The wind outside the workshop had turned bitter, pressing against the shutters like some patient hunter testing for weakness. Inside, the scent of warm oil and coal smoke hung thick in the air, mingling with old vellum and ink. Corwin sat hunched over a steel-banded table, hands blackened from soot and wire, the fractured pieces of an old focusing lens spread before him like a broken promise.
Liran paced. Not nervously, not quite—but with a predator's rhythm, sharp eyes on the windows, the shadows, the quiet corners of the room.
Ashra, seated on the edge of a crate stacked with re-bound tomes, flipped through a parchment filled with hand-sketched glyphs. She hadn't spoken for a while, but her posture was coiled, alert. She hadn't sheathed her knife since they'd come back from the vault.
None of them had.
"They let us go," Corwin finally said, voice low and uncertain. "That's the part I can't stop thinking about. The Adept. He could have taken us. Called more. But he warned us instead."
Ashra didn't look up. "You think it was mercy?"
Liran laughed softly. A humorless sound. "It was confidence. Like a man letting a rat run in a maze he built."
Corwin turned the fractured lens in his fingers. "Then we need to break the maze."
Before anyone could answer, there was a knock at the door.
Once.
Twice.
Then silence.
Ashra was on her feet in a heartbeat, Liran drawing his blade as he moved silently to the left of the doorway. Corwin slid the lens pieces back into the drawer, standing slowly.
Another knock. Lighter this time. A rhythm they knew.
Liran exhaled. "Safe."
He opened the door a crack, and an old man slipped in. Bent-backed, wrapped in three layers of ragged shawls, Dren Hollow looked more ghost than man. But his eyes were sharp—blue and glinting with something far older than fear.
Corwin stepped forward. "Dren. I wasn't expecting—"
"Didn't have time," Dren wheezed, waving a hand. "They've moved. Tonight. I saw them. The Carrion."
Silence fell like an axe.
Ashra stepped closer. "Where?"
Dren sank into a chair by the furnace, cradling his walking stick. "East Hollow. The old alley market. They weren't searching. They knew. Moved like a line of blades. I counted five. Pale masks. Glyph-robes."
Corwin frowned. "They were hunting someone."
Dren nodded, mouth grim. "Me. And likely you, lad. They stopped at my door. Asked the landlady about 'the old scribe who speaks of Circles.' She lied for me. I owe her a bottle for that."
Liran was already by the window, peering into the street beyond.
Corwin felt the cold sink into his chest. "They're closing in. Faster than we thought."
Ashra leaned against the wall, jaw set. "And we made noise. The vault, the trades, the foundry run. Someone talked. Maybe not even knowing it."
Dren reached into his coat and pulled out a folded piece of cloth. Inside: a single feather.
Black as pitch.
Corwin stared.
"The crows," Dren muttered. "Always watching when the Order moves. Not birds. Not anymore."
Ashra's voice was flat. "Alchemical eyes."
"Worse," Dren said. "Eyes of something. They track glyph resonance. Bloodlines. Even dreams."
Corwin glanced at the walls, suddenly aware of how thin they were. How fragile.
"We need to move the workshop," he said.
Liran shook his head. "No. We need to anchor it. Reinforce. Wards, traps, redundancies. Running only makes them close faster. We need to show teeth."
Ashra looked to Corwin. "You said it yourself. They let us go. That means they want you to keep digging. So dig."
Corwin slowly nodded, stepping back to the workbench. He opened a drawer, pulled out the folded parchment bearing the fragment of the Philosopher's Circuit.
"Then we make it cost them," he said quietly. "Every step. Every shadow. We gather more allies. We build. And we prepare."
Dren leaned forward. "There are others who remember the old ways. Hidden deep. Exiles. Ex-Guild. Some won't help you. But some might. You need more than tools and blood for what's coming, lad."
Corwin traced the sigil on the paper. The serpent. The ouroboros.
"We'll find them."
Ashra gave a rare smile—sharp as a knife.
Liran sheathed his blade.
Outside, the wind howled once and then fell quiet.
But beneath the floorboards, faint and nearly imperceptible, the wards carved into the foundation pulsed with a new urgency.
Something had seen them.
And it was drawing closer.