The slate didn't chime so much as flare—a cold-white square that bleached the dispatch wall. Runners shouted up the stair; boots beat a panic tempo.
EMERGENCY POSTING — ALL AVAILABLE
City: Vesperfall (river confluence, lighthouse of Saint Aur)
Status: DARK — wardlamps cold, belllines silent, scry relays failed
Unknown Hostile: suspected DARK entity; reports of "accounts" taken at first aid tents
Objectives:
Scout and confirm threat; locate survivors.
Restore at least one citywide signal (bell or light-beacon).
Identify and sever hostile's link to healing/ward network.
Bonus: Collateral ≤ 8% of civic infrastructure; maintain Oathbond ≥ 70%.
Aurelia glanced at me—a quick weighing that always lands on yes.
"We go," I said.
She nodded once. "We go."
┌──────────── PRE-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Eirion Luminara │
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 MP: 21,100 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 0% Oathbond: Linked (~82%) │
│ Weapon: Lysithea — Bride's Oath (Legend.)│
│ Utilities: Lantern of Ten Safe Hours (1) │
│ Sigil: Honest Road │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
Night gathered in Vesperfall like ink poured into a bowl. The lighthouse at Saint Aur's point—normally a steady breath of gold—was an open eye gone pupil-black. Streets lay in negative; wardlamps wore caps of dead glass. The only sound was river against quay, and even that sounded like someone imitating water.
We moved through the western gatehouse behind a wedge of Abbey guard. The Oathbond slid snug; Aurelia drifted half a step behind me—mine to guard.
"Markers," she said.
I scored a hair-thin Sunline every twenty paces down the avenue, commas for when we needed to find our way back through someone else's dark.
First survivors, a baker's family, clustered under a stall. Their breath made little white flags. I set a Suture Bridge between two lamp-posts; the air inside remembered morning. They eased two steps taller at once.
"What took the lights?" Aurelia asked, quiet.
The baker pointed—toward the cathedral square. "Something with beads," he whispered, ashamed of the fear, "counting… what we owed."
We found the square by the shape it wasn't—no candlelight at the brass Saint, no novices on duty by the south bell, no traffic on the steps. Only a rainfall of ash that wasn't ash—dead motes of ward.
From the nave's shadow came the sound of a clerk turning pages politely.
It stepped out like a ledger wearing a man: tall; coat black as debt; fingers bone-white moving over an abacus strung with stolen lamp-glass beads. Where a face should be, a blank oval of matte enamel.
SYSTEM: Tallyman of Shadows (Boss — Dark)
Abilities: Levy (taxes heal-over-time; converts % to Bleakness Debt), Audit (Redact-like; removes latest buff), Lien (Backline clause: attaches to rear action), Blackout Veil (damps light sources), Foreclose (stun on parry ring)
Trait: Feeds on ward/aid ledgers; resists diffuse light; vulnerable to clean law.
A dotted line skated along the flagstones—Lien—not for my heel this time but aiming for the Sunline marks I'd left on the way in.
Aurelia's shield moved one inch; the dotted hook struck bright rim and burned off like fog in noon. "Eyes front," she said, and set herself, a promise in plate.
"Aegis Hymn."
Healer (sustain):
"Aegis thalán, hyménne arhael;
Serin valín, sirae velyn;
Lirë solánne— aërion keep."
Twin Paladin (antiphon, optional):
"Osthár an rhael— kyrn valára."
Stand for the light— our hearts together.
Tiles of dawn tessellated over us. The Tallyman rolled a thumb over his abacus; I felt the air try to price my next heal.
"Let's write the rules," I murmured, and traced two long Sunlines up the nave's throat, post to post, lamp-chimney to lamp-chimney—parallel rails rising toward the lighthouse. Glass chimneys caught stray starlight and made it want to be kind.
"Peal Weave… with prisms," I said. "Chorus Lattice."
I tapped a narrow Radiant Nova down Lysithea's edge into the first chimney. The tone split—Prism Mercy—then each chimed lamp passed it to the next: a grid of tone carried on glass, a Chorus Lattice that threaded the avenue and climbed the tower's throat. Somewhere far off, the lighthouse lens shivered as if remembering how to catch light.
