Candlecross's flame hall had been quieted, but the hours still bled. You could hear it if you stood between the wick-trees: a thin, papery whisper—wings counting what they had no right to count. The candle crown above the gate burned gold, yet here and there a wick's core held that wrong blue like a swallowed secret.
The chandler-priestess met us at the back stair, apron stiff with wax. "The brood moved," she rasped. "Into the crown vault and the cooling glass. They're drinking the night by mouthfuls."
Lord Caelion fell in on our left with six Dawnwardens, mirrors angled low and careful; he was very nice about every motion—asking quietly, checking lines, keeping flattery locked under function.
"Request: keep reflectors two paces back, low pitch unless you call for echo," he said.
"Granted," I answered. "Thank you."
Aurelia's shield found my back—the inch that keeps worlds upright. "Edge-casts only," she said. "No bursts. We make the air obey."
┌──────────── PRE-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 12,980 / 13,180 MP: 5,020 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 28% Oathbond: Linked (~86%) │
│ Buffs: Wayleave (narrow), Etiquette (hall) │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,080 / 12,460 │
│ Allies: Dawnwardens (6) — reflectors ready │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
We lifted into the crown vault—a stone bowl of glass channels that fed the great crown at the gate. Beneath the manifold, rows of cooling jars (bellglass domes for saint-candles) lay like sleeping lungs. The air was wrong-cold. The Hour-Moths clung to beams in black festoons, wings furred with soot. At their heart pulsed something larger—a Matron like a folded fan the size of a table, veins ticking in a stolen rhythm.
SYSTEM: Hour-Moth Brood (Swarm — Dark) & Matron of Minutes (Elite)
Abilities: Time-Sip (drain HoT; apply Slow), Soot-Fall (blind), Shiver (glass microfracture), Clockwing Pulse (stagger), Blue Core (converts flame minutes to brood growth)
Terrain risks: Flashover (wax), Shatterfield (glass resonance)
The brood breathed—candles guttered; seconds stretched thin.
"Chorus under Silence," Aurelia said.
"Wick Peal." I laid a hair-thin Sunline along the wax skins of the feed channels and tapped a Nova edge down Lysithea. Tone went into wax, not air—returning as a slow hum that soothed breath and pulled Time-Sip out of our HoTs like splinters.
Caelion read my pitch and echoed the lower line exactly, mirrors catching and walking it without adding heat. "Holding your hum," he said, voice quiet and useful.
Moths dropped in a Soot-Fall. Darkness came down like a curtain. Spell interrupts pinched syllables mean. I refused air and cast into glass instead.
"Bond Mirror." I traced twin Sunlines up a bellglass jar and Annotated our last shared Mend between Aurelia and me as the truth. The jar remembered our cadence and gave it back. The Out-of-Phase tug that makes hearts miss each other failed to find purchase.
The Matron flexed. A Clockwing Pulse shoved the room half a step; the glass—angry—began to Shiver. Aurelia set her feet, shield as anchor, voice flat: "No Flashover. Keep to hinge."
"Wicks," I said. The brood gnawed at the braids feeding the crown.
"Wickbinding." I looped a tight Counter-Signature around each gnawed braid and wrote the clause they were born for: A wick is for giving light, not eating time. Thread laced it in; a small Peal through the nearest pane carried obedience. Blue guttered to gold in each bound knot; the Matron's wings stuttered with irritation.
She dived—wings beating minutes out of the air. Close quarters insisted. Aurelia broke left under a beam—boots exact on slick board—rim kissed wing-root, elbow found joint, shield turned the heavy paper of the moth's body into something the floor would be happy to hold. I cut Prism Mercy off a cracked jar—three silent sub-lines crossing through hinge, eye, heart. Reprise pecked at the cloud, tidy pips unseating a dozen small thieves.
The brood adapted: a fur of moths encrusted the glass manifold, drinking minutes before they reached the crown. The channels brightened wrong—blue like noon in a sickroom.
"Collapse their siphon," Aurelia said.
"Name the law," I answered—and did.
"Minute Replevin."
I stamped a wide Counter-Signature across the manifold and along the Chorus rails we'd strung through Candlecross, then Annotated the little truth that underpins every taper: Minutes given to light are alms, not debt. I sent that sentence down the Chorus via glass—not loud, only correct.
New Technique (Built): Minute Replevin — Counter-Signature + Annotation + Chorus (glass).
Reclassifies flame-time as charity; Time-Sip streams reverse for 6s; drained HoT returns as regen; brood loses Blue Core coherence; first Clockwing Pulse after cast fails.
