Her voice carried before I reached for the flap.
She sat at a scarred wooden table, maps and reports scattered before her, a single candle burning low. When she looked up, her silver eyes caught the light.
"I'm ready."
The words left me steady.
"Even if I'm not fully prepared."
Kaelen stood, crossing the space between us in three strides. She studied my face, searching for fractures, for the despair that had consumed me in the tunnels. She found something else instead.
"Your mother stood in this tent once." She touched my shoulder. "Looked at me with those same eyes and told me she was leaving to save children she'd never met."
My throat tightened.
"I called her a fool. Told her that a Keeper should be more cautious." Kaelen's grip tightened. "She always went anyway."
She released me and reached for something hanging beside the entrance. It was a bronze bell, small enough to fit in her palm but heavy with age and purpose.
"This has been silent for decades." She stepped outside. "Since the day your mother left and never came back."
The entire camp likely heard the first strike.
The sound rolled through the cavern like thunder, impossibly loud, resonating in my bones and teeth. It rang a second time. A third. Each peal deliberate, spaced with ritual precision.
The camp transformed.
Fires sparked to life in controlled bursts. Tent flaps parted. Figures emerged, not stumbling or confused, but moving with practiced efficiency. No one shouted. No one ran. They simply moved, each soldier knowing exactly where they needed to be.
Within minutes, the chaos resolved into order.
Five hundred Fae assembled in the central cavern. They formed ranks with silent discipline, armor catching the growing light, weapons secured but ready.
I stood at Kaelen's shoulder and felt smaller than I had ever felt.
"Four battalions," Kaelen said, her voice carrying without shouting. "One hundred twenty each. The remaining twentyare healers and scouts, distributed among the battalions as the situation demands."
The formations were perfect. Identical spacing, identical posture, faces forward and expressionless.
This wasn't a resistance. This was a war machine that had been waiting.
Movement at the front.
Twenty figures stepped forward from the first battalion, peeling away from formation with synchronized precision. They wore different armor, lighter, darker, marked with symbols I didn't recognize.
The one who approached stood a full head taller than those around him. Scars crossed his face in deliberate patterns, ritual marks from battles I couldn't imagine. His eyes were flat gray, assessing.
"Captain Malzaun."
He didn't salute. Didn't bow. Simply acknowledged.
"Lyanna's daughter."
"Seris."
"I know who you are." Something shifted in his expression. It wasn't quite warmth, but recognition. "Your mother saved my sister from a slaver caravan outside Greymarch. Burned the whole convoy to ash. Walked my sister home through three territories without a scratch."
He looked past me, finding Daemon in the crowd that had gathered behind us.
