The Vault sleeps.
But the city does not.
Its shadows shift. Eyes move. Threads stretch.
And now, my hands begin to close around them.
Sov is the first to return.
He steps through a broken corridor of the Temple ruins, silent as falling ash.
"The South's unraveling," he says. "The Threadless convened a meeting last night—off-grid. Hidden chamber beneath a spice merchant's house."
"Who was there?"
"Not the merchants. Not the preachers. Just blades. And one they called *the Hollow Tongue.*"
My brow tightens.
"That's not a title I recognize."
"Then they've made something new."
Kett sends word, not herself.
A folded silk slip tucked into the binding of an old prayer book, left beside the Vault's entrance.
I read it by torchlight.
*They're laundering city gold through a ghost fund they call the Pale Tithe. Every fourth coin goes not to the High Taxers… but to a private war chest.*
*Also—someone's paying bounty hunters for names. Ours.*
*Burn this after reading.*
– K.
I burn it. But the heat doesn't take the chill from my bones.
Narth returns next.
He looks like he's aged ten years.
He carries no scrolls. Just a single name, carved into a piece of dry bone.
He sets it before me and kneels.
"Who is this?" I ask.
He swallows. "The one who stitched the first Vault. A weaver-mage named *Vellidra.* Her rites were erased. But I found her mark."
The bone glows faintly under the ring's light.
I grip it, and for a flash—*I see her hands building stone with song, binding blood to rock, weaving silence into foundation.*
The Vault was made by a heretic.
Or a savior.
Maybe both.
Branvel doesn't report.
He *drags.*
Through the gates of the Temple ruins, he hauls a robed figure bound in rope and bruises.
"Spy," he says flatly. "Tried to buy a Councilman's loyalty. Thought he could vanish before the ink dried."
The man groans. "I… I was only following orders."
"Whose?" I ask.
He spits blood. "No name. Only a ring… made of bone."
My ring pulses.
Lira steps forward, sword already drawn. "That means something to you?"
I nod once.
"A rival."
The Vault speaks to me again that night—not in words, but pressure.
It *knows* something is stirring.
And it's warning me.
The Threadless are preparing for war.
But they won't find us idle.
The four I trusted have become hands of fate.
And I…
I am learning how to *weave the threads myself.*
The city will become a loom.
And its fate?
A tapestry written in blood, shadow, and truth.
Let them come.
I am no longer waiting.