The channels blushed from blue to honest gold. The hum in the wax rose a degree, like a kettle deciding to be ready. Everywhere the brood had banked stolen minutes, those minutes came back—soft warmth on faces, knees, lungs. The Matron's wings miscounted.
"Now," Aurelia said.
"Together."
Her Sunlit Verdict came down in a clean diagonal through the Matron's thorax; my seam rode a finger's breadth alongside, edge-cast—no burst, no shatter. The brood tried a last Soot-Fall; Caelion's mirrors tilted to catch it, walking the bad dark into nothing. He didn't speak praise; he held tone.
The Matron flailed for the manifold—one wing as a blanket of wrong. I drew a ring of Sunlines on the floor around the glass plinth and set stub-candles at the cardinal points; their tiny flames became gnomons.
"Wax Sundial."
New Technique (Built): Wax Sundial — Sunwheel Bulwark variant using stub-candles as gnomons; tone runs the ring through Bellglass; pins swarm phases to true noon; cancels Out-of-Phase and Blue Core within circle.
The ring sang—not loud, only correct. The moths' timings snapped to noon and discovered they didn't like it. Within the circle, Parallax tricks failed; the Matron lost her double shadow and became exactly where she was.
Aurelia's Knight's Mandate rolled—weight on the intent that would eat time. The Matron's body bowed out of instinct to kneel before law. That was enough.
"White Mercy—Release (threaded)." I poured the banked Aegis along the Wick Peal rails as Reservoir Mercy, not a blast—a push that filled the channels and the Sundial ring. The Matron's blue core extinguished to gold. The brood… unhappened, leaving only soot that refused to choose a shape.
Silence—not empty—returned; shaped like candles remembering service.
┌──────────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ───────────┐
│ Threat: Hour-Moth Brood — purged (27) │
│ Matron of Minutes — defeated │
│ Time-Sip network: **collapsed** │
│ Crown manifold: re-hallowed (100%) │
│ HP — Eirion: 13,040 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,210 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 3,940 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 23% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 92% │
│ New: Minute Replevin; Wax Sundial (Rank 1) │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
We held the ring for another breath, then did the small ends. Thread teased microfractures out of bellglass. Wickbinding tightened any wick that thought about sulking. I left Reservoir Mercy in the aisle so night-shift candlers would be warmed by a kindness we could afford to leave.
The chandler-priestess came up the stair with her hands open, not touching anything out of respect. She looked at the manifold, then at us—ears and shield and mirrors all behaving.
"You returned what the moths took," she said, astonished to hear her own hours humming under her palm. "They always take."
"Not from alms," I said gently. "Not when we write it down."
Caelion exhaled, helm under his arm, mirror bosses dimming their borrowed stars. He kept his voice correctly plain. "Your Minute Replevin is—elegant," he said, catching himself before the compliment left the Canticle's lane. "We'll train the reflectors to carry it."
Aurelia's look ran over him for flourishes; found none; allowed a fractional nod. "Good," she said. Then—to me—"Status?"
I checked the manifold one last time. The blue stayed gold. The hum in the wax held. The tiny thimble bells under the rafters rang once—the polite note a room gives when it agrees with itself.
The System placed its coin on our ledger.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ CANDLECROSS — BROOD PURGED │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Objective: Purge brood — COMPLETE │
│ Objective: Collapse Time-Sip — COMPLETE │
│ Bonus: No flashover — PASS │
│ Oathbond ≥70% — PASS │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +33,000 │
│ ▸ City Scrip +180 │
│ ▸ Relic: Bellglass Thimble (clean) │
│ ▸ Skills: Minute Replevin, Wax Sundial │
│ ▸ Mastery: Counter-Signature +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
We left one last Sunline bow on the vault lintel—No loud Novas in a house of wax; minutes gifted are charity—and Candlecross adopted the sentence as if it had always owned it. The crown above the gate burned the color of bread in a patient oven.
Outside, the city breathed like someone returned to their schedule. A child pointed at the steady flames and clapped once, very seriously, as if to seal the pact.
On the steps, Aurelia drifted that exact inch into my back. "Still guarding my six?" I asked, because light words keep law supple.
"In a town where time thought it had teeth?" she said, dry as good bread. "Especially."
Lord Caelion matched pace on my left, mirrors at rest, voice lowered out of respect for the waxhouse. "If you prefer," he offered, "I'll post quiet reflectors at the crown till dawn—no chatter. Only tone."
"I prefer that," I said, and meant all of it—the work, the help, the way the city had decided to keep morning