The documents smelled of salt, lavender, and a faint, acrid undertone of expensive ink. Noella spread them across her laboratory table, weighting the corners with clean river stones. Princess Selene's proposal was not a single scroll but a nested system of ledgers, manifests, and coded intelligence summaries.
For two days, Noella ate at the table, slept in a chair by the low fire, and dissected the offer into its constituent variables.
Variable A: Grain. Silverveil promised four hundred tons of hard wheat and rye over twelve months. Enough to eliminate rationing and create a surplus. Dependency coefficient: high. If severed, systemic collapse within sixty days.
Variable B: Materials. Scheduled shipments of sulfur, quality saltpeter, refined steel ingots, copper wire, optical glass. The lifeblood of her Academy. Dependency coefficient: catastrophic. Domestic sourcing capacity: near zero.
Variable C: Intelligence. Weekly summaries of Tombsrose naval movements, merchant fleet compositions, dockyard production. A window into the hegemon's economic vitals. Verifiability coefficient: low. Potential for disinformation: high.
Variable D: Eden's Output. In return: quarterly delivery of "stabilized black powder formulae," "mechanism schematics for pressure-triggered devices," and "tactical assessment protocols." Selene had been careful not to demand the Soul-Prayer research or anything directly pertaining to Volsei. She wanted the products of Noella's mind, not its ultimate secrets. Strategic dilution coefficient: medium-high. Knowledge, once transferred, replicates.
The equation was clear. Accepting the terms would solve immediate survival constraints but would graft Silverveil's supply lines directly into Eden's aorta. Cut them, and Eden would bleed out in a season.
Therefore, the solution was not refusal, but restructuring. Dependency must be mutual, or at least, the cost of severance must be asymmetrically painful for Silverveil.
She began drafting her counter-proposal. She would accept the partnership framework. But the first phase would be a "proof-of-concept execution." Silverveil would immediately deliver a "seed shipment" of one hundred pounds of refined saltpeter and twenty pounds of sulfur. Concurrently, they would provide actionable, verifiable intelligence on a Tombsrose logistical asset—a land-based convoy, not a ship—that Eden could interdict. The success of this joint operation would validate the intelligence flow and Eden's ability to act on it. The captured materials would offset the initial resource transfer, creating immediate reciprocity.
It was a test. It said: Your turn. Show me your cards are real before I show you mine.
She set the quill down and picked up the monocular Selene had given her. It was cold, perfectly balanced. She fitted the headband, adjusted the lens before her right eye—the amber-gold one. The world in that field of view leapt into hyper-clarity. The grain of the wooden table became a topography of canyons. She turned it on her own notes; her script, normally precise, was revealed as a chaotic scramble of ink-spatters and frantic corrections at the microscopic level. A flaw made visible.
A gift of perception. And a reminder: she was being perceived.
\\-\\-
Lieutenant Dorn was proving to be a ghost in his own right.
He did not intrude. He observed. He participated in Kael's dawn drills with a grim, uncomplaining endurance that earned him terse nods from the old master-at-arms. He asked questions, but they were always technical, doctrinal. "What's the optimal spacing for a three-man infiltrate-and-exfiltrate in woodland?" "How do you calculate the auditory footprint of a footfall on wet leaves versus dry?" "What's the psychological decay rate of guard vigilance in the third hour of a watch?"
He never asked about Volsei. He never looked towards the west tower.
Noella watched him one afternoon from the battlements. Below, in the muddy yard, Dorn was sparring with Rylan. Both used weighted sticks. Rylan was faster, fueled by a survivor's desperate energy. Dorn was slower, more economical. He absorbed Rylan's flurry of attacks with minimal parries, letting the force dissipate, studying the patterns. Then, in a gap so small Noella almost missed it, he moved. Not a strike, but a shift of balance, a tap of his stick against Rylan's wrist. A disarm. A kill in a real fight.
He wasn't learning how they fought. He was learning why they fought that way. He was reverse-engineering the doctrine from its application.
Kael limped up beside her, following her gaze. "He's good. Annoyingly good. Doesn't waste a breath or a step."
"His report will be comprehensive," Noella said.
"Aye. And what's in it for us? Besides a lad who can hold his own?"
"A line of communication to General Doric that isn't a formal envoy. A channel for disinformation, if needed. And a living benchmark against which to measure our own Ghosts." She turned from the wall. "Let him learn the forms, Kael. The principles. The spirit of it… that stays here."
\\-\\-
The Ether, when Volsei slipped into it, was not a place of rest.
Tonight, he walked only a short way—a half-step from the world, enough to be in the interstitial murk. The air was thick, tasting of ozone and the iron-scent of old blood. Gravity was a suggestion. Light came from nowhere and everywhere, a bruised purple gloom that turned the familiar rocks of Eden's hinterlands into twisted, menacing sculptures.
He came here for two reasons. First, the soul-fatigue. The dense, ambient potential of the Ether acted as a pressure on his own depleted reserves, a passive recharge. It was uncomfortable, like sitting in a room that was too quiet, the silence itself becoming a noise.
Second, to listen.
Since the Blackwood, the whispers had changed. Before, they were the distant, bored cruelties of the Demon Court, the petty schemes of lesser fiends. Now, there was a new quality. A directed attention. He felt it as a prickling on the skin of his soul, like being watched through a keyhole.
He stood on a outcropping that, in the human world, was a hill overlooking a sleeping shepherd's hut. Here, the hut was a skeletal, glowing fungus growing from the rock. The sky was a swirl of abstract, hateful colours.
A shadow detached itself from a deeper gloom. It did not approach. It coalesced into a humanoid shape of pure darkness, featureless but for two pinpricks of cold white light where eyes might be. A Shadow. One of his father's people.
Walker. The word formed in his mind, not a sound but a concept imprinted on the air.
Volsei did not respond. He waited.
The Council is curious. You make noise in the silent world. You cut threads that were meant to hold.
"They were my threads to cut," Volsei said, his own voice sounding thin and real in the unreal space.
The human witch. She seeks to understand the Song That Burns. A dangerous curiosity. The Shadow's form shimmered, indicating the direction of the castle, of Noella's tower. The Council debates. Some see a tool to be used. Others see a spark to be extinguished before it finds tinder.
"Tell them to debate quieter. The noise is distracting."
The Shadow seemed to ripple—amusement? You have your father's… disregard. It will get you consumed. The alliance between the Iron Crown and Krax'thul grows solid. They will come for your little kingdom. And for the witch who thinks in numbers.
Information. A warning. Or a manipulation. "Why tell me?"
Because consumption is wasteful. The Shadow's form began to dissolve back into the murk. There are other equations. Remember your blood, Walker. Before it is spilled.
It was gone.
Volsei remained until the oppressive recharge felt like a suffocation. As he prepared to step back, his boot scuffed against something on the weird, spongy ground. Not rock. A piece of jagged, dark crystal, about the size of his thumb. It pulsed with a faint, internal violet light. It felt warm. It hummed against his fingertips, a vibration that resonated in his teeth.
An Ether-geode. A crystallized pocket of raw soul-stuff. Incredibly rare. A battery. Or a bomb.
He pocketed it. A sample for the witch who thought in numbers.
When he snapped back into the world behind the castle stables, the cold night air felt shockingly clean and empty. The crystal burned a hole in his perception, a tiny knot of wrongness in his coat.
He had gone for quiet. He had returned with a message, a threat, and a piece of a star from a nightmare.
And the growing certainty that the walls between their wars were much thinner than Noella had calculated.