Two others were with them.
The broader one turned first. He took us in quickly, a spark of interest flashing across his face before discipline smoothed it away. His hair was a silver blond, pale enough to catch the light even indoors, and eyes that were a clear ocean blue. Bronze skinned and easy in his confidence, he looked like trouble in the way storms looked like trouble, not malicious, just inevitable once momentum took hold.
The other man turned as well. His posture was easy, balanced as if he never fully settled anywhere. His face was sharp rather than hard, angles clean and unsoftened, his skin a deep mocha tone, smooth and rich as polished stone warmed by thesun. Hazel eyes met mine, steady and unblinking, and the look held no hostility—only a quiet acknowledgement, the kind you offered someone you respected.
The room held after that, as if everyone were recalibrating around the same point.
Atlas shifted first, not toward the table, but subtly closer to me. The movement slight enough to pass as coincidence. It wasn’t. I felt the intent of it more than the space it closed.
“This is Lieutenant Fenix Drae,” he said, nodding once toward the broader man. “And Scoutmaster Kade Vessar.”
Fenix dipped his head in something that might have been a bow if he’d ever bothered to learn one. “A pleasure,” he said, tone light but eyes sharp. “Under better circumstances, I’d pretend this wasn’t my favorite kind of room to walk into.”
Maren snorted softly beside me.
Kade inclined his head as well, more reserved, his gaze returning to the table almost immediately, as if introductions were a courtesy rather than the point.
“What’s going on,” I asked quietly, stepping closer.
No one answered right away.
Maren stood beside me, close enough that I could feel the steadiness of her presence without looking. Calder’s hand tightened against the edge of the map. Joren’s gaze flicked from the window to the table and stayed there.
Kade moved first.
He reached into the inner pocket of his cloak and drew something out, setting it on the table between us without hesitation. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but this wasn’t it.
A length of black cord, coiled neatly, the ends cut clean. Beside it lay a shard of stormglass, dark and translucent, its edges catching the light in thin, dangerous lines.
I leaned closer, drawn despite myself. The stormglass carried a faint coldness against the warmth of the room, subtle enough that I might have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention.
I straightened slowly.
“Where did this come from,” I asked.
“And what does it mean.”
No one spoke at first.
Atlas didn’t move. Neither did Calder. Joren shifted by the window as if he were listening for something beyond stone and glass. The air itself seemed to hold, the question suspended between us.
Then Kade answered.
“It came from the eastern boundary,” he said. “Just inside our line. Placed where a patrol would notice it, but where it wouldn’t be disturbed before the right eyes found it.”
He paused then, not because he was finished, but because he was choosing his next words carefully.
“There was a raven,” Kade continued.
My breath caught, just barely.
“It was dead,” he said evenly. “And the cord wasn’t left beside it. It was knotted around its neck.”
The words settled squarely, reshaping everything that had come before them.
Not a symbol left near a body.
Not a warning set beside a sign.
