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Chapter 11 - Chapter 11 - Candlecross Flame Hall — Hollow Wicks & Hour-Moths

Candlecross smelled like honey-prayer—warm beeswax, clean smoke, the faint mineral bite of cooling glass. The candle crown above the gate held its flames steady despite a draft that shouldn't exist. Inside, long wick-trees branched over copper troughs where pale rivers of wax flowed and cooled into tapers like a harvest.

Not all the light was right.

Some candles burned blue at the core, eating time instead of tendering it. Wax along the gutter boards showed rot—pitted like bad bread. In rafters, something winged worried the beams where the soot pooled.

The dispatch slate at the flame hall door flickered as we approached with the chandler-priestess.

DISPATCH LEDGER

Assignment: Flame Hall — Hollow Wick & Hour-Moths

Site: Candlecross Gate District (main pouring floor, cooling racks, crown-feed channels)

Threat: Hour-Moths (Dark) sipping minutes from open flame; Tallow Wretch gestating in the gutter sump

Hazards: Flashover (Scald), paraffin slick (Slip), smoke-choke (Stifle), glass resonance (Shatterfield)

Objectives:

Save three apprentices trapped on the rack catwalk.

Purge the moth brood; collapse their time-sip.

Re-hallow wick-trees and crown-feed channels.

Bonus: No flashover events; Oathbond ≥ 70%.

Note: Edge-casts only. Route tone through glass, water, or wax. Avoid loud Novas.

Boots rang the threshold behind us. Lord Caelion entered in white, helm under his arm, half a dozen Dawnwardens with mirror bosses at his back. He kept a respectful distance inside our Etiquette Canticle, but his eyes were warm as lamplight.

"Request to join the hymn, Healer," he said, courtly without being heavy. "We'll hold mirrors and catch your tone where wax and glass ask for gentleness."

Aurelia's shield found my back by a measured inch. "Obey our rails," she said. "No flourishes. Ask before you add."

"My favorite way to be useful," he answered, and he meant it.

┌──────────── PRE-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐

│ Eirion — HP: 12,640 / 13,180 MP: 6,780 / 21,100 │

│ Aegis Hymn: 22% Oathbond: Linked (~86%) │

│ Weapon: Lysithea — Bride's Oath (Legendary) │

│ Buffs: Wayleave (narrow), Etiquette (hall) │

│ Aurelia — HP: 11,980 / 12,460 │

│ Allies: Dawnwardens (6) — reflectors ready │

└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I set the room's rule with two thin strokes. Sunlines along the lintels, a gentle Peal through the lantern glass.

"House clause," I murmured. "No loud Novas in a house of wax. Aid is alms."

Aurelia's nod was the kind that means that will hold when things move. "Moths in rafters. Wretch in sump," she said. "Apprentices first."

We stepped onto the pouring floor.

The Hour-Moths unfurled like postcards from dusk—wing paper thin, veins ticking in time signatures that weren't ours. When they opened their little mouths, they sipped minutes from candle flames, and the room's day leaned the wrong way for a heartbeat.

SYSTEM: Hour-Moth (Swarm — Dark)

Abilities: Time-Sip (drains HoT → Slow), Soot-Fall (blind), Wick-Gnaw (mutes wicks), Shiver (glass microfractures)

Brood: Tallow Wretch (gestating) — absorbs runoff; exudes Flashover risk.

Caelion lifted two fingers. "Reflectors in pairs. Angle for silence."

He was supernaturally nice about it—checking my sightline, matching my breath, keeping flattery tucked under function. "If you prefer a lower pitch through the glass, Eirion, I can—"

"—Take the lower by two," I said, caught smiling. "Thank you."

Aurelia's eye didn't twitch; it considered the idea and then chose the mission. "Racks," she said. We moved.

The apprentices clung to a catwalk above cooling tapers—three figures in wax-stained aprons, cheeks streaked with soot, breaths too fast. The ladder at the end was tarred with melt, then bitten—Wick-Gnaw had chewed the slats.