New Technique (Built): Chorus Lattice — Lay parallel Sunlines along lamp-posts and route Peal Weave via glass chimneys; creates a city-lane regen and signal backbone; cancels Blackout Veil within lanes; enables remote tone-casting to the lighthouse lens.
The Tallyman did not like being audited. He flicked a bead—Levy—and my on-hit heal snapped crooked, a debt line beginning to write itself under Aurelia's greave: Bleakness 3% (accruing).
"Annotation," I breathed, cutting a caret of light over her sternum—locking the most recent Mend as pre-tax. The Tallyman rolled Audit to erase it; the caret held; the System ticked approval.
He tried Lien again from behind, attaching to the Chorus rail. I traced a quick Counter-Signature circle at the nearest post; the clause struck it and completed to me instead. I slashed the circle. The debt-hook snapped.
A hiss—no breath, only displeasure.
It moved like a verdict gone wrong. The abacus-frame swung notched edge for my temple. Bellguard kissed it aside; the parry window opened where none should; Aegis drank +12%. The beast reached with its other hand to Foreclose, intending to stun us on our own ring.
I did not give it noise. I cut a Sunline along the bellrope and tapped a Peal into bronze instead. The tone went down the rope and up the Chorus Lattice to the lighthouse lens. From the point—half a city away—an answering white blink trembled like an eye that wanted to wake.
"Good," Aurelia said, reading my plan before I fully had it.
"Lane right," I murmured. She shifted, shield making room; I set a broad Suture Bridge across the square, lamp to lamp. The air on our side of the line felt like law.
"Levy," the Tallyman said without saying, and every little Mend I'd poured into civilians spiked, trying to become Bleakness.
"Charity clause," I said—and did something I hadn't tried: I traced a Counter-Signature around our entire lane and wrote in the simple sentence that has always been true of our work: Aid is alms.
Sanctuary Exemption (Improvised) — Counter-Signature + Annotation across a Suture Bridge; heals inside the lane count as charity and cannot be Levied; first hostile Audit fails.
The abacus ticked blankly. His next bead fell without weight.
"Now we work," Aurelia said, and stepped in.
The square became math. She stripped the Tallyman's reach down with rim angles; I Tricant-layered her beats—Smite riding the edge to unthread ledger-bindings, Mend plugging the fine nicks that make courage leak, Thread suturing the cracked lamp-bases so the Chorus would hold.
The boss swept a broad Blackout Veil—lamps coughed. The Chorus Lattice kept tone under the dark like a wire carrying music through a wall. I bled little Reprise birds into the lanes to pick off shadow-clerks that tried to write side debts. Civilians crossed our corridor with the faces of people who had just remembered names.
It adapted. The abacus split, beads skating like insects to seed the Chorus posts. Each bead birthed a collector—little mouthless clerks that held out bowls to catch our overheal and turn it taxing.
"Decentralize," Aurelia said.
"On it."
I cut two more rails—secondary Sunlines—and bridged them with staggered Suture Bridges, a honeycomb of low regen that spread the Chorus load so no one point could be foreclosed. Annotation stamped each heal in the whole web as exempt for the next breath and a half.
The Tallyman made a choice—that lovely, fatal thing—and lunged to break the grid at my post.
Bellguard. Aegis +24%. The Lien hook darted for my heel; Aurelia's rim accepted it and returned it as nothing.
"Now," she said.
"White Mercy—partial, threaded." I poured the bank along the rails as a push; the city's lamps whispered hold; the lighthouse lens flashed like a pulse.
We rode that beat.
Aurelia's Sunlit Verdict struck down the abacus spine; my seam rode a hair to the right, clean as ledger line, and I tapped a Prism Mercy off a shattered lamp chimney: three silent sub-lines slipped past the boss's coat and bit at the joints of Levy where they hid. Reprise pecked the little collectors off the posts with tidy, humiliating pops.
It reeled, then tried a last account: Foreclose—stun on parry ring—snapping at my timing like a lawyer at a comma.
I would have loved to refuse elegantly. Instead I did the other true thing: give the bell to the bell.
"Peal Weave—Citywide."
Tone went down lamp and up lens; the lighthouse found its throat and spoke—not a beam, not yet, but a tone that wore light. It ran the rails we'd strung and came back whole.
The Tallyman's enamel face cracked where a mouth would be if he were allowed one.
