The horn sounded again, closer this time, and Vance was already backing toward the trees, urgency written into every line of his posture."We need to move now." He said. "If that's the company that's been tracking me, they know roughly where I made contact. They'll converge on this position within the hour."Sera didn't argue. She turned and ran for the camp, Mira close behind, Vance following at a pace that suggested he'd already spent his last reserves of stealth getting this far.The camp erupted into motion the moment Sera relayed the warning, Roderick barking orders with the crisp efficiency of a man who'd clearly been half-expecting this exact scenario since the moment they'd settled near the stream. Horses were saddled, gear gathered, Dahlia insisting despite her still-fragile strength that she could ride without assistance, and within minutes the squad had broken camp entirely, scattering the fire's embers and striking north along a ridge trail Vex swore would put distance

The letter found Elara at dawn, delivered by a hawk that dropped out of the pale sky with the trained precision of a bird raised on House Veyron's own falconry lines, landing on a rock beside the dying fire as though it had tracked her scent across half the empire.She recognized the seal before she'd even untied the ribbon, dark blue wax stamped with the crossed-frost sigil of her family, pressed by her father's own hand rather than a steward's, which alone told her this wasn't a routine correspondence."Elara." Mira said, watching her go still over the parchment. "What is it?"Elara didn't answer immediately, eyes moving fast over the tight, formal script, her jaw tightening with every line. When she finally looked up, her face had gone carefully, deliberately blank in the way Mira had learned meant she was holding something back that cost her considerably to hold."My father." She said. "Formal notice. He's renouncing my claim to the Veyron name within thirty days unless I retu

They reached the outskirts of Veyron land two days later, the squad splitting by necessity, Roderick, Dahlia, and Vex staying behind with Sera and Lieutenant Vance's small band of trusted soldiers to continue tracking the Choir Hall's true perimeter, while Asta, Cassian, Yuki, and Mira rode with Elara and her aunt toward the estate itself, a compromise reached only after considerable argument."I don't like splitting the squad." Roderick had said, the morning they parted ways. "Not with Ignatius three days ahead of us and a Hall we still haven't properly scouted.""I don't like it either." Asta had answered. "But Elara's not doing this alone, and we can't spare the whole squad for a family confrontation when the Hall's still out there. This is the compromise that keeps both moving."Now, cresting the final ridge before House Veyron's ancestral seat came into view, Mira understood for the first time just how much weight the name actually carried. The estate sprawled across a wide v

They left the Veyron estate at first light, riding hard to close the two days' distance between themselves and the rest of the squad, and it was on the second afternoon, cresting a low hill above the agreed rendezvous point, that Yuki's horse shied without warning, ears pinned flat, refusing another step forward."Something's wrong." She said, fighting to steady the animal.Asta felt it a heartbeat later, a faint, wrongness in the air, the specific texture of flame that didn't belong to any of them, cold and hot at once in a way that made his own dragon-mark prickle uneasily along his forearm."That's not Council soldiers." Cassian said, scanning the tree line below. "That's something else."They found Roderick's camp exactly where they'd left it, tents still standing, fire still smoking faintly in its pit, but empty. No Vex. No Dahlia. No Sera or her soldiers."They wouldn't have abandoned their position without reason." Mira said, already dismounting, scanning the ground for trac

They made camp in a hollow half a mile from where Lucien had ambushed them, the wounded needing rest before anyone could reasonably ride further, and it was there, over a carefully rationed fire, that Lucien began laying out everything two months of forced service had taught him."The Hall's built into an old quarry." He said, sketching a rough diagram in the dirt with a stick, his hand steadier now than it had been an hour before. "Three levels below ground, accessed through a single main shaft disguised as an abandoned mining operation. That's the only entrance large enough to move candidates and equipment through.""Only one entrance." Roderick said, wincing as Dahlia finished binding his wound. "That seems like poor planning for a facility this important.""It's not poor planning." Lucien said. "It's confidence. Ardyn Vale doesn't believe anyone capable of reaching the Hall in force before deployment. She's not wrong to believe that, given how close it already is." He tappe