They began with ten braziers at the wardline and a handful of frightened midwives.
"Light, then breathe," Elyna said, repeating Derek's instructions with a clarity that made people trust their own hands. "In for four counts, out for four. Love your neighbor while you do."
"Is that magic?" a boy asked.
"It will be," Elyna said.
Word traveled like heat. Lanterns bloomed along alleys, across rooftops, over boats moored two-deep at the riverbank. Fishermen added oil. Bakers opened their doors and sent bread to the wardkeepers. A seamstress stitched her mother's charm into a new banner and tied it to the gate. When the hour bell struck, the city exhaled together.
The ward didn't surge, exactly. It harmonized—a hum that found the frequency of the stones and settled there, widening into something that could carry weight.
Derek stood between braziers and let the breath of strangers pass through him like tide through pilings. It did not heal him. It did something better: it gave his power somewhere else to stand.
The sky wrote again, softer this time, as if ashamed of being seen.
CIVIC LINK ESTABLISHED — "Lantern Network" Ward Regeneration: +18% Saintess Life Drain per major miracle: -9% Kernel Status: degraded (monitored)
Elyna laughed aloud, giddy and stunned. "You changed the rules."
"No," Derek said, watching faces lift in the light. "We reminded the rules who they're for."
A witherwight tested the edge of the ward and unraveled like smoke tugged through lace. Cheers rose, scattered and honest.
The High Priestess lifted her staff, but not to cast. To salute.
Nox scribbled on a slate, eyes bright. "Keystone," he whispered. "You might survive this clean."
"Clean?" Derek asked, amused.
"Alive and not a saint's ghost," Nox clarified. "We will take what language allows."
Chapter 10: A Knife with a Clock in It
Victory breeds better enemies.
Three nights later, while healers slept in shifts and lanterns made a second river in the sky, a woman in ash-gray stepped out of a shadow that should not have been there and placed a blade at Derek's throat. He froze, less from fear than recognition. The blade hummed with the same wrong as the first message.
"Don't shout," she said pleasantly. "I am proof of concept, not an assassin."
"You brought a knife to prove… not-murder?" Elyna's voice was very calm from the doorway. Her hand hovered near the bell-cord.
"Please," the woman said, almost offended. "If I intended harm, your bell would ring and no one would hear it." She tilted the blade. Inside its metal, numbers turned like fish. "This is a Pruner's Tool. Borrowed, not kept."
The High Priestess appeared behind Elyna, staff canted, eyes a blade of their own. "Name yourself."
"Call me Kestrel. Call my employer the Gardener, if you must. Your lantern trick bought you time. I'm here to purchase a replacement agreement."
Derek kept his voice even. "An agreement with a knife at my neck is a threat, not a treaty."
Kestrel sighed. "Symbolism tires me too. Fine." She lowered the blade and set it on the table between them. Instantly the room smelled like cold metal and wet roots. The numbers inside the steel slowed to a tolerant drift.
"Terms," she said. "You will not channel more than minor miracles without a civic chorus in place. You will continue binding the ward to breath, not blood. You will cede the outer marsh to controlled burn; rot harbors worse than wights. In return, your window remains… elastic."
"Elastic?" Nox echoed from the hall, unable to stop himself.
"Respondent to inputs," Kestrel translated. "Survival by maintenance instead of drama. The Gardener prefers pruning tyrants and epidemics. You are trending toward neither. Keep it that way."
"And if I refuse?" Derek asked.
Kestrel smiled without warmth. "Then the window becomes punctual."
Derek looked at the blade. It looked back with a thousand tiny clocks.
He thought of Toma's small voice, of Elyna's steady hands, of moonlight on lantern smoke, of the ward humming a pitch he could almost sing. He thought of a boy in another world who liked dumb jokes and family dinners and wanted to go home—and of a man who no longer could. He did not think of thrones. He was tired of those.
"I won't bind myself to your gardener," he said. "But I will bind myself to the city. You already know I am doing that. If your employer relents because the city holds me up, then we have no contract—only overlapping interests." He met Kestrel's eyes. "And I can survive those."
Silence sat down at the table like a fourth guest. Then Kestrel chuckled, brief and honest. "Overlapping interests," she repeated, as if tasting the phrase for fit. She slid the knife back into its sheath; the smell of wet roots thinned.
"Very well," she said. "Keep building your chorus, Saintess. We will keep pretending not to listen."
She stepped backward into a shadow that should have been too small to hold a person and was gone.
The High Priestess exhaled. Nox pressed his palm to his chest, as if keeping his heart from applauding. Elyna crossed the room and laid her hand over Derek's.
"Elastic," she said softly, smiling like someone who had learned a new dance step. "We can work with elastic."
The air above the table shimmered one last time.
KERNEL UPDATE: adaptive mode acknowledged Epoch Count: — (masked) Saintess Condition: "Keystone" Failure Condition revised: City collapse only Advisory: Keep breathing together.
Derek laughed then—quiet, incredulous, relieved. He squeezed Elyna's fingers and looked out toward the ward where lanterns moved like patient stars.
"Then we'll give it something to hear," he said. "Every hour if we have to."
He did not know yet that the Gardener had other gardens, that names like Empress and Guild Master waited like masks in a greenroom. But he knew this: survival was not a sprint against a clock; it was a choir that refused to fall out of key.
And tonight, at least, the city sang.