"Finish?" Aurelia asked, already moving.
"Together."
We crossed. Her blade found the ledger's spine; my seam found the liability column. White Mercy went release only where steel met shadow, not a blast, a final audit. The abacus fell as harmless glass beads. The coat collapsed into a pile of uncollected invoices and then into nothing at all.
Silence came in with a breath—the whole square inhaling.
Lamps around us ran up from sullen to soft day. From the point, the lighthouse cut one clean bar of light across the river; it wasn't full yet, but it was honest. The rails hummed a low amen.
"Status."
┌──────────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Threat: Tallyman of Shadows — defeated │
│ Survivors located: 41 (stabilized) │
│ Signal restored: Lighthouse (partial) + │
│ Chorus Lattice lanes across west ward │
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 MP: 15,940 / 21,100│
│ Aegis Hymn: 21% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 90% │
│ New: Chorus Lattice; Sanctuary Exemption│
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
We walked the grid and did the quiet work: Thread in lamp bases; Sunline bows over first-aid tables; Annotation on triage stretches so no one's breath could be billed. People tried their names out loud like shoes that suddenly fit. A child pointed at the lighthouse and giggled because it looked like a tall person learning to dance again.
The System chimed with dispatch coolness.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ EMERGENCY POSTING — UPDATED │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Vesperfall Blackout — SCOUT/SECURE│
│ Objectives: 1–3 COMPLETE │
│ Bonus: Collateral 4% — PASS │
│ Oathbond ≥70% — PASS │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +32,000 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +200 │
│ ▸ Relic: Abacus Bead (clear) │
│ ▸ Skill Mastery: Annotation +1 │
│ ▸ Reputation: Vesperfall (Grateful)│
└───────────────────────────────────┘
Aurelia stood on the cathedral steps and watched the light run bar by bar down the Avenue of Saints. The inch of shield at my back was habit; the look she gave me when I turned was the other habit.
"Good accounting," she said, which for her is practically poetry.
"Good enforcement," I said back.
We stitched one more Sunline along the abbey-ward and let it dim—a quiet signature. Somewhere above, the lighthouse tried a fuller breath and found it.
"Next scan after the slate cools," Aurelia said.
"Dawn willing," I agreed.
Far off, Saint Aur's lens rang a small, pleased note—glass speaking as bell—and Vesperfall answered in the only way that matters: a square of people breathing without counting the cost. In the Distance a Hooded figure watches in the shadows.
Vesperfall was recovering the way a city does when someone relights its lungs: in glances, in errands resumed, in doors left open a hopeful inch. Our Chorus Lattice still throbbed faintly along the lamp-line, a low, bone-trust tone that made the streets stand up straighter.
We were three blocks from the cathedral square when the night decided to edit me.
No warning. No footfall. Just a line of absence lancing through my ribs—cold, arithmetic, and correct.
I folded around it. Air left. The world tipped.
A beat later, something struck Aurelia side-on—invisible shove, wall-hard. Stone boomed; dust leapt; she dropped into a cracked fresco like a thrown shield.
The street remembered how to panic.
┌──────────── CRITICAL STATUS ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 4,613 / 13,180 (−65%) │
│ MP: 15,940 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 21% → 5% (pierce) │
│ Debuff: Bleakness 6% (accruing) │
│ Oathbond Harmony: 56% (shaken) │
│ Aurelia — HP: 7,980 / 12,460 │
│ Debuff: Stagger (1.5s) │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
"Eirion—" her voice had the flat edge she uses when the map just changed.
"I'm here." I wasn't yet, but I made it true.
Tricant. I split the breath:
Mend into my own side, hot and exact, untying the Bleakness before it could write itself a habit.
Thread laddered across the wound—neat luminous sutures cinching with every breath.
Smite—not to hurt anything yet, but to probe, a hair-thin seam flicked down the lane to see what tone came back.
Nothing. The seam vanished as if chewed by math.
"Unseen," Aurelia said, levering up with a sound that made the stone listen. The inch of shield found my back—habit lives even in pain.
I widened my stance and snapped Suture Screen in a looping gauze. Invisible impacts dented the light and skittered off, leaving ripples. Angles. Vectors.
"Rooftop. Thirty degrees right," I breathed. "And… the shadow of the lamppost. Both."
