Chapter 542: Back by Daybreak

Mount Washington Summit.

Across the entire New Continent, the winds blew fiercest right here.

Measured against the sprawling central peaks that routinely pierced the snow line, this mountain was little more than a broad-shouldered runt.

Yet moisture rolling in off the Atlantic, frigid air sweeping down from the Great Lakes, and warm currents climbing up the southern valleys all insisted on converging directly above its crest.

When those three air masses collided, they churned up the worst weather in the entire New Continent.

In the shallows behind the veil, a small cottage stood atop the summit.

Its four walls were bricked from wind, its roof thatched with wind, and even the stepping stone out front had been pressed into shape out of wind, yielding softly underfoot.

Inside sat nothing more than a single table and two chairs.

Matthew pushed the door open and walked in, spotting someone seated in the inner chair.

It was a tall young man dressed in a tweed hunting suit of last century's cut.

There wasn't a breath of wind inside the cottage, yet a lock of hair over his forehead drifted backward, as though he were still standing out on the mountain ridge. The man was striking—put a face like that in a village, and the girls fetching water from the well would take the long way round just to pass his door a few extra times.

Spotting Matthew, the man rose and held out a hand.

Matthew eyed the hand for a second.

"Save the formalities." He took off his hat and hung it on a knob of wind jutting from the back of the door.

"...I'm not here for a matchmaking session."

The young man's hand froze in midair.

"Besides..." Matthew pulled out the other chair and sat down.

"You're holding your breath just to play host. Sitting across from you makes me feel like I'm suffocating on your behalf."

The corner of the young man's mouth twitched.

He opened his mouth and let out a long, slow breath.

His body dissolved in moments, leaving only a length of bone hovering above the chair, bored through with a row of holes.

Wind bolted out through the cracks of the door, fast and urgent, carrying palpable relief. When a Virtuoso wished to show their face, the effort required varied wildly depending on their tradition and mysteries.

Matthew was a road—where a road ended, there was naturally a pair of feet, and growing legs and a traveler up from those feet was simply a matter of course.

The Wild Hunt of the lord of the hunt could never halt, so his shell could only grow atop a horse's back; once dismounted, he was nothing at all.

The one from the Black Soil River couldn't even be bothered to build a form, possessing countless vessels to swap between at whim.

This Gale Adept, however, was "one whose lungs have departed, whose bones have become a flute, leaving only breath in the world."

If wind stayed still in one place, it ceased to be wind.

To put together a vessel, it had to trap that single breath inside a skin bag, much like a living person holding their breath.

A string of short notes piped from the holes of the Bone Flute, sounding somewhat aggrieved: "When I was young, I really was that handsome."

"I believe you," Matthew said with a laugh.

"Though on that face just now, you raised the bridge of your nose a touch and trimmed the jawline."

The Bone Flute fell silent. Outside, the wind spun into an eddy across the summit, sending stones clattering down the slope.

Only after a long while did the wind sound again: "The girls in the village saw me. They can vouch for it."

Matthew looked at it. "Is there anyone left in that village of yours who still remembers what you looked like?"

This time, the Bone Flute gave no answer.

Matthew didn't press. He reached for a coarse earthenware cup on the table and took a sip.

"This tea of yours..." He frowned. "It's weaker than the mud at the Mouth of the Underworld River."

A string of short notes blew from the holes of the Bone Flute: "I can't drink it anyway. Be grateful I brewed you any at all."

"The wind in your house blew all the flavor right out of the leaves."

The Bone Flute sounded again, raspy this time, its trailing note dragging into a cough.

Matthew raised his eyes to look at it.

"Still not healed?"

On the night of April thirtieth, it had spun the poison gas above Flanders into a tornado, only for that yellow-green mass to pour back down into the flute itself.

More than half a year had passed and it had coughed up almost all of it, yet a cloying, rotten stench still clung inside the deepest hole, carried out whenever a note was blown.

The Bone Flute spoke through the sound of the wind: "Mostly healed, though that fellow has already taken root in a new tradition. Dealing with him from here on out will take a slow grind."

"What's that fellow calling himself now?"

"He Who Once Drowned Ten Thousand Soldiers Upon the Earth in a Single Breath."

