Night pressed in like a lid. The rotunda's torchlight was thin and tired, but it was something — a small island of warm orange in a sea of cold stone.
Riven volunteered for watch with way more enthusiasm than was wise. "I'll take first watch," he said, stretching like a cat. "I'm basically an expert at staying awake. Mostly awake."
Kael didn't argue. He needed sleep that didn't taste like panic. Seren set up the small hearth, folding her scraps into a neat stack like prayer flags. She handed one to Kael: Rotate. Two hours each. Perfect handwriting, annoying efficiency.
Riven grinned. "Two hours? Pfft. I'll do half an hour and do the rest as dramatic snoring."
"You'll wake me," Kael said flat.
Riven made a face — that soft snort, half challenge, half promise: "Tch. I will not. I swear on my terrible haircut."
They took positions. Riven planted himself on the bench, propping his sword at the ready and his head on his hand. For five minutes he looked alert. After that, he looked very theatrical.
Kael lay back against the cool stone. He could feel the Key of Low Tide where it sat in his pocket, a small cold weight that meant choices. He let his knees lift and fall, counting breaths. Seren sat cross-legged by the coals, watching both of them like a small, patient captain.
Time in the rotunda moves weird. It's not that it's slow — it's that it keeps trying to surprise you with small things: a cough in the dark, a distant drip of water, a scuff that is more foot than stone. Little noises that mean a lot in a place that listens.
Riven started telling a story. It was one of those "I almost killed a monster" deals. He made the monster sound ridiculous and terrible at the same time. Kael's mouth twitched. He didn't always laugh out loud, but the dry little thing that escaped felt like permission to be human for a second.
Seren rolled her eyes and scribbled: You're full of lies. She tossed the scrap at him; it landed on his chest like a joke. He read it, made a face, then tucked it behind his ear as if it were an award.
"Eh?" Riven said with a half-cocked look. "What? I fought it! It had teeth — lots of teeth. Also a weird smell. Like old socks." He made that gross sucking noise that earns laughter every time.
Kael let himself grin. It didn't fix the hollow in his chest; nothing did that. But it made the room easier to breathe in.
Two hours passed slow and fast. Riven snored, loud and proud, dutifully waving his sword at nothing. Seren kept one eye open. Kael stayed awake another hour, then closed his own eyes and listened to the small sounds: paper rubbing, the coals ticking, Riven's smug snores.
At one point in the night, Kael woke to the scrape of a boot on stone. He stiffened and sat up. Seren was already standing, squinting into the dark. She held a scrap up to him and mouthed: Movement left. She pointed into the corridor like she could see a thread of footprints only she could read.
They slipped out quiet, three shadows moving like breath. The corridor wasn't empty. A young Walker hunched by a seam, dark circles under his eyes, trading a token for a tiny scrap of bread. His hands shook. He looked like someone whose luck had run out.
Kael watched him and felt the ledger's scrape in his mind. The boy's name wasn't on the wall yet, but it would be soon if the market had its way.
They left a scrap of bread and three small coins without making a sound. Small mercy, nothing heroic, a thing that might matter to a thin man on a cold night.
When they came back, the rotunda smelled like smoke and bread and something older — the tiny sharp ghost of fear. Riven woke with a snort as if he'd been hit.
"Anything?" he asked, eyes not quite open.
Kael gave him a look. "You missed heroic charity, apparently."
Riven's mouth went into that half-grin. "Hmph. I would've done it if I wasn't busy being brave."
Seren shoved a scrap at him: You snore like a dying barrel. He grumbled, then laughed, the sound small and honest.
They slept in shifts after that. On Kael's watch, he let his thoughts run like thieves: names, the wall, Lyra, and the way Hollow sat like a pebble in his shoe he could not stop feeling. He thought of the boy with the token, of how everyone here was counting and being counted.
When dawn scraped grey light through the rotunda, they woke to small bright things: people moving, someone calling a trade, laughter that was too loud for the morning. Kael felt the weight of the night, but also something else — the fact that someone had eaten that scrap bread and kept breathing.
A faint sound rolled through the walls like a comment and not a command.
BOOOONG.
It trembled soft in his bones, patient and old. Not a warning. Just the world reminding them it kept a list.
Kael rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stood. For a second he fancied the ledger as a book he could close. Then he remembered it didn't close. It only waited for the next line.
They packed and moved on. Riven complained about lost sleep. Seren tidied her papers. Kael kept the Key warm in his pocket like it was a small promise he had to keep.