to know what they were.
Report filed. Incident confirmed. Attention summoned.
The gates opened.
Aria received them without pause.
Sound swallowed Sawyer whole—hoofbeats on stone, vendors calling prices, arguments spilling out of doorways, laughter that cut sharp against the edges of his patience. Smells layered thickly over one another: baked bread, tanned leather, waste left too long in the sun. The press of people forced the caravan to slow, then slow again, until progress became measured in yards rather than miles.
No one cheered.
No one recoiled either.
They looked.
Some recognized the wagons. Some recognized the Guild markings. A few recognized him.
Sawyer felt it when they did—the hitch in breath, the pause in conversation, the way eyes tracked him without quite daring to settle. Word traveled faster than wheels ever could. It always did.
He adjusted his stride, keeping pace with the wagon's rear axle. Staying close enough to be contained. Far enough to be watched.
Buildings rose higher the deeper they went. Stone replaced wood. Windows narrowed. Streets tightened into corridors where sound echoed whether it wanted to or not. The Song thinned further, its presence reduced to a quiet hum he barely acknowledged.
This was not a place it could rule.
This was a place that ruled back.
They passed the Guildhall last.
That, too, was deliberate.
Agnes would not bring him there yet. Not until the caravan was settled. Not until the child was placed somewhere safer than memory. Not until witnesses were gathered and the shape of what had happened was decided by more than truth alone.
Sawyer understood the order of things.
He had learned it the hard way.
The wagons turned toward the inner yards, disappearing one by one behind stone walls and iron-bound doors. Assignments were given. People peeled away with purpose. The road's hold loosened, replaced by structure and expectation.
Sawyer stopped where the street widened into a small square.
He did not follow.
For a moment, no one noticed.
Then Agnes turned.
Their eyes met across the distance—not questioning, not commanding. Simply acknowledging the space that had opened between them. She nodded once. He returned it.
That was enough.
Aria moved around him, indifferent and enduring.
Sawyer stood still amid it all, gauntlets heavy on his hands, the Song reduced to a whisper he no longer trusted, and felt the weight of what came next settle where the forest had left it behind.
The road was over.
And the reckoning had only just begun.
Sawyer moved.
Not hurried—never hurried—but with a direction so absolute that the crowd seemed to feel it before they understood it. The square bent around his path. People stepped aside without knowing why, hands pulling children closer, conversations faltering mid-syllable as he passed. Stone rang beneath his boots, each step measured, deliberate, as if the city itself were something that needed to be crossed rather than entered.
The Guildhall rose ahead of him, broad-backed and unyielding, its façade worn smooth by generations of petitions, orders, confessions, and excuses. Sawyer fixed his eyes on it and did not look away again.
The gauntlets shifted as he walked.
Discord metal answered motion with sound—not loud, not sharp, but wrong. A dull, layered rattle that carried too much weight for its volume, as if several impacts were happening at once and refusing to resolve into a single note. The noise cut through the city's din like a dropped plate in a quiet room.
Heads turned.
Not curiosity this time.
Recognition.
The sound followed him, step after step, echoing between stone walls and narrow windows. Each rattle seemed to scrape against something buried in the air, stirring discomfort that had no clear source. Sawyer felt it in the way people stiffened as he passed, in the way guards straightened too quickly, hands drifting toward weapons they did not draw.
The metal did not like the city.
Or perhaps the city did not like the metal.
Memory pressed in as the rhythm settled.
Stone underfoot became stone beneath his hands. The Guildhall's shadow overlaid itself with the cavern's ceiling. For a moment, the air tasted stale again, thick with rot and old smoke. He remembered the way the Song had screamed there—how it had clawed at him, begged him, tried to drown thought beneath inherited grief.
He remembered how it stopped.
Not fading.
Ending.
Sawyer's jaw tightened. His stride did not change.
He saw it again as clearly as if the walls of Aria had peeled away: bodies folded where momentum had abandoned them, expressions frozen mid-instinct, the geometry of violence written cleanly into flesh and stone. No chaos. No frenzy. Just inevitability carried out until there was nothing left to carry it.
Discord metal rattled.
A child on the edge of the street began to cry, the sound sharp and sudden. Her mother scooped her up at once, murmuring reassurances that did not slow Sawyer's pace. He did not look back. He did not look down. Guilt required indulgence. He had no room left for that.
The Song hovered at the back of his mind, thin and restrained, unwilling to intrude. It remembered the nest too. It remembered what it had lost there. For once, it had nothing to offer him—no guidance, no smoothing of steps, no harmony to hide behind.
That suited him fine.
The Guildhall doors loomed closer, iron-bound and scarred by time. Two guards stood watch, posture formal, expressions already hardening as Sawyer approached. They felt it now—the pressure that came with him, the sense that something unresolved was walking straight toward authority and would not stop until it was answered.
Discord metal rattled again as he reached the steps.
The guards did not bar his path.
One swallowed. The other shifted aside by half a step, just enough to acknowledge inevitability without naming it. Sawyer mounted the stairs without breaking stride, each footfall landing with finality that echoed up the stone façade and into the building beyond.
At the threshold, he paused.
Not for permission.
For alignment.
The memory of the lowest chamber surfaced unbidden—the empty space where the Song had once ruled, the silence that had followed. He carried that silence with him now, packed tight behind his ribs, ready to be set down where words would fail.
Sawyer pushed the doors open.
