Ren stepped into the square and found two men waiting as if the morning had been arranged for them.
One wore a robe threaded with tiny emblems of feathers and coin.
Their eyes scanned the crowd like metal calipers—resting longer than necessary on cheeks, on scars, on the pendant at his throat.
"Kira," Ren said, voice flat as sand. "You know them?"
"They're from the Cloud Trade Guild," she muttered, jaw tight. "Never good news."
The taller man smiled with a courtesy that tasted like cold brass.
"We regret your losses," he said, voice butter-slick. "Cataloging damages. Names, goods, casualties."
Ren kept his hand near his pendant, fingers finding the fossil scale by habit.
The scar under his jaw tightened like a remembered wire.
He did not like the feel of those searching eyes.
"Cataloging?" Kira snapped, boots kicking at a loose cobble. "You come to count our dead like merchants weigh grain?"
The shorter man's mouth twitched.
"We insure shipments and insure peace. There are atmospheric anomalies to log, artifacts to catalog—things that affect trade routes."
"Artifacts?" Ren echoed, because the word landed in his chest like a stone.
"Yes."
The taller man—Sorren—leaned in, expression amiable and precise.
"Reports mention anomalous energy residues after the raid. Old bones, fossil scales, relics from the High Skies. We must ascertain origin."
Kira's hand hovered near the little toolkit at her belt.
"We have a pendant. A fossil scale. It's not for sale."
"Not for sale?" Sorren's smile sharpened. "Pity. Curiosity often commands a price. Information, for instance."
He tapped a ledger at his side, voice casual.
"Who among you is the youth who bears the fossil?"
Ren felt noticed as if light had landed on him.
All talk around them grew thin; only Kira's breath and Sorren's words remained.
"I'm the one," Ren said shortly.
The square breathed inward as if waiting for the punchline.
"Good."
Sorren's eyes glittered.
"We represent collectors—interests who pay handsomely for relics. We must ensure such items do not destabilize trade lanes."
He paused, eyeing the pendant like it might spring teeth.
"Have you encountered… anomalies? Storm-eaten pits? Singing scales?"
Kira's jaw worked.
"We had a Devourer last night and a lot of screaming. If you're looking to buy grief, you're in the wrong market."
Sorren's smile thinned but did not vanish.
"Our interest is stability, Miss—?"
"Kira," she said. "And stability doesn't come from strangers taking things."
Ren's fingers tightened on the pendant until metal bit skin.
The memory of Li's calm and the journal's torn warnings tightened behind his ribs.
The Guild's questions felt like a net being tossed.
Sorren glanced past Ren to where Old Li stood, watching with a quiet hardness.
"Young Ren," Sorren said with the smoothness of someone practiced in openings.
"We seek to prevent the spread of dangerous artifacts. Perhaps your father—was he known to deal in curios?"
Ren's hand jerked back.
"My father tied knots and told stories," he replied, too quickly. "He left a journal. That's enough."
Sorren's brow creased.
"A journal suggests knowledge. Knowledge sells. We are merely interested in preserving safety."
Kira stepped closer, voice low and edged.
"Or in buying fear. Tell them, Ren. Tell them what your father left or we'll all be answering for a missing boy and a missing pendant."
Ren's jaw worked.
He owed his father answers and owed Li a promise.
Saying nothing felt like handing a lantern to a thief.
Sorren's companion opened a leather folder with the languid politeness of someone about to deliver a small wound.
A map, some official stamps.
"There are collectors who operate outside the law," he said finally. "A group known—unofficially—as the Split Hammer."
Kira barked a short, disbelieving laugh.
"You mean the Split Hammer? Stories old men whisper when fires go low."
"Stories become facts when they find buyers with deep pockets," Sorren replied.
"Split Hammer collectors have been linked to forges and black vaults. They prefer items of… lineage. Fossil scales, ancestral tools."
"Lineage?" Ren's voice tightened until it scraped.
The journal—his father's frantic script—burned behind his eyes.
He swallowed down his mouthful of memory.
Sorren's gaze sharpened.
"The Split Hammer is rumored to answer to a shadowed master. They do not flee storms; they sail them. If your pendant is of the right make, you may find hunters at your heels."
Kira's fists clenched.
"You come to 'catalog' and drop legends. Convenient."
"It is prudent," Sorren said.
"We aim to prevent unrest. When relics draw attention, opportunists follow. Trade routes wobble. Cities fall into speculation."
Li's cane scraped the stone as he stepped forward.
"Then mark this: our people are not wares. If you want something from us, ask. Don't circle like ravenous gulls."
Sorren inclined his head.
"We ask only for information. If you cooperate, we can ensure protection."
Ren felt the weight of the map in his pocket — his father's map, incomplete and heavy.
The journal's torn pages seemed to hum with missing ink.
Protection sounded affordable—if you could pay the price.
After the Guild men left with polite bows that tasted of teeth, Old Li stayed close.
He pressed a callused hand to Ren's shoulder, thumb finding the pendant's edge as if testing its warmth.
"The Split Hammer is no myth," Li said quietly, the words wrapped in salt and long memory.
"When I apprenticed, forges spoke of them in hushed tones. They take relics to bless their masters. They answer to smith-lords who do not suffer the kind of mercy we do here."
"Why would they care about a pendant?" Ren asked, because not asking felt worse than fear.
"Because your father's hand wrote of seals and of a scale bound to the sky," Li replied.
"They are vultures for binding-objects and for anything that sings when the storm hits. They would turn a boy into a key without a second thought."
Kira's eyes darted to the map that lay on the table of Ren's cabin—the leather curl, the frayed ink.
"We can't let them find the missing pages," she said, voice low and urgent.
"If they know the Jade Forge or its routes, they'll cut it off."
"Then we take measures," Li said.
"Close the lanes. Hide the routes. Teach the children not to talk about scales."
Ren pressed both hands flat on the worn map, feeling the leather's ridges like a pulse.
The pendant's groove left a crescent of warmth on his palm.
"You'll need shelter," Kira said, setting her jaw into linings of plan and threat.
"And we'll need time to fix the glider properly. Promise me you won't wander after storms."
Ren pictured the glider and his vow to her father.
The scar under his jaw prickled as if in agreement.
He nodded once, slow and certain.
"I won't be bait."
Li's eyes, old as rope, flicked to the pendant.
"Be careful who you trust," he murmured. "Promises weigh."
That night Ren sat again for the Echo's practice, palms on knees, breath slow.
He tried to chase the sun's angle as instructed and let the village's creak and murmur fall like flotsam around him.
"Focus on the sky," the Echo advised when it drifted near. "Map the lines. Breathe the dawn."
He breathed and held three minutes, then five, then strained toward the hour.
Fatigue pulled at the edges—horns of memory, the leftover ache, Li's steady hand—and still he kept at it.
The pendant lay cool at his breast like a promise.
Something tugged.
Not the Echo this time.
Not a voice with ancient teaching; rather, a slight, persistent pull at the back of his awareness, like thread wrapped around a finger.
He opened his eyes and nearly lost balance.
The room felt narrowed, as if attention had been stitched elsewhere.
Kira's lamp blurred.
The sound of the village hummed like a distant hive.
Ren reached for the pendant, fingers trembling.
The pull strengthened, not violent but inexorable—an invisible line being drawn taught across his mind, gentle and claiming.
He whispered, "Who's there?"
The night answered only with the hush of rope against wood.
That night, Ren attempts the daily meditation mission again.
This time, as he seeks the energy of the sky, he feels something beyond—as if invisible threads of attention had been tied to him during the day, and now gently pull his consciousness away.