They rode three days toward the original vault without stopping longer than necessary, Ardyn Vale's newly consolidated authority making every checkpoint, every crossroads, every town a potential trap now that a warrant carried execution rather than mere arrest. Kael led the way from memory alone, his blind certainty about the terrain never once wavering despite the two decades since he'd last walked it.It was on the second night, keeping watch alone at the camp's edge while the others slept, that Mira first noticed something wrong with Cassian.He sat apart from the fire, as he often did lately, but tonight his hands trembled with a tremor that hadn't eased even after an hour of stillness, and when she approached, careful, she saw the faint black-red lines tracing beneath the skin of his forearm, not the controlled crimson of his own natural flame, but something darker, more fractured, spreading in patterns disturbingly similar to what she'd seen on Dahlia's collarbone weeks before.

The work took most of the day to prepare properly, Emrick and Yuki trading calculations back and forth with the meticulous care of two people who understood exactly how much was riding on getting it right the first time."We can't test this the way we tested the resonance theory at the bridge." Emrick warned, as the afternoon light began slanting long across the camp. "That was destabilization, meant to break something apart. This needs to hold something together without letting anything leak backward. Different principle entirely, and considerably less margin for error.""Then we go slow." Kael said, his blind hands still resting near Cassian's forearm, monitoring the spread of the dark lines with careful, constant attention. "Smallest possible application first. We don't risk the full working until we understand how his body responds to even a fraction of it."Cassian sat still through the preparations, exhausted but resolute, Mira noticing the way his hands had stopped tremblin