They swung inward on protesting hinges, the sound swallowed quickly by the hall's vaulted interior. Light spilled across polished stone floors. Voices faltered. Somewhere deeper inside, paperwork stopped moving.
Discord metal rattled as he stepped inside Aria's heart.
And for the first time since leaving the forest, Sawyer welcomed the attention.
The first reaction was not panic.
It was recoil.
Someone near the records desk yelped, the sound of a person who had just realized their day was about to become complicated. A clerk winced as ink sloshed in an open well, muttering under their breath without looking up.
"Oh no," a voice said somewhere behind a pillar. "Not this again."
The words carried farther than they should have.
Heads turned—not sharply, not eagerly. Just enough. Like people glancing toward thunder they already knew the shape of.
Discord metal rattled.
The sound rolled through the Guildhall and the response followed in its wake—not weapons, not aura, but memory.
A veteran leaned back from the quest board, lips pressing thin. "Him again?" he asked no one in particular.
A woman near the staircase squinted, then swore softly. "You've got to be kidding me."
Sawyer kept walking.
With each step the sound of silence became louder and louder.
Boots scraped stone behind him.
Then more.
The veterans moved first—not in a rush, not in formation, but with the practiced inevitability of people who had done this before and had not enjoyed the outcome. Old hands peeled away from walls and benches, from quest boards and pillars, their movements economical, their spacing careful. They did not try to surround him. They knew better.
"Stop," someone said.
Not shouted. Not threatened. Worn.
Sawyer did not slow.
Another voice joined it, sharper. "That's far enough."
Then another. "Enough you punk!"
Shouts hit the air in fragments, thrown from different mouths, stripped of authority by repetition. It bounced off him without purchase. Words blurred together, cadence dissolving into a low, overlapping hum that meant nothing. Warnings. Pleas. Commands. He heard none of it.
The discord metal rattled.
The party ran in sensing the discord.
Agnes reached for him first.
She stepped into his path—not fully blocking, just enough to force acknowledgment if he chose to give it. Her jaw was tight, eyes bright with the kind of frustration that came from watching something inevitable and hating herself for recognizing it.
"Sawyer," she said, more firmly now. "Stop. What's wrong?!"
He did not answer.
Bran's shield edge scraped stone as he shifted, planting himself a half-step to Sawyer's right. "You don't want to do this," he said quietly. Not warning. Statement of fact. "Whatever you're thinking—this ends badly."
Faust appeared on the other side, staff grounded, knuckles white. His usual ease was gone, replaced by calculation layered over dread. "You're doing it again," he said under his breath.
Sawyer kept walking.
Their voices washed over him and dissolved, stripped of shape the moment they touched whatever stillness he carried inside. He felt the nest again—the absence where the Song had died, the way sound itself had seemed optional afterward. Compared to that, this hall was noise pretending to matter.
A hand caught his arm.
Kristaphs.
The grip was firm, grounding, threaded with resonance meant to anchor rather than restrain. "Sawyer," he said urgently. "Look at me."
Sawyer stopped.
Not because of the hand.
Because the discord metal went quiet.
The sudden absence of its rattle sent a ripple through the hall sharper than any sound it had made. Breath caught. Someone gasped. The Song flinched, tightening instinctively as if bracing for impact.
Sawyer lifted his head.
Erika stood at the far end of the chamber.
She had not moved until now.
Her posture was rigid, shoulders squared, fingers flexing once at her side before curling into a fist. Frustration was etched plainly across her face—not anger, not fear, but the sharp, contained irritation of someone who had warned everyone this would happen and been ignored.
Their eyes locked.
The air changed.
Killing intent began to gather around her—not spilling, not wild. Disciplined. Controlled. The kind that had been honed through years of stopping worse things than this. The Guildhall felt it immediately. Wards stirred. Veterans tensed. Aura prickled along skin like static before a storm.
Erika drew breath.
She was about to flare.
Sawyer's hand moved.
The whistle was already between his fingers before anyone understood what he intended. A few veterans recognized it and shouted—but too late.
The note was soft.
Almost gentle.
It did not echo.
It fell.
Sound collapsed inward, folding over itself like a wave breaking straight down instead of forward. The Song recoiled in full this time, not retreating—disconnecting. Aura unraveled mid-manifestation. Wards flickered and died like candles pinched out by invisible fingers.
People dropped.
Not violently.
Not screaming.
They simply… went still.
One by one, bodies sagged and slid, veterans and clerks alike slumping where they stood, weapons clattering harmlessly to the floor. Conversations cut off mid-word. A raised hand never completed its gesture. Breath slowed, then evened out, sleep claiming the hall with merciless efficiency.
Agnes crumpled where she stood, caught only by Bran's shoulder before he followed her down. Faust's staff hit the stone with a hollow knock as he collapsed beside it. Kristaphs' grip loosened, his hand slipping from Sawyer's arm as he folded backward, already unconscious.
Erika staggered—but did not fall.
She dropped to one knee instead, one hand braced against the stone, teeth clenched hard enough to creak. The edges of her aura flared once in reflex, then guttered out, leaving only her own strength holding her upright.
Silence returned.
Real silence this time.
Sawyer lowered the whistle. He was now only a few paces from her.
He looked at her—really looked—and saw not authority, not threat, but exhaustion sharpened into anger.
"You," Erika said hoarsely. "You absolute—"
Her words got cut by a simple request.
"Vice-guildmaster. Let me hunt."