The second line of Hohenheim's honorific name was blown out slowly just like that.

The Gale Adept bore him no particular malice; they simply stood on different sides and fought their own battles.

Matthew, on the other hand, clicked his tongue in distaste. "Picking a name that long—sounds like a eulogy read at a funeral."

As he spoke, he reached for the saucer of salted crackers on the table—a local specialty, born from a stubborn marriage of the food industry and produce from beyond the veil.

Before his fingers even touched a cracker, his expression shifted and he shot up from his chair.

The earthenware cup tipped over, sloshing tea across the table.

"Sorry about that—a little fellow just fell off the road."

Every trace of the usual easy smile vanished from the man's sun-reddened face.

"...I have to go. Need to head over and take a look."

The wind inside the room pieced together a voice: "That poetry-writing kid you mentioned before?"

Matthew gave a grunt of assent, his stride already carrying him forward as the door parted on its own before him.

Just as his figure was about to vanish, he halted.

Across the span of an entire ocean, Matthew saw a lamp flicker on.

The light was small yet warm, shining piercingly bright against the blackness of the Deep Realm.

Matthew watched that direction for a moment, then slowly backed up and settled into his chair once more.

"Looks like I don't need to go after all."

He righted the toppled cup and carelessly swiped his cuff across the spilled tea on the table.

"So long as he's in the reading area, he won't die. That kid owes the Master a book debt—his life is tougher than any of ours."

The Bone Flute let out a long stream of air—whether a sigh of relief or a simple sigh, it was impossible to tell.

Matthew mulled something over, then pulled two stacks of manuscripts from his coat and slapped them onto the table.

A small red stamp marked the upper right corner of each cover, with a return slip pasted beneath: Matthew Carrick, first in reservation queue; loan period provisionally set at one month.

Roughly three days ago, the return slip and the two stacks of manuscripts had appeared on the threshold of Matthew's stilt house at the Mouth of the Underworld River. Figuring a visit to an old friend was a rare enough occasion, he had brought them along. "Since we both have time right now, let's read them together."

The wind in the room swept low across the tabletop and flipped open the pages.

Matthew propped his chin on his arm, reading along a second time.

They reached the third chapter—the "Ides of March" on the Roman calendar—as Caesar set out for the Theatre of Pompey.

With the main Senate building under repair at the time, their session was being held in an annex of the Theatre of Pompey.

His wife tugged at Caesar's sleeve, telling him she had dreamed of him covered in blood the night before, only for him to shake his sleeve free and walk out.

At the foot of the steps outside the theater, a man had set up a stall selling umbrellas, hawking his wares and declaring it was sure to rain today.

Amused, Caesar asked him, "With the sky this clear, where is the rain supposed to come from?"

The umbrella seller glanced up the steps, where a cluster of senators with bulging sleeves was already drawing near:

"My lord, it'll be raining soon enough. Red rain."

At that passage, every hole along the Bone Flute burst open at once, and its laughter crashed out of the cottage, whipping up a blizzard.

Over in the Material Realm, the chain-anchored stone house groaned and creaked. Down the mountain at the grand hotel in Bretton Woods, a night watchman was jolted awake by the rattling windowpanes.

Matthew held down his hat and waited for the squall to pass.

"Hey, keep it down!"

The Bone Flute went on trembling; another trace of cloying sweetness coughed out from its deepest hole, though it paid no mind and kept right on shaking.

Matthew couldn't hold back either, slapping the table as he laughed.

"When I read this part back at the Mouth of the Underworld River, I sprayed fish soup right into a dog's face."

The wind turned to the second stack: The Wolf's Maw.

Here the pages turned more slowly, and a long silence stretched before the Bone Flute made a sound.

"Tonight, the wolf's jaws opened at St. Gotthard."

Matthew reached out and smoothed the page flat.

"When he wrote down 'Wolf,' he had probably caught the scent of it already."

The two Virtuosos sat quietly before that page for a while. Hawthorne had once written a story set among these very mountains of the New Continent.

In a valley stood a great stone that looked like a human face from afar, and a boy in the village spent his childhood gazing up at it, waiting for the great man who bore its likeness to arrive.

He waited his whole life. Generals, politicians, and poets came and went, yet not one of them resembled it.

