Orders changed at morning bell.
Because the last report named a hostile human group, the Sanctum sent a stronger squad to chase them. Elira's team received a different task—simple on paper, heavy in need. They were to go to Moonshadow Gorge and gather two rare herbs: Moonshade and Silverleaf. Healers needed them for medicine and rites, and the window to cut them fresh was short.
"High-risk sky," Mira said as they checked their packs by the western gate. "Storm-Talon rocs hunt over the gorge. They react to magic waves."
"Then we don't make any," Kael said. He set a bundle of dull, cloth-wrapped rods on the ground. "Veilfield Shroud first. Silent Ward after. We move like moss."
Elira nodded and touched the pendant at her throat. The stone was cool, quiet. She tried to steady her breath.
They hiked under pale light, following a narrow path that clung to the ridge. Moonshadow Gorge opened below them in long, folded shadows. Outcrops rose like broken teeth. The wind came thin, then sudden, then thin again, as if the gorge chose each breath for itself.
At the first staging point, Kael hammered the rods into the soil and traced a short rune. Threads of gray spread from each rod and pulled together, forming a faint, smoky film that made the air look one shade darker.
"Veilfield Shroud," he said. "It hides heat bleed and edges our shapes."
Mira raised both palms. A circle of soft blue ripples slid outward, then sank out of sight. "Silent Ward," she added, very quiet. "It eats the sound we make and softens metal ring."
Elira felt the world go thick and muffled, as if she were under water. She let a slow wind build inside her, only enough to keep her balance on the dropping slope. No names. No sharp moves. She kept one hand near the pendant, not touching.
They found the first patch of Moonshade in a hollow where cold air pooled. The leaves were dark, with a soft silver line along each vein. Mira clipped gently, sliding the stems into waxed paper. Kael stood guard, eyes on the sky. Elira checked the path above for loose stones and laid thin breezes at the edges so nothing would skitter.
A long, low cry rolled over the gorge. They froze. The sound passed. Nothing answered.
"Good," Kael mouthed.
They moved to the second site slow as frost. The path tightened into shelves. Thorny vine scratched their boots. Here, Silverleaf grew in clumps against old rock, the leaves pale and luminous in the shade. They worked in silence. The Veilfield hummed at the edge of hearing; the Ward pressed on Elira's ears.
Then light shifted. A shadow fell where it shouldn't.
Mira's fingers closed on Elira's sleeve. She pointed past the herb bed, toward a low saddle of rock where two narrow ledges met. Two figures stood there—close, almost touching. One was a girl with black hair and red eyes, wings tucked, tail curling lazily. Nakea. The other wore a gray cloak with the hood low and his mouth covered by a scarf. He stood very still, hands loose at his sides, like a man trained to move only when he chose.
The three of them dropped behind the rock lip. The Veilfield dulled the world to a slow, smoked glow. If they kept their breathing small and even, they might pass for shadows.
"…another step," Nakea was saying in that calm, smooth voice. "And you will be pulled past the point of no return."
The man's reply came rough, contained. "And whose fault would that be?"
"Fault is a simple word for a complicated thing," she said. "I am telling you to stay where you are."
The man moved his head, just a fraction. "Why was I never told? Was I being kept out, shielded—or caged?"
Nakea tilted her head. "Knowing too soon would place you where you must not stand."
The wind turned; Elira caught a crack of words, thin as thread.
"…Elira is a descendant of—"
The rest vanished in the hush of the Ward. Elira's stomach dropped. She tightened her fingers on the stone rim until they hurt. She did not dare lift her head. Mira's hand found her shoulder and pressed once, steadying. Kael's breath was a measured count at her back.
The man's composure broke for a heartbeat. His hand touched his cloak as if to reach for something beneath it. "If that is true, why did no one tell me?" His voice went lower, darker. "Were you guarding her—or were you guarding me?"
"Does it matter?" Nakea asked softly.
"It does to me."
Silence a moment. The gorge breathed.
Nakea's tail lifted. "We are done with this."
He stepped closer. "We are not."
Something moved; it would have become a fight. Nakea stopped it. Her head turned sharply, red eyes narrowing. She looked not at the man but past him—past the rocks, past the herb clump, through the Veilfield that was supposed to hide them from the world.
"…someone," she said, very mild.
Black-red light traced her fingers. Shadow Bloom rolled out across the slope, a sweep of cool pressure that made Elira's teeth ache. The Veilfield trembled like wet silk. Elira's vision blinked dark, then returned. Her chest tightened as if a hand had pressed on her lungs.
"Hold," Kael breathed.
Elira did not move. She pulled herself small and let her wind drain to almost nothing.
The pressure ebbed. When sight cleared, the saddle was empty. Nakea and the man were gone. Only a thin gray smear marked the rock, and a single black feather lay crooked in a crack—the kind of feather no bird should grow.