"Suture Bridge," I said, stringing two Sunlines from pillar to pillar and thickening the air between into a corridor of gentle glow. "Walk the light," I called up. "Slow and steady."

Aurelia's shield took the angle beneath, her body a promise if anyone slipped. Caelion's reflectors held my tone at the corridor's edges, so the bridge sang kindly under shoeleather.

Moths dropped in a Soot-Fall. The air went black, breath went tight. Spell interruptions tried to pinch the syllables off my next Mend.

I refused the air.

"Ripple Peal — wax."

I dipped Lysithea to a cooling channel, laid a thin Sunline along the wax's skin, and tapped a Nova edge down the blade. Tone entered wax, ran the channel, and came back as a low hum that soothed breath and made Time-Sip stutter.

New Technique (Built): Wick Peal — Route edge-cast Nova through a wax skin Sunline; carries tone as heat-hum; steadies breath; cancels Time-Sip near channels; lowers Flashover risk.

Apprentices crossed our corridor with the faces of people being untied. Aurelia guided the last heel with two knuckles; Caelion offered a forearm where the ladder failed, and withdrew it the instant balance returned.

"Thank you," one whispered, eyeing our ears with the practiced awe of Candlecross children. "You made the air remember morning."

"Keep your hands low and your words steady," Aurelia told them. "Down. Out. Tea."

The Tallow Wretch chose that moment to be born.

It heaved out of the gutter sump—humanoid in the way candles are people at a distance, its body tiers of half-melted votives that had learned to walk. Its head was three wicks braided wrong, burning blue. Where it stepped, Flashover wanted to happen.

I did not burst.

"Wickbinding."

I drew a tight Counter-Signature ring around its braided head and wrote the simplest truth: A wick is for giving light, not eating time. Lumen Thread laced the clause down into the braid; I tapped a Peal through a nearby glass to carry it.

New Technique (Built): Wickbinding — Counter-Signature + Thread + Peal (glass). Converts hostile wick-clauses into service; flips Time-Sip to Slow-Burn (harmless). First Shiver attempt fails.

The blue guttered to gold. The Wretch staggered, confused to find itself useful.

It swung a limb like a curtain of soft knives. Close quarters insisted. Aurelia met the mass inside its arc—rim set, boots careful on slick paraffin, hips squaring wrong momentum into a correct stop. I Tricant-laced her motion—Mend for parry torque, Smite down a seam that wouldn't spill, Thread to stitch a buckling plank so our footing stayed true.

Moths dove to re-gnaw the braid. Caelion's reflectors flashed noiselessly; I flicked a Prism Mercy off a rack's glass endcap—three silent sub-lines that trimmed their wings without shaking the panes.

"Status," Aurelia clipped.

┌──────────── BATTLE OVERLAY ───────────┐

│ Oathbond: 88% (steady) │

│ Aegis Hymn: 41% (surge ready) │

│ Hazards: Flashover risk ↓ (Wick Peal) │

│ Apprentices: 3 evac (stable) │

└────────────────────────────────────────┘

The Wretch lurched for a trough—too much fuel; Flashover if it got in. I drew two long Sunlines parallel across the aisle, Suture Bridge between, and poured White Mercy—partial not as a wave but as a reservoir—gentle pressure stored in the wax corridor, bleeding out as HoT while we moved.

New Technique (Built): Reservoir Mercy — Partial White Mercy soaked into wax along a Suture Bridge; releases healing as steady warmth to allies crossing later; reduces Scald severity.

"Together," Aurelia said, reading the hinge of the Wretch's next sway.

"Together."

Her Sunlit Verdict came down like a clean guillotine on a candle you mean to snuff; my seam rode a finger's breadth alongside, not exploding—rephrasing. Reprise birds hopped fat from overheal and pecked the last Hour-Moths out of the rafters in tidy pips.

