She swept the edge of the compound, breath steady, eyes sharp.

  The ground was disturbed in places, just enough to catch her interest. Not a trail, not quite. But indentations where the soil hadn't fully settled. Her fingers skimmed one of the deeper prints near the northern archway. Narrow footbed, light step.

  Another set nearby. Wider, heavier.

  Her gaze narrowed.

  Five. No, four distinct sets. Not just Sparklefish. Three others. Civilians, likely. The prints didn’t run like they belonged to combatants. No aggressive stances. No scuff marks from a struggle.

  She kept scanning. A thread of mana residue lingered by the southern fence, faint, thin, barely a trace. Dimming fast.

  Haste glyph. Incomplete, sloppy. Whoever prepped it wasn’t a mage.

  Not Sparklefish.

  She followed the trace's direction until it dissolved into forest debris and silence.

  Too late.

  She crouched again, brushing a smear of glittering residue near a shallow heelmark. Same shimmer that clung to the corpse’s wrist. Same dust that coated the hidden room.

  They'd all passed through here, and they’d left clean.

  Writ exhaled slowly through her nose, forced the rising frustration down.

  They were smart, careful, coordinated. And they hadn’t stuck around for the aftermath.

  They’d been long gone. Probably since the moment she’d clawed her way out of the trap.

  She stood. Checked again. Nothing new, no trail worth following.

  Then she felt it.

  A shift beneath her boots. A pulse. Not mana, but roots.

  She turned, sharply, eyes sweeping the base of Relay Point Nine.

  The ground was moving.

  No, not the ground. The trees.

  The ring of ancient trees surrounding the outpost had begun to stir. Groaning low, stretching high, as if roused from slumber. Branches twisted toward the structure’s heart, gnarled bark creaking in rhythmic shudders. Their trunks widened, slowly at first, then faster, as they leaned inward.

  It wasn’t a collapse.

  It was consumption.

  The seedwake pods had bloomed.

  Writ’s breath caught as the Relay Point shuddered. Floor tiles buckled, stone cracked, and roots tore through the foundation like soft parchment.

  The structure had destabilized faster than expected.

  Too fast.

  She turned on her heel and ran.

  Branches snapped behind her. Dust filled the air as the roof caved in, vines surging like veins through the remains of the walls. The air thickened with arcane bloom, the sharp scent of mana-choked growth pressing into her lungs.

  By the time she cleared the threshold, the outpost had already begun to vanish beneath bark and leaves.

  She didn’t look back.

  There was no time to mourn the failed trail. No time to second-guess the timeline.

  The detonation had started.

  She kept moving, fast and silent through the roots.

  Now came the harder part.

  Now came the rehearsed truth.

  Because the Accord wouldn’t take this failure lightly. Not with her name tied to it. Not with incognito compromised and witnesses still breathing.

  Writ rolled her shoulder once, testing the joint. Bruised, but intact.

  The scouting hadn’t cooled her temper. If anything, it simmered deeper now, buried under ash and grit.

  She stood by the window, eyes scanning the mist-choked horizon. No movement, no pursuit.

  Not yet.

  Behind her, Junior rummaged through his bag for gauze, bandaging a cut on his hand. Fane sat in the corner, arms braced on her knees, staring down at the floor with that clenched, jaw-locked look she’d seen before, on soldiers waiting to be sentenced. Reck crouched nearby, offering quiet reassurances, though his own posture was just as tight.

  The silence cracked.

  “Now, draft your reports,” Writ started.

  Fane and Reck stiffened. Junior looked up, hopeful for more context. Writ offered none.

  “Stick to the facts. No dramatics. No excess,” she took out her own notebook and pen, already uncapping it.

  “Relay Point Nine is compromised. The memory trap activated. We dismantled it. One intruder neutralized. Four unknown fled.”

  Junior opened his mouth, thought better of it, closed it.

  Fane shifted, "do we include the... argument?"

  Writ didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze flicked back to the window, scanning once more. No signs of movement, no shimmer of approach.

  “No. Only that they had confirmed our presence and location,” she answered, "nothing else.”

  Junior hesitated, “should I... say I triggered it?”

  Her eyes snapped to him. He went quiet under the weight of it.

  Writ turned back toward the window.

  “Doesn’t matter what triggered it. It failed. We're known,” she explained, “write like you’re alive. Or they’ll write it for you.”

  The air hung thick after that.

  They started scribbling.

  Fane tore a page from her field journal and leaned it against the wall to write. Next to her, Reck paused with his pen hovering, brow tight, mentally assembling his words. Junior sat cross-legged on the dusty floor, chewing the end of his pen before finally putting it to paper.

  Writ started writing her report draft too, still with occasional check over the windows.

  Time passed with only the scratch of pens and the gust battering the tower walls.

  Finally, Junior broke the silence again, softer this time, "will they... discard us?”

  Fane didn’t look up. Reck shook his head.

  "No. Not yet," Writ didn’t turn, “depends if they believe we’re still useful.”

  Rain tapped against the broken glass. Fane still scrawled on the floor nearby, torn pages scattered around her like debris. Reck leaned against a support beam, chewing the inside of his cheek. Junior still cross-legged on the floor, scribbling in his notebook, then pausing, tapping it with the pen like the words might change if he stared long enough.

  Writ was the only one still standing, her back to them as she stared out the jagged window.

  No one spoke for a while.

