The city had quieted.
Michael and Anna were sitting on the edge of the upper garden terrace where Blackstone met wind and the distant glow of lava rivers stitched like slow lightning. The fire spirit coiled nearby, its flickering gentle, its warmth sufficient to keep the chill at bay.
Anna had a small charm clutched between her fingers copper, worn, engraved with a rune Michael didn't recognize.
"My name was not always Anna," she said, voice low, eyes fixed on the horizon. "In a different life, they called me Serael. I was a guardian… some kind of priestess, I think. I had a temple. A purpose. People turned to me as if I had the answers."
Michael waited.
"I once tried to save a city," she went on. "Kept the fire at bay for three days. Lost everyone on the fourth."
She rotated the charm in her palm.
"I remember I was standing in the ashes. I didn't cry. I just forgot how."
Michael's chest tightened. "You were alone?"
"Worse," she said. "I was followed. People who insisted I try again. Be their shield. Their answer. And I did. Over and over. Until the burden of failing them became greater than the lives I saved."
Her voice didn't shake. But there was something weary behind it.
Michael stared at her. Not with awe, or pity but with a kind of protective grief he hadn't known he'd developed.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You didn't have to bear all of that by yourself."
Anna smiled faintly. "You say that as if I had a choice."
"You do now," he said, without missing a beat. "You have us. Me. Kael. Even Blue."
She blinked, then burst into a quiet, incredulous laugh. The sound warmed the air.
"I'll remember you said that," she added quietly.
"You'd better."
She tilted her head a little against his shoulder, not hard, just to share the silence.
"Thank you," she said.
Later, kael joined them to the sounds of clattering armor and gravel, slipping down with them over firefruit and flatbread. Her face was serious.
"We have a little something brewing," she said, rolling open a scrap of ember paper on which were scrawled markings in sigil ink. "Not aimed at us. But something's moving."
Anna sat up straighter. "Where?"
"Out beyond the Cracked Span. Caravan town went dark. No return calls. Rumours of vanished summoners. The spirits, locals say, quit answering. Just silence."
Michael looked between them. "What does that mean?"
Kael met his eyes. "It means we're either close to a Realm break… or something's crawling through from another one."
Anna stared at the paper, lost in thought. "How much time before the city realizes?"
Kael shrugged. "Hard to say. But if it continues to spread, someone is going to seek help. And I thought maybe we'd be the idiots who answer."
Michael knew it deep in his bones that quiet hum, a thread tugging in his chest.
Something was beginning.
...…
The city inhaled amber light.
The late afternoon sun dappled through Pyrrhion's ever-brightening sky, the courtyard of Michael, Anna, and Kael etched from cooled magma and smooth Blackstone. Next to them, a low fire pit crackled, for a sound more than heat.
Michael drank slowly from a ceramic cup of citrus-ash tea. The taste had grown on him.
Kael was honing her blade at a rhythm that felt canalizing rather than necessity. Near her, Anna squatted next to a fire basin, feeding it thin strands of memory palm bark that smelled both like honey and charcoal. Her hands moved slowly, purposefully.
A handful of children ran in the street outside, laughing, running after one another barefoot. One looked in the doorway, saw Anna, and smiled then gave a short bow and took off after the others.
Michael noticed. He always noticed.
Anna didn't seem surprised. She did not do when people were kind to her it was like the world around her just moved in time with who she was. No one raised their voice. No one ever disrespected her. And not because she said she was entitled to it.
Because she behaved like someone worth listening to.
Kael broke the silence first. "There's something wrong at the edge of the Cracked Span."
Michael looked up. "What do you mean, 'off'?"
Kael put the blade aside and reached into her side pack to produce a stone-etched glyph tablet. "The spirit patterns are thinning. No response from a summoner beyond a few hundred meters. Scout teams haven't returned. They're labeling it 'containment-worthy,' but not confirmed hostile."
Michael frowned. "Containment-worthy?"
Kael nodded. "Which means something's disrupting the Thread-resonance in the vicinity. Not even one summoner is out of sync. Something bigger."
Anna rose, brushed her hands on her robe, and went over to the fire pit. She stared at the flame for a long moment and then said, "We should go."
Kael raised a brow. "That easy?"
Anna nodded once. "It says something that goes that loudly, we listen."
Michael watched the pair of them Kael's bristling readiness, Anna's calm certainty — and for the first time felt as if he weren't simply trailing behind them.
He belonged here.
They packed quietly. No rush, no panic. Just precision. On the way, people offered Anna fruit, talismans, and little favors for the road. She didn't turn any of them down, accepting each with quiet grace. No one questioned where they were headed.
Because when Anna walked, there was faith the path would make a difference.'
And when Michael walked next to her, they looked at him differently too.
Not as someone dangerous.
But as a figure worth watching.