The first light reached the valley late. Fog held the ridges. The cave mouth took the day in small pieces, the way a careful person opens a door.
Kael carried Mira through the last slope without asking his legs for anything fancy. He kept a steady pace. Her weight was nothing; the careful part was the breathing. Her head rested against his shoulder. She was warm and cold at once. Her lashes looked pale where they brushed his coat. When he crossed the ward line, the hair on his forearms rose. The old grounds recognized him. That was good.
Selina walked ahead and called positions the way she always did on first entry.
"Ward one, live. Ward two, live. Floor edge, three steps right. Hold."
Kael halted. She slid a flat stone aside, pressed a sigil, and waited for the small click. The floor edge sealed.
"Clear," she said. "Bring her in."
The inner cavern was dry, wide, and clean. The side tunnels ran like quiet hallways. The altar was where the maps said it would be: in the center, set into a cradle of dark stone. The lotus was stone too, but not dead. Six long petals lay cupped, human-length, edges smooth, faint lines like veins if you were near. The surface kept a thin gloss, as if someone had wiped it five minutes ago.
Kael set Mira down on the padded cot first. He checked her pulse with two fingers and counted without sound. Selina opened the kit, took a temperature, checked capillary refill on a fingertip, wrote numbers on a slate, then repeated them once out loud for Kael.
"Pulse eighty-four. Temperature baseline. Oxygen good. Skin cool to touch. Color pale. Nose clear. No active bleed."
Mira's lips moved. "Water."
Selina put the cup to her mouth. "Small sip. Say stop."
Mira sipped and stopped by closing her mouth. Selina pulled the cup back. Kael adjusted the blanket and checked the line of her neck. He watched her swallow. He waited for the small cough. It did not come. Good.
Selina faced him. "Three tasks. I finish the inner wards; you sweep the outer path and set dumb snares. Then we do supplies. After that, we talk."
"Understood," Kael said.
He took the outer line. The upper switchback was still covered by scrub and rock. He walked with care to leave a clean pattern, then broke it on purpose and laid a false one for anyone reading sign. He set a simple trip line of twine and bell seed at the last blind bend. He brushed away their night tracks. He lifted the blackthorn branch he'd placed years ago and sighted the lower runnels. No fresh prints. Good.
Back inside, Selina finished the inner ring. The wards here were old. Her work was not to invent but to wake and link. She pressed a palm to each anchoring plate, spoke the short keys, and fed them a half-minute of her breath. The plates took it and glowed once. She did not smile. She never smiled at wards. She checked them twice.
Mira slept with her mouth slightly open. The white in her lashes was clear in this light. Her skin looked too even, like snow without footprints. The change was wrong in a modern room. Here it fit. The air was dry and clean. The faint lotus scent in her breath was stronger today.
Selina stood by the cot and spoke simply.
"You are safe. You can sleep. We are here."
Mira's fingers moved at the word here and stilled.
They did the inventory. Three large crates: dried food, water, tools. Two small crates: scripts, inks, cloth, metal hooks. One sealed roll of linen. One rope coil. One short spade. A stove and fuel. A crate of cheap phones in foil. Two solar mats small enough to hide in a crack in the rock. No noise. No light spill. Everything had a place.
By noon, they had a routine. Kael patrolled on the half-hour. Selina checked Mira and the altar on the hour. They ate in quick, quiet bites.
At one, Mira woke again. Her voice was rough.
"Where?"
Selina sat on the cot edge so Mira could place the sound. "In our old grounds. A valley with a cave. We brought you last night. You are safe. You will not be disturbed."
Mira tried to lift a hand and failed. She let it go. "Why?"
"Because the city is not safe," Selina said. "Because the Red Clan is moving. Because we need the old stone under you when the sky changes."
Mira listened. She did not argue. She focused on one point and asked the next thing.
"Tea?"
"Water first." Selina lifted the cup. "Then tea."
Mira swallowed. "Okay."
Kael watched from the shadow. He did not speak until Mira turned her face toward his side of the cave.
"You are there," she said.
"I am," he answered.
"Do not leave."