Something laughed without making sound—like a pen notching a tally without ink.
It stepped out of the lamplight wrong: where a person would be, there was a cutout—coat shaped out of night, edges razor-true, a long spear that was an argument against depth. Its feet were on the roofline and its shadow was also on the street, and both moved in agreement.
SYSTEM: Gnomon of the Offset (Assassin — Dark)
Traits: Parallax Pike (attacks from body or shadow), Null Edge (pierces Aegis), Noonhole (destroys beams mid-flight), Backline Shear (rear clause against your shadow)
Abilities: Counterlight Dash (teleports along hard edges), Audit of Motion (punishes parry ring with stun), Silhouette Anchor (tethers to lamp-shadow)
So: a thing that fights with geometry and despises the idea of noon.
The spear darted—Parallax from the shadow, not the roof. Bellguard met nothing; the hit came from pavement-dark up under the Screen's lip; Aegis drank the whiplash and squealed.
Aurelia was already moving. Shield set, boots exact, she intersected the line, turning spear through rim angle—the math obeyed her.
"Break its anchors," she snapped. "It's using the lamp's shadow as a second mouth."
"Then we divorce our shadows."
I slashed a narrow circle of Sunline around our feet—Counter-Signature—and wrote, very simply: My shadow is not my consent. The next Backline Shear reaching to hook our heels struck the circle and completed to me instead. I cut the line. The clause died.
Umbra Divorce (Built): Counter-Signature around caster/rescuer severs hostile Backline interactions with your shadows for 8s; first Shear fails.
The assassin twitched—very slightly, very annoyed.
I dipped Lysithea to the cobbles and laid a Sunline thin as string down the lane; then I breathed Peal into it—Ripple Peal across stone instead of water. The line hummed; every time the Gnomon shifted between its body and shadow, the tone warped—a skip in a record.
"Mirror offset," I called. "When it steps, I cut."
Aurelia walked pressure into it like a teacher writing clearer on a board. The spear whistled—silence with a bevel—at my throat. Suture Screen took the corner; the impact left a sharp ring that wasn't sound.
"Annotation," I breathed, locking the Mend on my ribs as pre-edit against whatever Audit of Motion it would try. Then Tricant layer:
Smite rode the predicted line where its shadow would overtake its body.
Mend slid into Aurelia's thigh where a previous bruise argued to be a wound.
Thread laced the lamp-post base to break the Silhouette Anchor.
The anchor wobbled; the shadow stuttered.
It teleported—a Counterlight Dash along the cornice; Noonhole ate the seam I'd fired for its chest mid-air. It jabbed down—Parallax—two points at once—
"Bellguard!" we said together. Her rim took the real, my guard clipped the shadow; timing opened; Aegis bank jumped—+24%—warm and ready.
"Now," Aurelia said, voice flat iron.
"Prism Mercy—silent split." I flicked an edge-cast Nova off a shop's cracked window. Three silent sub-lines slid in at odd angles—the sort geometry doesn't expect—and bit the hinge where shadow and body agreed. Reprise pecked like bright birds down the seam. The Gnomon flickered, both halves briefly one law.
It tried a last trick—Audit of Motion—lunging to catch my parry ring and turn it into a stun. I refused the noise and tapped the Chorus Lattice on the nearest lamp instead. Tone went through glass; the lamp chimed a little D that ran the line and came back whole.
"Finish?" Aurelia asked.
"Together."
She stepped inside the spear's mathematics and lowered the problem by one solution—Sunlit Verdict down the column of night. I laid my seam a finger's breadth beside, an account line the world would respect. At the same instant, I traced a tight Sunline collar around the shadow on the cobbles—Counter-Signature—and cut. Body and shade disagreed for a single, perfect beat.
"White Mercy—Release."
Incantation (original conlang)
Release call:
"Virá sirae— White Mercy!"
Plain sense: "Release the mercy."
Optional antiphon (Paladin):
"Osthár an rhael— valára." (Stand for the light— our hearts together.)
Not a blast. A push where steel met shadow: kind pressure that made them pick one.
The Gnomon chose wrong.
It tore along our seams into harmless dark, then into the ordinary night that streets know how to hold.