Only when he had grown old and stood speaking to his neighbors in the setting sun did the townsfolk realize that his own face was the exact image of the stone.

The Bone Flute broke the silence first: "What did that poem he wrote for you say?"

Matthew gathered up both stacks of manuscripts and tucked them back inside his coat. "Not showing you."

A short, slightly indignant note piped from the Bone Flute: "What's there to be smug about?"

"That poem was recited for my ears alone. Exclusive service, understand?"

Matthew looked thoroughly pleased with himself as he said it, the grin returning to his face.

The Bone Flute went quiet.

Outside, however, the wind surreptitiously blew the stepping stone by the door until its edge tilted up—just enough to trip Matthew on his way out.

Before leaving, Matthew pulled the return slip from his coat and turned it over. After a moment's thought, he took a pencil stub and jotted a line across the back: When does the next volume arrive?

He held the slip up before his eyes and waited for a reply.

The answer came quickly, a row of penciled words surfacing beneath his own: The author is still recuperating.

Matthew's brows knitted together as he tucked the slip back into his inner breast pocket.

"Recuperating... doesn't even say where he's hurt."

Savoring the stories as he walked out, he caught his boot on the tilted stepping stone by the door, right on cue.

As Matthew stumbled, a string of brisk, cheerful notes piped from the holes of the Bone Flute.

Across the ocean, on the St. Gotthard shallows, the hunt had yet to conclude.

The pack lunged forward once more—thousands of hounds that had been choking down a bellyful of rage ever since their ordeal in the Deep Realm.

At a sharp whistle from the lord of the hunt, they tore into the two massive forms still pinned to the ice.

The Mirrors on the pyramid were dead, Algol's eye still shut tight, and when the hounds' jaws clamped down, the glass gave way with a crisp crunch.

They trotted back carrying shards of broken mirror in their teeth, wisps of uncollected shadow still trailing from the jagged edges and dripping all along the way. Over by that gaping maw, things were livelier still: it had just retched its belly empty, the walls of Hattusa had yet to finish crumbling, and clay tablets lay scattered everywhere, their cuneiform strokes strewn across the ground like spilled nails.

The pack trampled over the clay tablets as they charged in, dragging out severed lengths of borrowed tongues and several bronze rivets that hadn't been chewed through.

One hound trotted back with a kiln brick from Ugarit clamped in its jaws, the heat inside the clay still so fierce it bared its teeth the whole way back.

The Old Scholar flipped open the register and recorded every item.

"Dead glass, one basket."

"Borrowed tongues, seven."

"Bronze rivets, eleven... You there, hound, the one in your mouth makes twelve. Don't try to hide it."

The hound lowered its head and spat the rivet out beside his horse's hooves.

The lord of the hunt had no time to spare for the spoils.

He urged his mount up to the pyramid and leaned down from the saddle.

Pinned left and right by the twin stars of Gemini, the Black Earth River Master couldn't budge, its Mirrors blind.

It hung suspended just above the ice, every one of its shadows drooping limp. The lord of the hunt reached out and pressed a hand against it.

That massive hand plunged into the folds of the pyramid, and tens of thousands of riders heard the dry, grating rasp of something being pried loose.

A tremor ran through the Black Earth River Master as the lord of the hunt drew his hand back out from the folds, prying a single gold tooth free from the tangle of rotting fangs—the fourth syllable of its true name.

Even the frost clinging to the antlers of the lord of the hunt forgot to shake loose as he hurriedly stuffed the syllable into the chamber of his Horn.

"Heh... that makes four."

Having just emptied its stomach, been forced to stand in punishment before the Master, and had an entire city confiscated, the Abyss Virtuoso was left with its jaws hanging slack, looking half-dead.

Yet it was still a Virtuoso of the Abyss Tradition; battered as it was, it had strength to spare.

Clamping its upper and lower jaws shut, it turned itself into a well, its mouth opening directly beneath the pyramid to swallow them both as they slid downward together.

The lunging hounds snapped at empty air; the few most eager ones nearly pitched headfirst into the shaft before riders yanked them back by the scruff of their necks.

The young man carrying the axe dug his heels into his horse's flanks, ready to give chase.