"I won't."
She stopped trying to speak. The small muscles in her face relaxed. She drifted back down with simple trust, not because she chose it, but because her body made the choice for her. Kael stayed where the rock gave him sight of both entries.
In the afternoon, the outside world knocked.
Not on their door. On the air.
The messages came one after another. A neutral observatory issued an anomaly note: "high-altitude dust front" and "geomagnetic irregularity." Power companies warned about "short, localized flickers." A private weather watcher posted a clipped video of a horizon line with a thin green band for three seconds at noon. And then an ambulance radio, recorded and leaked, caught a city dispatcher saying, "We are getting animal calls that make no sense."
Selina kept the old phone on the lowest power draw. She showed Kael the headlines. He read the tags and gave her the short version.
"Early tremors," he said. "No need to move tonight. We watch."
She nodded once. "We taper nectar."
They spoke in plain terms. They did not use code words here; the wards were enough.
Selina measured a small dose and looked at it before she moved. "Half teaspoon. Only once before night."
Kael agreed. "No more until midnight. Then nothing until dawn."
"Agreed," she said.
Mira woke again to the cup at her lip. She drank and made a face at the taste, not because it was bad, but because her mouth remembered jam from another day and this was not jam. She said nothing about it. She trusted the hands.
"Tell me the time," she said.
"Three twenty-eight," Selina answered.
"Tell me the day."
"First day after we left the city."
"Okay," Mira said.
She dozed. When she woke, she asked one more.
"Did Nora call?"
"No," Selina said. "We turned that number off."
"Okay," Mira said again, and the word sounded like relief and loss in the same breath.
Far away from the cave, Nora stood in a back room that used to be a café and was now a quiet office with ugly carpet. She held the phone in both hands, pressed it to her ear, and dropped her voice.
"They moved at night," she said. "Out by Long Ridge. I don't have the exact spot."
The voice on the other end stayed even. "You will get it."
"I need time," Nora said. "They know someone watched the street. They are good at vanishing. If I push, I lose them."
The voice was patient in the way money is patient. "The eclipse window is near. We will not miss it. Give me something tonight."
"I will try," Nora said. She ended the call and leaned her forehead to the cold glass. She could have told them to walk into the old grounds and break their own legs on the first ward, but she did not. She stood a long time, hands shaking, and then sent a different message to a different contact.
She wrote: Harland is dirty. Look at Alder. Stop chasing the girl. You will end up dead.
She hit send and told herself it was enough for one day.
Arthur Halden did not sit in quiet rooms. He chose a private club with leather and rules. He read the letter with the red wax. He met Envoy Ash under a painting of a stag. Ash wore a dark suit and a thin red pin on his lapel. He spoke in clean sentences.
"The eclipse is three weeks away," Ash said. "We will open the gate. Those who commit now will stand at the front."
Arthur nodded. "What do you want from me today?"
"Money," Ash said. "Access. Silence."
"I can do that."
"You will also stop funding Doctor Harland from your personal account," Ash said. "He confuses profit with work."
Arthur smiled without warmth. "I am already bored of him."
Ash let that pass. "When the gate opens, people will panic. We will place our hands on the scale. Those with sense will accept the new order fast. You wish to be one of them."
Arthur did not deny it. "I want to learn what you learn."
"You will earn what you learn," Ash said. "You will bring us a problem to solve."
Arthur's eyes did not move. "The girl."
Ash lowered his voice only a shade. "Yes."
Arthur leaned back. "You will tell me when to move."
"I will," Ash said. "I will also tell you when not to move. Today is not the day."
Arthur accepted it because he liked the feeling of being on a list that others did not see.
At dusk, the valley cooled fast. Selina made a small pot of simple food. Kael did the last light check outside and stood under the ridge until the bats came out. He listened for human noise. There was none. He went back in and closed the inner door.
Mira woke for the last time that day at the sound of the pot lid. Food smelled normal. She was glad for that detail.
"Hungry?" Selina asked.
"A little."
Selina fed her a spoon at a time, slow. Mira ate four spoons and stopped. "Enough."
"Okay," Selina said.