┌──────────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Threat: Gnomon of the Offset — defeated│
│ HP — Eirion: 10,940 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 11,702 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 12,780 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 28% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 86% │
│ New Techniques: Umbra Divorce (8s) │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
Loot remained because even assassins carry trinkets: a Gnomon Spike (parallax-tempered), a thin Offset Lens that hated true noon, and a little stack of vellum slips that tried to name my shadow yours until Sunline burned the ink away.
The street remembered how to breathe. The baker's boy who'd watched everything from a doorway let out a sound like a kettle deciding it was safe to sing.
Aurelia turned from the wall she'd hit—powder in her hair, a shallow dent in her pauldron the size of a fist. Her eyes raked me for cracks, catalogued the sutures, the color in my mouth, the way my shoulders sat.
"You dropped sixty-five," she said, voice even. Not accusation. Account.
"And got most of it back," I said. "How's the fresco?"
"Improved," she said dryly. Then, a beat softer: "Don't get ahead of the bell."
"I won't." I breathed once and let the Umbra Divorce circle fade, then knelt and drew a small Sunline bow at the foot of the lamp that had been abused. "No back-clauses," I told the shadow. It stayed a shadow, which is the best thing a shadow can be.
The Chorus Lattice hummed, pleased. Far off, the lighthouse lens blinked a true bar.
The System added a note to the ledger, precise as a coin.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ EMERGENCY — SUPPLEMENTAL │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Offset Assassin neutralized │
│ City lanes remain stable │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +14,500 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +80 │
│ ▸ Relic Shard: Offset Lens │
│ ▸ Mastery: Counter-Signature +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We took a minute in the resettled quiet. I reset my wrap; Aurelia thumbed the dent in her plate as if deciding whether to keep it as a lesson. She stepped that half-inch back to my shoulder—shield where my breath ends.
"Still guarding my six?" I asked, because the world felt too narrowly saved not to say it.
"In a city full of edges?" she said. "Especially."
We started stitching commas every twenty paces again—thin Sunlines that taught the night to be sentences instead of knives. Somewhere above, bells tested a small chord and kept it, like a promise made aloud.
The avenue held its breath. Lamps hummed our Chorus Lattice like a choir under glass; the lighthouse blinked a thin bar along the river; the city was learning how to be itself again.
Shadows decided otherwise.
They stepped out—ten of them—slitting free from cornice and curb, lamppost and lintel, each a cutout of night carrying a spear that was more theorem than weapon. They formed a neat decagon, the center of which was us.
The nearest tilted its spear at the place my lungs had been edited last hour. "The novice has been unmade," it said without a mouth. "Accounts remain. Kneel."
Aurelia's shield eased an inch into my back—the small promise that stops a world from tilting. "Eyes front," she told the ring.
┌──────────── PRE-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 10,940 / 13,180 MP: 12,780 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 28% Oathbond: Linked (~83%) │
│ Debuffs: none │
│ Aurelia — HP: 11,702 / 12,460 │
│ Weapon: Lysithea — Bride's Oath (Legendary) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
SYSTEM: Gnomon Cohort (10) — Dark Assassins (Prime)
Traits: Parallax Pike (body and shadow), Null Edge (pierce % Aegis), Noonhole (erases beams), Backline Shear+ (team-clause vs your shadows), Quadrature (four-angle feints), Counterlight Dash (multi-hop)
Leader: Quadrant Marshal — adds Eclipse Call (kills local light for 2s).
The street dimmed—Eclipse Call—and every lamp within thirty paces thought about being ashamed.
"Back-clauses first," Aurelia said.
"Divorce filed."
I scored a Counter-Signature circle around our boots and wrote the sentence the city had learned an hour ago: My shadow is not my consent. The first Backline Shear+ that snicked for our heels completed to me and died under the cut. Eight more skated in immediately, clever, coordinated.
"Not enough," I muttered. "Make it a ring."
I slashed two Sunlines wide, lamp to lamp, and bridged them with a quick Suture Bridge—a glowing lane that we stood within. Then I stamped the clause across the entire corridor: Aid is alms; shadows are unowned.
Umbra Divorce (Field) — Counter-Signature + Suture Bridge: breaks hostile rear-clauses on allies inside; first two Shear per target fail.
The ring closed, spears lowered.
They came.
