<b>Chapter 127 </b>


    Second dawn came, mist sitting low, light peeling up from the east one quietyer at a time. We’d spent the night turning ns into muscle memory, then walking those muscles until they stopped shaking. We kept it simple and stacked.


    Xavier and Tommy rebuilt the rota with a pencil and a ruler: no loops, no tells. Two pairs on the ridge, two along the east bank, one roamer on the service road. Runners stationed at the old boathouse and the north copse, each with a whistle and strict hand signs if the. wind swallowed sound. Dad stayed at the packhouse with Mum, Elliot, and Macey, cooking breakfast he didn’t really need to cook, ordinary on purpose, three warriors at the back fence forpany.


    Haiden and his team were movement men all night. He walked the culverts and the narrow footbridges and left quiet markers only we would read, chalk arrows at ankle height, a nail glinting where a blind spot used to be, a length of bright cord threaded through reeds to show the one safe line from trees to bar. Heid scent decoys that started and stopped and doubled back, then scuffed them with water so nothing could chart our habits. He was still tugging a g taut when the first bell rang. We made the sandbar honest and obvious. A rope and stake boundary at knee height, red cloth fluttering in the easy breeze. One chalked circle for the envoy to stop in, one for us. Visible. Fair. A folding table sat ten yards back with water jugs and a med kit and nothing that could be mistaken for a weapon. Anything sharp lived zipped into a canvas bag behind my feet and didn’te out unless the rope dropped. Terms were simple and aloud, no parchment, no sigils. Daylight. One envoy. Empty hands. Stay on the dry side of the rope. Speak your name. No one steps closer than the circles. If anyone moved wrong, we ended it by standing up and walking away. No drama. No show. Just distance.


    Aleisha took the rock at the crown of the bar,ces loose, elbows on her knees, a bored girl watching water skim stones. We knew better. She was counting breaths and watching pulse jump at a throat, tracking the way the wind slid off skin and told her who had been where. Noah stood upwind with his shoulders loose and his gaze never still, reading the ripples and the way reeds showed the shape of anything that thought to hide. Haiden became a hinge between treeline and water, a man who looked like he might have just wandered over and stayed for the view. Xavier hovered at my left shoulder, close without crowding, the kind of stillness that makes a line for other people to steady against. Levi stood at my right with his hands open and his eyes quiet, ready to ask clean questions and hear the words in the spaces between answers. I checked the rope knots one more


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    time because superstition is allowed if it doesn’t make you stupid. The stakes held. My throat remembered where to swallow. Under my palm the baby rolled once and went still again, a small reminder to breathe where my feet were.


    “Time,” Levi said, not looking at a clock so much as feeling the way mornings have a different weight when a promise is about to be collected. We didn’t fill the quiet. We held it. Waiting is work, and we did it with our bodies. The heron downriver lifted, thought better of it, and settled. A fly made a brave circle around Haiden’s ear and left when it realized it didn’t have his attention. Theke kept its mirror. The smell was all mud, green, iron tang where the rope had rubbed the stake tops and bled a little rust.


    Movement at the east treeline. Not magic, not shimmer, just the ordinary physics of a person parting brush. A coat the color of road dust. Boots that had walked more miles than they wanted to. Empty hands, fingers spread before they even reached the rope so we couldn’t miss it. The envoy stopped at the gs and didn’t test them with a toe. Good.


    “Smell?” Xavier asked low enough that it barely counted as sound.


    Aleisha’s answer was the tilt of her head and the smallest nod before she mindlinked.


    “Travel. Smoke, river. No wolf. No blood. No pack–scent on their coat.” She breathed


    again. “No fear–sweat either. They walked themselves steady.”


    Levi’s voice stayed gentle. “Your name.”


    The envoy lifted their chin. “Ie under your terms. Empty hands. Alone.” The voice was low, clean. “I give the name Irin.”


    Levi didn’t need a knot to hear a lie. He watched blink rate, listened for the click in a swallow, tracked shoulder set and the way people borrow time when they’re trying to think and pretend they aren’t. He gave the smallest nod. “Approach to the line,” he said. “Stop at the chalk.”


    Irin stepped forward. No rush, no test. The rope fluttered against their thigh and they didn’t try to catch it. They took the circle and stood like they’d practiced, weight even, hands down, throat uncovered, no tilt of the head meant to sell humility. They looked like someone who had decided to be seen exactly as they were.


    “I am Envy,” I said. “Xavier, Haiden, Levi, Noah, Aleisha.<b>” </b>I didn’t list titles. Titles make people posture. “We hold the terms. We end this if they’re bent.”


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    <b>13:35 </b>Wed, Sep 3


    “<b>I </b>understand,” Irin said. Their eyes went to the chalk at my feet and back to my face, a small<b>, </b>useful tell. They wanted distance as much as we did.


    “We were told,” they went on, choosing each word like it mattered, “there is a child here who carries our making.”


    Before and after sat down together in my chest.


    “My son is safe,” I said. “He isn’t a door you get to knock on. You speak to us.‘


    Irin absorbed that without flinching. “We have lost many,” they said after a beat. “We look


    for what is not ash.”


    Levi’s hands rested easy at his sides. “Words first,” he said. “Before ims.”


    Irin nodded once. A muscle jumped along their jaw, settled. “Then we both tell the truth,” they said, “and see what matches.”


    Haiden rolled his shoulder and the line of him slid into a stance that could be a sprint or a stand in a breath. Noah took in the envoy’s boots, coat, empty belt. Xavier mapped paths in and out that none of us would have to think about if we needed them. We had picked the hour. We had set the rope. We had put our people where they needed to be and left the rest to discipline.


    I put both hands on the curve under my ribs and gave Levi a small nod.


    “Begin,” I said.


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