The seam was gone. Only stone cooled beneath Arya's palm and the after-image of white light burned across his vision. The chamber seemed to breathe, air expanding back into places the door had pressed flat. Above, the sanctum rattled with orders and anger—metal on wood, boots on stone, the priest's voice sharpened to a blade.
Mira touched his shoulder. "You with me?"
"Mostly." Arya tried to smile. His hand throbbed under the fresh bandage; the cuts over the vow lines had stopped bleeding, but the skin felt hot, like it remembered a sun that hadn't risen yet. "I told it no."
"Yes," Yeshe said. Pride softened the ribs of her words. "And you did not tell the King yes. That is two refusals in one morning. Exhausting work."
Lhakpa exhaled a laugh he didn't mean to let out. "For the record," he murmured, "I still wasn't here."
"Then be nowhere a little longer," Mira said, gripping her staff.
They climbed.
The stair's throat opened into the sanctum, and the scene arranged itself like a board mid-game: Aama Gita by the bell, rope in her hand; Captain Sagar just inside the threshold, helm tucked beneath one arm, trident at his side; two ranks of Trident Guard fanned to either side; the white-robed priest centered between them, charms glinting on his wrist, his mouth polite and his eyes full of want.
Villagers had gathered at the courtyard's edge, pressed behind a line of prayer flags. The murmur of their prayers braided with the low drone of the temple's smaller bells. Someone—some many—had begun to scatter marigolds along the eaves until the air itself smelled like altars.
Aama Gita looked at Arya first, at his bandaged palm, then at his face. Whatever she saw, she approved. "The hinge heard you," she said. "It is enough for a beginning."
The priest took one step forward. "Enough for treason." He flicked his fingers; two Guards advanced, tridents lowered. "By writ of His Majesty, the storm-bearer is to be sealed. Keeper, stand aside."
Sagar didn't move. "No sealing in the sanctum," he said evenly. "The writ is not a license to turn shrines into armories."
"The writ is a license to keep cities standing," the priest snapped. "Or will you argue jurisprudence while Narak gnaws through the door you let wake?"
Aama Gita struck the bell. One clear note rolled like water poured into a long throat. The sound slid around edges, under boots, through ribs. The two advancing Guards slowed, tridents dipping; their eyes flickered—in doubt, in memory.
"Yeshe," Arya said quietly, "if they press—"
"Then the mountain will decide who may put a foot where," Yeshe said. She lifted her cane and drew it lightly across the threshold stones. A faint line of frost sprang where the wood touched. "Lines are older than swords."
The priest smiled, and it was not kind. "Lines are older than boys too." His charms chimed; the air thickened, the sanctum remembering how to be a well again. "Storm-bearer, you will come now."
Mira stepped between Arya and the priest. "No."
He didn't look at her. "Girl, your courage earns you nothing but a grave."
"Better mine than his," she said, and did not move.
Sagar's jaw flexed. He slid one boot ahead of the other until he, too, stood on the line. "Keeper is right," he said, not taking his eyes off the priest. "You drag the writ like a net and call anything caught 'law.' The King wants a storm in a scabbard. Fine. But he does not get it with bell-metal melted over the floor of Changu."
The priest's voice softened into the kind of patience that breaks things. "Captain, you mistake courtesy for compromise. This temple woke a hinge. A hinge implies a door. The boy implies a key. The crown requires keys."
Aama Gita sighed as if a child had knocked over a bowl. "So noisy." She turned to Arya. "Boy—once more."
He understood. He didn't need to open a seam; he needed to place the leash, not as a private promise but as a line the stones themselves would enforce.
He stepped forward until his toes kissed the frost Yeshe had drawn. He lifted his palm, letting the bandage fall away. The storm mark shone faintly in the temple light—a pale coil, a quiet star.
"I set it here," he said to the floor, to the plinth, to the beams that had learned bell-song for centuries. "No storm for fear. No storm for pride. No storm that harms those I stand beside. No storm on a plea. If I break these here, may this place refuse me."
Silence held like a held breath. Then the flagstones under his boots warmed. The faintest traceries of light stitched a circle around the threshold, as thin as hair, as absolute as a blade.
The priest scoffed. "Superstition."
Sagar's trident hummed in his hand, just once, as if disagreeing.
A gust of wind ghosted through the courtyard. Prayer flags snapped in a sequence that felt almost like language. The villagers went suddenly quiet, as if a story's last page was about to turn.
"Enough," the priest said, patience discarded. He raised his hand. Charms whispered. Power gathered, the air brightening—not like Arya's lightning, but like noon trapped inside glass.
"Don't," Sagar said.
The priest brought his hand down.
The light hit the line Yeshe had made and unmade itself. Not violently. Not dramatically. It was as if the floor had opened a palm and the charm had decided to be very tired. The bell rang of its own accord, a single sober note. The priest staggered, shocked that the world hadn't agreed with him.
