I tugged my boots on and left the room, heading down the corridor toward where I knew I’d find him. The sense of farewell was still lodged beneath my ribs, following close enough that I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there.
Atlas
The raven arrived without announcement.
I noticed it because everything else remained exactly as it should have been.
Morning had settled into the fortress with practiced ease. Patrol rotations were intact, gates opening on schedule, the low murmur of the city carrying up from below in familiar rhythms. Nothing rushed. Nothing lagged. The kind of order you trusted because it had never given you a reason not to.
The bird perched on the out parapet of my office. Dark against the pale stone. Its claws scraped softly as it adjusted its balance. There was no cry, no message, it simply sat there.
Joren was talking when I saw it.
Something inconsequential. A comment about the quiet. About how the guards were already bored enough to start inventing reasons to be busy.
The raven didn’t look at him.
Its head was angled slightly, one silver eye fixed on me, unblinking.
I shifted my stance slowly.
The raven tracked the movement without turning its head, the focus precise enough to feel intentional. It watched me the way a sentry watched a post, like it had been put there to do exactly that.
Joren followed my gaze at last. He went still for the briefest moment before smoothing it away. The pause so practiced it might have passed for nothing if I hadn’t been watching him as closely as the bird watched me.
“It’s just a raven,” he said, too easily. “No note. No fuss. Probably decided the stone was warmer than wherever it came from.”
I didn’t respond to that.
Joren hadn’t seen its eyes. Hadn’t noticed the way the silver caught the light without shifting, without blinking away or tracking anything else in the room. To him, it was just another bird on a ledge.
I rested a hand against the edge of the desk, fingers curling into the familiar grain of the wood. Anchoring myself before I shifted the conversation.
“Any updates,” I asked, “since the last round of nothing worth mentioning?”
Joren snorted. “Nothing new. Schedules are holding. The Hall’s quiet. No changes worth flagging.”
Nothing worth reporting was not the same as nothing happening.
“Keep the patrols on their current routes,” I said. “No adjustments.”
He blinked. “You want them bored?”
“I want them predictable.”
That earned me a look, but he nodded. “All right.”
I straightened from the desk and took a step back, putting space between myself and the window.
The raven didn’t follow.
It stayed quiet where it was, watching, as if movement were no longer required now that the point had been fixed.
I turned away first.
Behind me the bird remained still. Silent. Unmoved. Its silver eye marking time I had no intention of naming aloud.
The first warning wasn’t sound, but something deeper tightening low in my chest. The bond drawing taut as if it had recognized its other end moving closer. The pressure was insistent in a way it hadn’t been before.