"Leave off!" Sitting tall in his saddle, the lord of the hunt barked a command to stop him.

"A cornered dog will bite, and a cornered mouth like that will eat even itself."

Watching the mouth of the well seal shut inch by inch, he raised his Horn and proclaimed toward it:

"The old priest of the Black Soil River, and that tongueless maw—from this night forth, both are beasts of the chase."

Tens of thousands of riders fell silent as one.

"On every hunting night—Yule, the Four Seasons Hall, Walburg, All Saints, and every night hereafter when too many die—the Wild Hunt may ride to claim the blood debt of tonight."

From within the narrowing slit, the great maw let out a slow, lazy yawn. "Chase all you like. Makes no difference to me."

The seam closed over, leaving only the two stars pinned to the spot before an unseen hand drew them back.

Out on the shallows, the two newcomers who had been spat back up finally scrambled out of the mud.

The other newcomers crowded around to haul them to their feet.

"How... how did you two get out?"

"Must be because we listened to the Honored Envoy and gave our real names," the fuzz-cheeked youth said, still shaken after passing through the jaws of a Virtuoso.

None of the newcomers standing in the circle said a word. Suddenly, one of them turned and walked up to the Old Scholar's horse.

He took off his hat. "Old sir, about the name I gave for the register earlier..."

Behind him, two more stepped forward.

The Old Scholar looked at them with a sigh, flipping the register back to the pages for the newcomers to write down their real names anew.

Watching from the rear, Loki kept his face blank.

The hounds trotted back with the spoils in their jaws, crowding into a dense mass beneath the mount of the lord of the hunt.

The limping pup stayed crouched beneath Lillian's horse, its eyes still fixed on the spot where the well had been.

The lord of the hunt muttered, "The one it acknowledged shattered, so it follows whoever smells closest to him."

Loki had been watching this side all along as well; the Honored Envoy's death was far too convenient.

In all his years working as a broker, people who died with such impeccable timing were rarely dead at all.

He pressed the thought down, the stitched seams on his face smoothing out until even the corners of his eyes crinkled with warmth. Loki urged his mount over to Lillian's side.

"Skadi, you've worked hard tonight.

Hold on to that slip for now... and if anything comes up hereafter, feel free to come to me."

Lillian turned her head to look at him.

Her eyes were as cold as ever, betraying nothing at all.

"Alright."

With that, she turned her face back toward the spot where the mouth of the well had vanished.

Loki nodded with a smile and wheeled his horse away.

He had ridden barely a dozen paces when Freyja drew alongside him. "You certainly know how to play the part."

"I've always known how to play the part," Loki said.

"And what scheme were you cooking up just now?" Freyja knitted her brows. Mercifully, they were in the shallows; otherwise, she would likely have been subjected to another of his foul farts.

Loki turned his head and flashed her a seamless smile. "I was just thinking it's high time someone swept the snow outside the front door."

In the center of the shallows, the spoils had been piled into a small hill.

Alongside the original sacks of loot lay the various fragments the hounds had dragged back from the Virtuosos themselves:

A basket of dead glass, seven borrowed tongues, a handful of bronze rivets; that mouth-scalding kiln brick, and several flakes of the pyramid torn free from between the Gemini pins.

Off to the very edge sat the coffin lid by itself, still wrapped in black gauze.

Whenever the wind stirred, the gauze drifted toward the collar of whoever stood nearest.

That coffin lid had dropped from a chaos-corrupted Virtuoso, and none of the newcomers dared go near it.

The Old Scholar flipped open the register. "By the rules, every one of you crawled out by your own true words and drew a bow tonight. These spoils are yours by right."

A stir ran through the shallows as the newcomers traded excited glances.

The one who had carried the receipt in his teeth was allotted a Roman bronze coin; he turned it over and over in his fingers before asking which emperor's likeness it bore.

The charcoal-hauler couldn't keep his mouth shut: "Probably the one with the big nose."

"What kind of answer is that... Which emperor didn't have a big nose?"

"Which means whichever one you name, you won't be wrong."

Another received the glass bottle holding that sudden jolt of falling from a height just as a person drifts off to sleep.

Refusing to believe the warning, he picked it up and gave it a shake, promptly landing flat on his backside in the mud.

