The riders came out of the treeline like something poured rather than ridden, dozens of them, torches high, banners snapping crimson-and-gold in wind that hadn't existed a minute ago, the Ember Council's sigil catching the firelight in a way that made the whole clearing look, for a moment, like it was already burning."Positions!" Roderick barked, and the squad moved before the word finished leaving his mouth, months of fighting together folding them into formation without anyone needing to think about where to stand.Behind them, the cellar doorway had gone dark and silent, the voice retreating the instant the horns sounded a third time,which told Mira, more than anything else that night, exactly how deliberately this had been timed.Doss backed against the courtyard wall, hands raised, the particular posture of a man who'd learned the hard way that soldiers with banners rarely asked questions before they acted. Seris didn't move at all, standing exactly where she'd been when the ac

Five minutes was a lie everyone in that courtyard told themselves to keep moving."We're not leaving you here." Asta said, rounding on his cousin. "Not after the ruin. Not after the letter tonight. I'm not doing this again.""You're not doing anything." Cassian said. "I am. There's a difference, and you know it." He glanced toward the smoking cellar door, then back at Asta, something steadier in his face than Mira had seen there in months. "It listens to me because it thinks I'm still deciding whether to hate it. The second that stops being true, it stops talking and starts 'doing,' and I'd rather that happen to one person than to seven.""That's not a sacrifice." Roderick said. "That's suicide with better lighting.""Maybe." Cassian's mouth twitched, almost a smile, gone as fast as it appeared. "Or maybe it's the first useful thing I've done since this squad started looking at me like a liability instead of a person."Kael stepped forward before anyone else could argue, and

The track spat them out into a shallow ravine an hour before dawn, and for the first time since the letter had ignited in Cassian's hands, nobody spoke at all, not out of caution, but because there simply wasn't breath left to spare on words.Mira counted heads out of habit more than doubt. Asta. Cassian. Roderick. Flora. Yuki. Elara. Jabber. Eren. Doss, still stumbling, still flinching at every shadow that moved wrong. Seven of the squad, plus one stranger who hadn't asked to be part of any of this.Not Kael. Not Seris."We left them." Cassian said, finally, breaking the silence. It wasn't an accusation. It was worse, the flat, disbelieving tone of a man still trying to convince himself the math had been unavoidable."They chose to stay." Asta said, though his voice carried none of the certainty the words were supposed to.Roderick had climbed the ravine's lip to scout the treeline behind them, and when he came back down his face had gone the particular gray of a soldier delivering

Loki hadn't said a word since the depot.Mira noticed it the way she noticed most things about him lately, sideways, in the gaps between more urgent concerns, because Loki not talking was so unnatural it registered as its own kind of alarm. He'd always filled silences before anyone else could, jokes landing or not landing, restless energy spent on anything except stillness. Now he sat at the edge of the outcrop with his knees drawn up, staring at nothing, and hadn't so much as glanced toward the horizon where the horns had faded."You've been quiet." She said finally, settling beside him, careful to keep her voice low enough not to draw the others' attention."Lot to be quiet about." He said. Flat. Not his usual deflection."That's not an answer."He didn't respond right away. When he did, his voice had none of its familiar looseness left in it. "You ever have a theory." He said."That you're too scared to test, because testing it means finding out you're right?"Mira went still.

Loki didn't move.Mira had expected him to run, to freeze, to do any of the things a person does when the worst possible outcome of a fear finally arrives wearing a familiar face,but he only stood there in the mill's doorway, staring at his sister's borrowed smile like he was trying to find some version of her still intact behind it."Sera." He said again, quieter this time. "It's me. It's Loki. You remember me."'"Of course we remember you."' The five voices answered, layered so precisely that Mira couldn't tell which mouth the words had actually started in. '"We remember everyone she remembers. That's rather the point of us."'"Stop talking like that." Loki said, his voice cracking. "Just…talk like her. Please."For a moment, something flickered across the girl's face, a hesitation, small and human, gone as fast as it appeared and when she spoke again, her voice came alone, singular, stripped of the harmony's layered weight."Loki." She said, and it was smaller now, younger-s