Quadrature turned the decagon into a storm of correct lines. Two went high, two low; one stabbed from a roofline, its shadow from a drain; three feinted and didn't feint—angles inside angles.
"Bellguard!" Aurelia and I said together.
Her rim took the real; my guard shaved the shadow; timing opened—Aegis +24%—and pain turned to bank. We moved in the narrow language we love: she lowered the problem; I wrote the solution beside it.
I flicked Prism Mercy off a shopfront pane—no noise—three silent sub-lines slid sideways into hinge and heel. Reprise hopped like tidy sparrows across the lane, plucking spearpoints off geometry.
The Quadrant Marshal lifted his spear and pulled the night nearer—Eclipse—every lamp choking at once.
"On me," Aurelia said. Her body became a lighthouse in plate—not with light, but with law. Knight's Mandate rolled off her in a pressure that didn't care about seeing; it made indecent and hostile intents heavy. Four gnomons stumbled; three knelt against their will, palms obeying stone.
"Thank you," I breathed, and wrote a new thing.
"Sunwheel Bulwark."
I cut a ring of Sunlines around us, latching each to a lamp-chimney with Thread and tapping a Peal into glass. The tone ran the circle and returned—not loud, only correct—a 360° halo. Where Parallax struck, it found self-interference: body and shadow could not agree within the wheel.
New Technique (Built): Sunwheel Bulwark — Chorus Lattice + Sunlines in a closed ring; continuous Peal tone creates 360° parry advantage; Parallax and Dash lose 40% coherence inside the wheel.
The ring clanged without sound. Three spears skipped; two jammed onscreen as if hitting glass no one else could see. The Marshal snarled a geometry, and the cohort flowed over the wheel in a multi-hop Dash, legs writing scalene triangles between cornices.
"Roof," Aurelia said. She didn't look. She always knows.
I slashed a Sunline across the front of the gentry club's mirror door and pinged a Prism Mercy into it; sub-lines bloomed up the façade like delicate cracks. When the assassins crossed those hairlines, their shadows stuttered half a beat behind.
"Now."
Aurelia's sword taught two correct lines to be one; my seam rode a finger's breadth aside. The first prime split like paper; the second went to knees under Mandate and frayed into harmless dark.
But ten is ten. Angles find angles. One Noonhole ate my seam mid-flight; one spear tip kissed my collarbone—the armor sang wrong; Aegis scalded down to 19%; my hand went a little dumb. Another line grazed Aurelia's vambrace, trying to write stun where parry belonged.
"Don't let them steal the bell," I said.
She smiled with only her eyes, and the smile was a verdict. "I don't."
They surged as a set—five-into-one shape—aiming to foreclose our wheel.
"—Left flank! Hold the line!" a voice called—bright, too cultured for this alley.
White armor broke the dark like surf.
Elves in tabards pale as first frost—Luminari Dawnwardens—flowed into our ring, shields locking with a kind of song you can feel in shin bone. Behind them, a banner with the Bride's sun inlaid in nacre snapped once and understood the street.
At their point rode a figure in ornate white—filigree and mirrored insets, a gorget etched with vows. Pale hair braided back; eyes the color of a clean noonday sky. He looked at me as if nothing else existed.
"Are you unharmed, my love?" he asked, with devastating, unearned familiarity.
Aurelia's jaw flexed. She granted him precisely one glance, stacked with an entire history of dislike. "Wonderful. You're here."
The Marshal did not pause for courtly drama; he lunged to end it.
"Form Halo Phalanx!" the newcomer snapped—credit where it was due—and his ranks obeyed: their white shields presented in a ring, edges touching our Sunwheel Bulwark. The mirrors in their bosses caught my Peal and threw it onward—doubling the wheel.
"Take the reflectors," I called, and the captain (of course he was a captain) leaned without looking; I breathed tone across their arcs. The halo thickened into a wall.
The cohort hit and broke.
Aurelia was a fixed star in the storm. She let Mandate weigh intent and used the inch between weight and will to break wrists cleanly. I rode her math with Tricant—Mend into every joint that paid for her shieldwork, Smite along any line that forgot it was wrong, Thread lacing dents in white shields so borrowed faith didn't split under load.
"Status!" I clipped.