The two who had been spat out lined up as well. When their turn came, the lord of the hunt spoke from his saddle:

"Half shares for those two. They didn't crawl out on their own."

Cradling the meager scraps they were handed, the pair didn't mind in the slightest.

Walking away with their lives was miracle enough; getting a share of the spoils on top of it made them think these Virtuosos weren't nearly as heartless as the rumors claimed.

As for the items dropped by the three Virtuosos, the lord of the hunt claimed those for himself.

The newcomers hadn't expected a piece of them anyway—even if handed the remnants of a Virtuoso, none of them would have dared carry such things home.

Right then, the lord of the hunt did something he hadn't done in centuries.

The final, unwilling gasp of dying prey was fortune itself; though the two Virtuosos hadn't perished, the resentment they left behind was thicker than death. By the old rules, the first share of fortune went to the scout who had distinguished himself, while the lord of the hunt took the lion's share of the rest.

Instead, he tapped his Horn, parceling out a generous measure of that fortune:

"Tonight's fortune goes to all who witnessed it."

Dead silence fell over the shallows for a heartbeat before an uproar broke loose.

Veteran riders slapped their saddles and hollered, while the charcoal-hauler bellowed praises to the generosity of the lord of the hunt at the top of his lungs.

Once he finished shouting, though, something felt off, and he leaned over to mutter to the man beside him: "Did that giant mouth lick his brains loose tonight?"

As the fortune settled onto the newcomers, some felt their shoulders lighten, as though an unseen burden had been lifted away; one man who had been "struck" in the well shaft by that blast of grapeshot from Fontenoy, his belly aching dully ever since, found the pain fading away to nothing right then and there.

Watching the crowd laughing and weeping across the shallows, the lord of the hunt naturally had his own calculations.

Seizing fortune was addictive; anyone who tasted it once would never forget the rush.

By handing out this trifling scrap tonight, come next year's Yule, Four Seasons Hall, and Walburg, these very people would find their own way back, lining up with tickets and dragging their kin and friends along to squeeze into his ranks.

His gaze swept past the very tail end of the column, pausing for a beat at Skadi's cuff. That tongue was tucked away right inside it.

The lord of the hunt weighed the matter silently before looking away.

Sooner or later, that maw would come looking for its missing tongue.

So long as Skadi kept riding with the host, it made no difference whose pocket held the thing.

Just then, Loki dug his heels into his horse's flanks and darted to the front of the newcomers, the stitched seams across his face splitting wide in a grin.

"Everyone! Do you see that?"

Every newcomer turned to look at him at once.

"One night! Just a single night! You walked away with your lives, claimed your share of the loot, and got a measure of fortune handed to you for free!"

He ticked the points off on his fingers.

"What is this? It's capital! The books lay it out in black and white—fortune can be saved, seized, and traded away.

Carry one measure more of fortune on your back, and next time you climb out of a well, you'll be a step faster than the rest; a step faster means you live; and living means you earn the next share..."

He spread both hands wide in the air, shaping a ball that grew larger with every turn.

"It's a snowball, rolling bigger and bigger!"

No one among the newcomers spoke, yet a feverish heat quietly kindled in their eyes.

Loki pivoted in his saddle and bowed low toward the lord of the hunt.

"The lord of the hunt is generous! On behalf of the brothers of the North, I thank the lord of the hunt!"

The lord of the hunt ignored him.

Unbothered, Loki straightened up and went right back to telling the newcomers how to muster on Yule night, which tavern back doors took registrations, and what cut they could earn for bringing in a fresh recruit.

Even as he warmed to his pitch, a single thought turned behind his eyes: 'Next season's ticket prices are going way up—I'll advertise it as "one night's fortune included."'

This wasn't the Spirit Realm, so he had no fear of his thoughts leaking out again.

Watching Loki work the crowd of newcomers, the Old Scholar murmured, "Aren't you going to rein him in?"

"Which word out of his mouth was a lie?"

The Old Scholar thought it over. "...Every word was true."

"Then let him talk."

The lord of the hunt watched Loki's hands miming the growing snowball.

A snowball did indeed grow larger the further it rolled—until at last the snow rolled the people themselves right inside, adding another line to his register.