They cleaned the small mess. They spoke the plan for the night so the cave would hear it.
"Two watches," Selina said. "You take first. I take second. If we get visitors, we do not negotiate."
"Agreed," Kael said.
They did the last check of Mira. Pulse steady. Color the same. Lashes white all the way now. The altar looked like stone, but a person with a hand for old things could feel a hum in the petals. Selina laid a palm near the base and kept it there until her skin warmed. She lifted her hand and shook it out.
"Tomorrow we test the cradle," she said.
"Tomorrow," Kael agreed.
When Mira slept, they spoke five minutes of truth. No dramatics. No tricks.
Kael said, "Nora called someone high. She did not sell us in one shot. She is buying time, or she is hedging."
Selina said, "We will treat her as a risk either way."
Kael said, "Arthur is in."
Selina nodded. "I know."
He looked at her. "You think she will hate us when she wakes."
"Yes," Selina said. "For a while."
He let that sit. "I can live with that."
"She can live with that," Selina said. "That is the part that matters."
They sat without talking for the rest of the hour. The cave breathed like an old animal sleeping at their feet.
Night carried small things into the valley. A fox on the scree. A thin cloud that broke apart before it could cross the moon. Air that tasted like rock and clean dust. The world outside the wards kept its voice low. Inside, nothing moved that was not meant to.
In the city, a meeting room with no windows filled with men and women in suits who liked secrets more than sleep. Screens showed charts that looked like weather until you knew what you were seeing.
A man in a gray tie said, "We need a public story for the light bands and the output spikes."
A woman with neat hair said, "Solar dust. It buys us two weeks."
"Two weeks is not enough," the man said.
"It is what we have," she answered.
They moved on to talk about supply lines and port closures. They did not talk about gates. Not out loud.
Back in the cave, Mira woke to the sound of Selina adjusting the blanket. She did not ask what time it was. She did not ask if they were safe. She said one thing.
"Thank you."
Selina answered the way she always did when thank you meant more than thank you.
"You're welcome."
"Kael," Mira said.
"I'm here," he said from the dark.
"Okay," she said, and slept again.
Just before dawn, the valley had a single minute of green light. It came from no lamp. It started nowhere and ended nowhere. The wards took it and hummed once. The altar's petal edges brightened like cold glass and went dark. Kael saw it. Selina felt it in her teeth.
"Soon," he said.
"Yes," she said.
They did not wake Mira to tell her. There was no point in fear she could not use.
When the day came up, it did not look normal. It looked like a day that was holding its breath. You would not know it if you were in a kitchen with cartoons on. You knew it here.
Kael walked the outer path and did not change anything. Selina put a hand on the altar again and took it away faster than yesterday. Mira slept through both.
At the edge of the city, Nora waited on a corner that used to sell flowers. A black van rolled past slow. She watched it go and did not lift her hand. She stood until the van turned the far corner and then walked the other way.
She called a number with a foreign code and said only one line.
"Move your money to food," she said. "Do it today."
She hung up. She did not call the Red Clan dispatch. She told herself she was just waiting for a better moment to tell the truth. She did not say the truth had changed in her hands.
By last light, the old grounds felt like a lung at the end of a long climb. The wards were steady. The altar was ready. Mira's color was the same unreal white. Her breathing was deeper. Her pulse had a new rhythm layered under the old one. It was slow and sure. It did not belong to a sick girl. It belonged to something that had learned to sleep in stone.
Selina marked the changes in the slate without making a speech of it.
"Tomorrow we seat her," Kael said.
"Tomorrow," Selina said. "Short window. No visitors."
"Understood."
They ate in silence. After, Kael checked the lines a last time and came back in. He sat on the floor by the altar, long legs bent, hands loose. Selina sat on the cot edge and watched Mira breathe.
The night did not ask for anything else. They took the gift.
Outside the valley, Arthur signed a transfer. Dr. Harland wrote a fresh lie. The Red Clan drew a new circle and sharpened knives with old handles. The sky did what it wanted.
Inside the valley, three people made a small plan and held it with both hands.
That was the first day.