The Wretch slumped into honest wax.

Overhead, the crown-feed channels glimmered wrong—thin veins of guttering blue racing toward the candle crown above the gate.

"Crown feed," I said, already moving.

We climbed the back stair among cooling saints. Caelion matched step exactly, voice low and nice in the exact way that doesn't get in the way. "If you prefer, I can hold the right-hand channel, lower pitch, hands clear."

"Hold the right," I answered, pulse counting beats. "Echo on my three."

We reached the manifold where glass veins met like a heart for fire.

I laid Sunlines along each channel lip and touched the manifold with two fingers. "No loud Novas in a house of wax," I reminded, then breathed Peal into glass—Chorus Lattice through tubes.

Caelion echoed on three—precise, restrained. The Dawnwardens' mirrors caught the tone and walked it down the line without adding shine where shine wasn't helpful.

Blue gutter tried to outrun us. I Counter-Signed a loop within the glass—tiny Bond Mirror annotations pegging each good wick with our last shared Mend, then cut the hostile clause where it reached for the crown. The blue pinched into a bead, then a memory.

The crown-flames corrected—gold, then steady.

The room exhaled.

"Status."

┌──────────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐

│ Threats: Hour-Moths dispersed (21) │

│ Tallow Wretch resolved (1) │

│ Objectives: Apprentices rescued (3/3) │

│ Crown-feed channels re-hallowed │

│ Flashover events: 0 (PASS) │

│ HP — Eirion: 12,980 / 13,180 │

│ HP — Aurelia: 12,080 / 12,460 │

│ MP: 5,020 / 21,100 │

│ Aegis Hymn: 28% residual │

│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 91% │

│ New: Wick Peal, Wickbinding, Reservoir Mercy │

└────────────────────────────────────────┘

At floor level, the apprentices cried a little in the way you do when your body remembers it belongs to you. The priestess pressed my forearm, then, catching Aurelia's eye, pressed hers too—politely. "You kept the hours," she rasped.

"We keep them where we can," Aurelia said.

The System laid its cool coin.

┌───────────────────────────────────┐

│ Candlecross — Flame Hall │

├───────────────────────────────────┤

│ Objectives 1–3 COMPLETE │

│ Bonus: No flashover — PASS │

│ Oathbond ≥70% — PASS │

├───────────────────────────────────┤

│ Rewards: │

│ ▸ EXP +30,000 │

│ ▸ City Scrip +160 │

│ ▸ Relic: Sanctified Wick-Tree Knot │

│ ▸ Skills: Wick Peal, Wickbinding, │

│ Reservoir Mercy (unlocked)│

│ ▸ Mastery: Tricant +1 │

└───────────────────────────────────┘

We did the small right ends: Thread stitching hairline fractures in cooling panes; Sunline bows over the door frames with the clause no loud Novas in a house of wax written like a blessing; Reservoir Mercy left warming the corridor where night-shift candlers would pass, so their feet would remember morning.

Caelion, for his part, was super nice in the way even Aurelia didn't swat: he fetched water without being asked, held mirrors without editorial, and when he spoke to me it was logistics that arrived wearing respect.

"If you prefer," he said quietly as we coiled lines, "I can keep a mirror pair on the east channel through the night—no chatter, only tone-keeping. Your work will carry farther."

I let my breath be a smile. "I prefer that," I said. "Thank you."

Aurelia eyed him, weighing style against function, then granted him the rarest of her medals. "Useful," she said, and the word landed like a benediction.

We stepped back into the street. The candle crown over the gate burned steady. Across Candlecross, windows lit in polite sequence—like a choir standing by row.

I touched two fingers to the glass and left a last sentence the hall could keep: Praise the work before the workers. The panes liked the line and kept it.

"Five hours," Aurelia reminded, steering us toward earned rest. "Then slate."

"Yes," I said, and the bell behind my eyes gave one clean, satisfied note while the city breathed the way cities should—on purpose—toward morning.

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