┌──────────── BATTLE OVERLAY ───────────┐
│ Oathbond: 87% (latticed) │
│ Aegis Hymn: 64% (surge ready) │
│ Sunwheel: Stable (×2 reflectors) │
│ Hostiles remaining: 7 + Marshal │
└───────────────────────────────────────┘
The Marshal vaulted the wheel and threw his shadow simultaneously—Quadrature at a human scale. I Bellguard-kissed the real; Aurelia took the shadow with the rim; the window opened twice. Aegis swelled—+24% again—and I didn't throw it. I poured.
"White Mercy—partial, threaded!" The release went along the halo, a cool pressure that kept Parallax from agreeing with itself. Reprise bolts hopped like patient birds, picking ligature ties off the cohort's ankles.
"Captain," Aurelia said to the man in white, voice ironed flat. "Hold your line; don't flourish."
He actually obeyed, which I filed for later.
The assassins adapted—as they do. Four dropped through drains, emerging as pools beneath our feet, spearpoints growing from shadow. I sketched a tight Sunline ring around our boots and wrote in Umbra Divorce a second time—sanctuary exemption for our shadows. The first two Shears per ally failed again; the third scraped my greave and found Suture Screen waiting like a net.
We drew them into math they couldn't own.
Aurelia: "Together."
Me: "Together."
Her Sunlit Verdict—down the most ambitious spear. My seam—along the liability column of that ambition. Prism Mercy—off a shattered visor's mirrored inset, three silent lines into the Marshal's ankle, elbow, and the bad habit he had of assuming noon was dead. Peal—riding the Halo Phalanx in a full circle, making Parallax bite its own tongue.
The Marshal split wrong and fell into being only night.
The last three primes tried to become doors into somewhere else. Chorus tone found the hinges and asked them to stay. They obeyed, and white shields did the rest.
Silence returned—the good kind, shaped like a city refusing to panic.
The Dawnwardens lowered shields. The captain wheeled his mare exactly three steps, theatrically precise, and bowed from the saddle—which is a feat and a choice.
"Lord Caelion of House Rhyse," he announced for other people, eyes on me alone. "By right of old oaths and—"
"—you can stop there," Aurelia said, tone snow over steel. "He's working."
I kept my sword low and my voice even. "Thank you for the line, Lord Caelion. The reflectors amplified the wheel."
His smile was a sunrise trying to happen. "Anything for you."
My ears, traitors, warmed. "Status," I said too quickly.
┌──────────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Gnomon Cohort neutralized (10/10) │
│ Allies: Luminari Dawnwardens — intact │
│ HP — Eirion: 11,990 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 11,903 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 10,920 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 22% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 90% │
│ New: Sunwheel Bulwark; Halo Phalanx (team pattern) │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
The System chimed its cold little coin.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ EMERGENCY — SUPPLEMENTAL │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Vesperfall Dark-Lanes secured │
│ Cohort defeated; halo lines set │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +18,500 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +120 │
│ ▸ Relic: Gnomon Spike (prime) │
│ ▸ Skill Mastery: Peal Weave +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We did the quiet courtesies: Thread through dented shields, Sunline bows at lamp bases the cohort had abused, a Ripple Peal down the gutter to remind water about kindness. Citizens peered from doorways with the new courage of people who've watched a problem end correctly.
Lord Caelion dismounted, helm under his arm, every gesture practiced. "Eirion," he said softly, as if we were alone. "Say the word, and the White Host will hold these streets until morning's morning. Also—" his voice gentled further "—you are unharmed?"
"Now, yes," I said, honest. "Thanks to my sister."
Aurelia's look at him could have sharpened steel. "You're useful when you take orders," she conceded, which coming from Aurelia is nearly a sonnet. "We'll speak of titles and rights when the city is silent."
He inclined his head, chastened—only a little—and stepped back to make the square larger instead of smaller.
We set one last Sunline every twenty paces as we moved toward the next dark lane, commas in the long sentence of Vesperfall. The lighthouse blinked a steadier bar; bells tested a chord and kept it.
"Still guarding my six?" I asked, because the line between us lives in light words as much as in steel.
"In a street full of men with opinions?" Aurelia said, dry as good bread. "Especially."
Lord Caelion pretended not to hear and, to his credit, mostly succeeded.
We walked on together, our wheel of light rolling ahead like a promise no ledger could tax, no shadow could own.