They stayed pinned for a slow count of thirty. No sound came. The rocs did not cry. The wind made no shape they could read.
"Finish the cut," Mira whispered. "We go."
They worked faster, still careful. Elira's hands were sure but cold. She kept hearing the cut-off word. Descendant of—what? Who? The question sat behind her ribs like a stone.
They sealed the last bundle and fell back along the ledges the same way they had come. The Veilfield held; the Ward held. When they finally rose above the shadow line, the world felt a little bigger. Elira dared to exhale more than a thread.
They reached the ridge trail before sunset. The light turned the gorge to dark wine. The wind slipped around boulders like cats.
Then the sky changed.
A sharp, metallic cry knifed the air. A Storm-Talon roc banked out of a cloud, huge wings casting a moving night across the ridge. At the same time, a gray flicker moved in the pine shadows below—someone there, watching, then gone. The Veilfield shuddered. The Silent Ward's ripples began to tear at the edges as if two hands were pulling it in opposite directions.
"Hold the Ward," Mira said, voice thin and controlled. "I'll add water."
Kael drove new rods into the soil as fast as he could, pushing the Shroud wider. "Stone ready at your call."
Elira lifted a hand to shape a Wind Barrier outside the Ward, gentle and broad. The air flexed—then snagged. That wrong, cold weight skimmed the edge of her control, like a seam in a cloth she could not smooth. She hesitated. If she pushed and the edge turned heavy again, she might snap the veil and call every threat in the sky.
The roc cried again. The gray shadow in the trees held. The Ward fluttered on the verge of collapse. If it broke, both enemies would see them.
Elira looked at Mira and Kael—at their steady hands, their eyes fixed on their work. She thought of the man's voice, of Nakea's eyes, of the word that hadn't finished. She thought of the people who had helped her and gone missing, of the night wind that had started to change.
Her throat burned. For once she did not try to be silent before the world. She pressed her palm flat over the pendant and whispered, raw and clear:
"Help me."
The stone turned warm at once, not like heat, but like a pulse that matched her own. A fine pattern lit from within the black—lines like tiny feathers, like the grain of a blade. The air around her stopped jittering, as if a conductor had lifted a hand.
A point of light formed above her palm, pale as breath, bright as a dew drop in sun. Wind drew into it, thin threads from every side, until the light held a shape as small as a bird and as keen as a knife. Two faint gold eyes opened in the glow and looked at her, steady and kind.
Do not fear the seam. Breathe.
The words were not spoken out loud. They arrived inside her, the way a rhythm returns to a song.
Elira breathed. The light answered. A clear, invisible shield slid outward from her hand and set itself over the Veilfield and the Ward, fitting them like a second skin. The torn edges knit. The ripples smoothed. The Shroud steadied as if a spine had been added to its back.
Mira's head lifted, eyes wide. "What—?"
"Hold your rhythm," the wind seemed to tell her. She did.
Kael felt the ground go sure under his boots. He grunted once. "Whatever you did—keep doing it."
The roc tilted. Its cry dropped to a curious note. It passed over the ridge without folding its wings, then wheeled away into the deeper cloud, unhappy but unwilling to strike.
The gray shape in the trees paused, then slipped back into shadow, a watcher choosing another night.
The light in Elira's hand softened. The small figure's gold eyes blinked once, slow. It felt like a nod. The pressure around them eased, not gone, but tolerable. The Veilfield and the Ward hummed together like chords on the same note.
Elira let out a long, steady breath. "Thank you," she whispered.
The light tilted as if in answer. Then it thinned to a bright thread and sank back into the stone at her throat. The pendant cooled, leaving only a memory of warmth.
Mira stared at the place where the air had changed. "I didn't see it," she said softly. "But something helped you."
Kael looked from Elira to the sky and back again. "We can talk later," he said. "While it holds, we move."
They moved. They climbed the last switchbacks and crossed the line where the Sanctum's banners began to count the wind again. No alarms sounded. No shadows followed.
At the gate, the guard signed their names and checked the bundles. "Herbs arrived within time," he said. "Good work."
That was all.
Walking the hall, Elira felt the pendant rest against her skin like a small, patient animal. Every few steps it gave the faintest tap, as if matching her stride. In her mind, the borrowed words still echoed, quiet and sure.
Breathe. I am here.
She closed her fingers over the stone once, then let it go. When she met Mira's eyes, both of them smiled a little—not because anything was easy now, but because something had answered.
Behind a shuttered window high above the hall, a man in a gray cloak stood very still until the team passed from sight. His hands were steady, but the breath he let out at the end shook the lamp flame.
In the courtyard, the wind turned a banner once and set it flat again. The night settled. The wards held.
And in the quiet place behind Elira's ribs, a new rhythm kept time.