Aama Gita's eyebrows climbed. "The stones chose."
The villagers breathed out in a ragged chorus. Somewhere a child laughed, wild and relieved; somewhere else, someone sobbed into both hands.
The priest recovered fast. Rage ironed his face flat. "Captain," he said, "arrest him."
Sagar didn't move. "On what ground? Not this one."
"On the King's," the priest snapped.
"Then find me a patch of royal lawn," Sagar said, "and I will consider it." His eyes flicked to Arya. "Storm-bearer. I gave you truth once, so I will again: mercy has a timetable. You have earned hours. Not days."
Arya nodded. It wasn't spite; it was math. Sagar wasn't his friend, but the line the captain would not cross had held, and Arya would remember.
Wind shifted again. The prayer flags all along the courtyard bowed—not outward toward the soldiers, but inward, toward the sanctum. Aama Gita grunted. "Heard."
Yeshe turned her blind face toward Arya. "We go. Now."
"Go where?" Mira asked. "There are guards at the gate, priests on the road, and a herald with a pair of sharp opinions about our travel plans."
"South ridge," Aama Gita said. "There's a pilgrim path that pretends it forgot it exists. It meets the old trade road by the pine well. If the soldiers go left, you go right. If they go right, you go anywhere they do not." She fixed Arya with a look. "And you do not open anything bigger than your hand can close."
"Yes," Arya said, throat tight.
Lhakpa stepped out from the press of Guards, cloak tucked close, head bowed just enough to make a lie of it. "For the record," he said, voice pitched so only they could hear, "there is a gap in the north wall where the pigeons teach themselves treason. I saw it once when I pretended to chase them."
"Pigeons are excellent insurgents," Mira said gravely.
"Appalling," Aama Gita agreed. "Use their door. Try not to drop feathers."
The priest saw the eddies of decision and tried to stand where the current would carry him. "You will not leave this temple, boy."
"Yes," Yeshe said, warmth sharpened to edge. "He will."
Sagar's gaze went to the villagers, to the marigold path, to the bell rope in Aama Gita's hand. He judged, measured, and—in the end—looked away. "Stand down," he told his men. "If the boy runs, the mountain will fetch him back if it wants him."
The Guards did not relax, but they did not close. A path as narrow as a prayer opened between bronze points.
"Walk," Yeshe said.
They did. Not fast—not quite. To move quickly would be to make a chase. They crossed the sanctum with the bell's note still sitting in the bones of the floor. At the north wall, hidden behind a screen of carved lattice, waited the pigeons' door: a cracked board that yielded to Aama Gita's fingertips, a gap above a ledge where ash and pale feathers collected.
Mira peered through. "Drop's not bad." She swung herself out, landed cat-quiet, then looked up. "Toss him."
"Absolutely not," Arya said.
She grinned. "Then jump."
He jumped. Yeshe followed, guided by their hands, not faltering on the ledge because the mountain itself put a palm under her feet. Lhakpa hesitated, threw them a look over his shoulder—fear and loyalty fighting—and ducked through after them.
Aama Gita didn't come. She stood framed in the lattice, bell rope looped in her fist, eyes bright as lamp oil. "The hinge keeps time," she said softly. "Use your hours well."
Then she straightened her shawl, turned, and walked back into the sanctum where the priest and the captain stood like two halves of a broken coin.
They slid into an alley skirting the temple's wall. The world beyond had the hush of snow though no snow fell, as if the city held its breath to avoid drawing attention. They threaded between stacked wood, a sleeping goat, a water pot left warm by afternoon light. At the lane's mouth, the terraced valley spread away, pinched by pines and the long glint of the trade road like a knife laid flat.
"South ridge," Yeshe said.
They ran. Not a sprint—an endurance lope, feet skimming steps, bodies shaped to air. Below, soldiers fanned slowly through lanes in the opposite direction, a white river seeking its own bed. Bells whispered above. The marigolds on the eaves shone brighter than they had any right to.
At the turn where the path narrowed to a goat's memory, Arya looked back.
On the temple roof, a single figure stood: Captain Sagar, helm under his arm, trident like a mast. He did not raise a hand. He did not shout. He only watched—measured—and then turned away.
"Don't look," Mira said, tugging him on. "We have hours. Let's not spend them staring."
They reached the ridge's crest and dropped into the pines. The smell of resin wrapped them; needles softened the path; cold light tallied their breaths.
Only when the temple was a tooth of dark against a paler sky did the storm in Arya's chest move again. It did not shove. It leaned the way a river leans into its own banks. South, it said, not as command but as memory. Gate. Net. Hold.
"Not without witness," Arya whispered back, thinking of bells and vows and a keeper who refused to let stones be bullied. A magpie hopped across the trail, head cocked, as if it, too, approved.
They followed the pilgrim path into the trees, toward a road older than writs and a fight that would not wait for permission.
Behind them, very far away, Changu's bell rang once more—slow, heavy, and satisfied.