This dog Loki barked tirelessly, driving plenty of game his way without needing to be fed.

With a hound that useful, he would gladly keep a few more.

Among the cheering crowd on the shallows, three figures didn't join in the laughter.

A strip of black gauze still clung to Hela's collar despite her tugging at it the whole way back, leaving the living half of her face deathly pale.

Freyja clutched her share of the spoils, her mind busy weighing her next move.

Suddenly, Lillian rode over.

Reining in beside Hela, she leaned down and breathed softly against the black gauze.

The breath left her lips so cold it didn't even fog.

At the touch of that breath, the black gauze recoiled into a tight knot and dropped from Hela's collar. Lillian exhaled another plume of chill air by way of explanation: "They don't like the cold."

A trace of color slowly returned to the living half of Hela's face. "Thank you."

Of everyone present, likely not a soul had ever heard Hela thank anyone.

Watching the exchange, Freyja nudged her mount closer as well.

"Does everyone who walks the Abyss have as many tricks up their sleeve as you, Skadi?"

Lillian turned her face toward her, bypassing the question entirely:

"Since the slip is in my hands now, you can report the names of anyone you bring in directly through me hereafter, without giving the first seat his cut."

Freyja's eyes narrowed. "What's your angle?"

"Nothing."

Freyja let out a soft laugh and drawled, "That scent of oranges down in the well was rather lovely, wasn't it?"

Saying nothing, Lillian tugged her white fox fur higher to cover half her face, though the tips of her ears turned red.

This time, Freyja laughed in earnest. The three women sat side by side in their saddles, none of them bringing up Loki again.

Yet Hela and Freyja were turning the exact same thought over in their minds: 'Stay hitched to an unreliable first seat like Loki, and we're bound to go under sooner or later. Skadi, on the other hand, holds the slip from the lord of the hunt, walks the Abyss Tradition, and has some murky tie to that shattered Honored Envoy...'

Freyja spoke up out of nowhere: "Running a pawnshop, my favorite part of the trade is appraisal—judging whether a piece is going to climb in value later on."

Hela kept her eyes on Loki, who was still gesturing over his imaginary snowball in the distance.

"I only look at one thing... who dies first."

At the far end of the column, the Old Scholar hugged his register to his chest and sidled up to the mount of the lord of the hunt.

"There's still one share left undivided."

"Which share?" The lord of the hunt played dumb.

"The Honored Envoy's share." The Old Scholar flipped the register back toward the front.

"Both the fortune and the spoils. Going by contribution tonight, his share is the largest of all—more than all of us old bones put together."

The lord of the hunt gave his reins an impatient flick. "I know that. It's not as if I'm withholding it."

"Then when do we hand it over?"

"After Yule."

The twelve nights of Yule marked the final hunting season; only after riding through Yule was the year's work truly done.

Besides, that kid would need to stay flat on his back for a good while first.

With a wisp of spirit torn to shreds between two sets of jaws and his shadow pulverized to dust, he was looking at half a year in bed at the very least.

Not that the lord of the hunt was the least bit worried the boy would actually die from it.

In fact, he was almost hoping something would go wrong with the kid.

Maybe the spirit wouldn't grow back properly, maybe the shadow wouldn't piece itself together, or maybe some lingering ailment would settle into his chest.

Among the Major Adepts of the Solar Tradition who specialized in healing, two owed him a favor; and if it proved beyond a Major Adept's reach, he could always call on a Virtuoso for help.

The moment that kid opened his mouth to beg, he could summon a healer with a wave of his hand—leaving the boy in his debt and far easier to keep under his thumb.

The lord of the hunt turned his gaze back toward the spot where the well had vanished. Before descending into the shaft, he hadn't actually held out much hope that the Master would intervene.

When that green-shaded desk lamp flickered on, he had been the one caught off guard by a pleasant surprise.

Had the Master not dropped those few words down from above, tonight's hunt would never have gone so smoothly, even with the Honored Envoy offered up as a sacrifice.

Right then and there, the lord of the hunt had recalculated the boy's worth.

Someone who could make the Master turn on that lamp in person was worth more than any piece sitting in his collection cabinets.

At the edge of the shallows, the limping pup still lay beneath Lillian's horse.

The white-browed old hound barked at it again, eliciting no response.

The pup neither whimpered nor barked; it simply lay there in the mud.

A dog didn't understand what it meant to shatter, or what it meant to perish.

All it knew was that the scent of paper and ink clinging to that person had scattered right there.

...

On the first morning after the winter solstice, the Imperial Capital refused to let even a hint of gray-white seep through the fog until nearly eight o'clock. Gerard had sat in the chair beside the window the entire night.

The Silver Blade had been retrieved from the carpet and now lay across his knees.

The wool blanket had slipped down around his ankles, and he hadn't bothered to pick it up.

His grandson's breathing was so shallow the quilt barely rose or fell.

As a Major Adept Hunter, he didn't need to open his Spirit Vision to see the truth:

The ether inside the boy's body was still moving, yet it had frozen sluggish as an icebound river, and something vital was missing right from his chest.

The first rule of a Hunter keeping the night watch was never to make a rash move before daybreak.

Yet day had broken, and the boy in the bed still hadn't stirred.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, the door opened, and the one person he least wanted to face right now walked into the room.

Margaret carried a tray holding a bowl of oatmeal, two slices of toast, and a small dish of honey.

She walked toward the bed. "Dad, I knew you'd sit up all night... I've told you your back can't take..."

Halfway to her son's bedside, the color drained from Margaret's face. Yet the tray in her hands stayed rock-steady, the surface of the oatmeal not even rippling.

Slowly, she set the tray down and reached out to take her son's hand where it lay outside the quilt.

...It was cold.

Beneath her fingertips, the few residual circuits that had lain ruined in Margaret for over a decade slowly turned a single cycle.

"When did it happen?"

"Three-seventeen."

"And you just sat here like this?"

"He said he'd be back by daybreak..." Gerard couldn't bring himself to look his daughter in the eye.

Margaret kept her head bowed, her fingers still clamped tight around her son's hand.

"Do you know what he went out to do last night?"

"He didn't say, so I didn't ask." Gerard let out another sigh.

"...You never ask!" Margaret's voice trembled. "When I went for my advancement at twenty-six, you just sat outside and waited for me to walk out on my own too."

The room fell quiet, save for the faint sound of the butler downstairs in the kitchen instructing the maids to boil water.

Margaret regretted the words the moment they left her mouth.

She closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them again, her vision had blurred.

"...I'm sorry, Dad."

"You're not wrong." Gerard rose to his feet, his knee popping with a dull click.

Carrying the Silver Blade, he walked to the doorway, bent down, and laid the weapon flat across the threshold, its edge facing out.

With a blade laid across the threshold, anything hoping to slip inside during the night had to step over the steel first.

Margaret tucked her son's hand back beneath the covers and smoothed the corners of the quilt before straightening up.

"...I'll go call Isabella and Rogers."

She headed down the corridor toward the stairs, only to stop halfway there and brace a hand against the wall.

Racking coughs tore through her one after another, impossible to force down. She pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and leaned against the wall until the fit subsided, then resumed her walk downstairs.

When the butler stepped forward to meet her, he saw nothing amiss.

Evelyn came bounding up right on cue.

The girl had followed the church carolers parading around the main street the night before, not getting home until nearly eleven.

Staying out that late had left her oversleeping this morning.

Without even combing her hair, she trotted straight up the stairs.

"Richie! You lazy bum! Quit sleeping!"

Charging in too fast, she nearly kicked the blade lying across the threshold and gave a startled shiver.

"Grandpa, why'd you leave a knife in the doorway?"

Gerard had already settled back into his chair by the window.

On any other day he would have teased his granddaughter, yet right now he had no heart to answer.

Evelyn paid it no mind, plopping down at the foot of the bed and reaching under the covers to tickle the soles of her brother's feet.

"Alright, I'm counting to three! One, two..."

She scratched twice, yet nothing stirred beneath the quilt.

"Still faking it!" Letting out a mischievous snicker, she went right back to tickling him.

Whenever Richard pretended to be asleep, he always caved by the second scratch.

Yet after she kept at it for a good while, the figure in the bed still hadn't moved an inch.

Evelyn's hand froze.