  "Tell me when you're done with the draft," Writ said.

  She closed her notebook, "I'll tell you what might happen after this."

  Everyone's attention went to her.

  “They’re going to separate us in different interrogation chamber.”

  Fane exhaled through her nose, “of course they are.”

  Junior looked up, his pen dimmed in his hands, “we should go over what we’re saying, right?”

  Writ nodded, her gaze swept across them, sharp and unreadable.

  “Yes. We will. Because this is survival. If our stories don’t match, we’re dead,” she let that settle, “they already know we were compromised. We won’t omit it. What they’ll want, what they’ll tear us apart for, is the why.”

  She met Reck’s eyes first.

  “Our story is this: We entered Relay Point Nine. Found signs of recent occupation. The memory trap activated during the pod planting. An unknown hostile attacked me while I was still regaining consciousness. Junior and I dismantled the trap over two hours. The relay node activated while the rest of you were still out. I accepted the message to verify identity. The voice on the other end already knew we were here.”

  She shifted her gaze to Junior, "and absolutely no mention of fumble," then to Fane, "or argument. If they ask what made the trap activated, say possibly triggered by occupant in the hidden room. You’re not lying. You just don’t know what it was."

  Junior’s pen froze, “But... what if they already know it was me who--”

  “Then they’ll want you to say it,” Writ’s tone was flat, “then they’ll ask how you triggered it, and why no one else mentioned it.”

  He looked at her, mouth slightly open.

  “You’ll say we don’t know. Because we don’t.”

  Fane frowned, “that won’t hold under interrogation.”

  “It has to,” she replied, “and it has to be uniform. No extra details. No improvisation. Only what I said.”

  She straightened, dusting her hands.

  “They’re not just looking for truth. They’re looking for a target. Someone to pin this on.”

  Junior sank a little where he sat, "...But it was my fault.”

  Writ didn’t flinch, “It doesn’t matter.”

  She paced once across the room, pausing between them.

  “They’ll ask: Did anyone hesitate? Say no.”

  “They’ll ask: Who entered first? Say we moved together.”

  “They’ll ask: Did the unknown attacker speak? Say no. You were unconscious.”

  “They’ll ask: Did you sense more than one attacker? Say no.”

  “They’ll ask: Did you leave anything behind? Say no.”

  She turned back to face all of them.

  “They’ll especially ask you if you touched the relay node. Say you didn’t. Because you didn’t.”

  Junior blinked, “but...”

  “You were unconscious,” her voice cut like flint, “you didn’t touch it.”

  Silence again.

  Fane finally asked, “what about what we saw inside the loop?”

  Writ’s face hardened, “you dreamed. You forgot. We moved on.”

  Another beat passed.

  Then Writ sat down.

  “Now say it out loud. All of it. Together.”

  They repeated the lines. Again. One by one. Until the stutters smoothed, until even Junior didn’t falter.

  Afterward, Writ went over each of their draft reports in silence, one by one, marking out phrasing that could raise suspicion, crossing out lines too heavy with implication. No flair, no uncertainty. Only what was safe. What could not be picked apart.

  They recited it all again, this time with pens in hand, until Writ gave a curt nod. Until she deemed the words clean enough to survive the Accord’s scrutiny.

  Then silence settled again, this time thicker, heavier, not from fear, but from what followed it.

  Writ didn’t dismiss them. She didn’t have to. They knew their parts now. Knew what the Accord would want to hear.

  The others drifted, some to corners, some to lean against the walls, not quite resting, not quite alert.

  Writ remained where she was.

  Notebook shut. Blade sheathed.

  She sat, finally, just outside the frame of the cracked window, knees bent, arms on her thighs. Not like a soldier resting, more like someone pausing.

  The wind moved through the broken pane, lifting dust, tugging at the ends of her coat. Somewhere below, the last pulse of the detonation had faded. All that remained was smoke. And silence.

  No one came for them.

  Sparklefish and his team had already evacuated, clean, quiet. No backup, no ambush, not even a warning shot.

  She didn't look out again.

  Her jaw clenched once, then loosened. A breath slipped through her nose.

  They'd survived this far. They’d cleaned what they could. Rehearsed the lie like truth.

  But the weight hadn’t left her chest.

  Because maybe it wasn’t over. Maybe they'd only bought time. Maybe they were already walking ghosts and didn't know it yet.

  Writ leaned her head back against the stone and shut her eyes.

  Just for a moment.

  Not to rest.

  Just... to stop bracing.

  Most of the building had gone quiet. Fane was downstairs, pretending to sleep but clearly awake by the rhythm of his breath. Reck hadn’t spoken since their last practice, curled in a cot with one arm over his eyes.

  They’d decided to spend the night in the watchtower, to return together tomorrow. Only after one last rehearsal.

  Up on the rooftop, Writ sat alone on the ledge, sharpening her blade in slow, deliberate strokes. Sparks jumped with every drag across the whetstone, small.

  The loop had ended, but not the stillness. Not the way it pressed in after.

  Junior approached quietly. For once, no bounce in his steps. No nervous babble.

  He didn’t speak until he stood beside her, one hand still clutching the railing, “...You didn’t have to cover for me.”

  Writ didn’t look up. Her blade hissed again against the whetstone.

  “Didn’t say I did.”

  Junior hesitated, “you could’ve let them eat me alive. Said it was my panic, my fault.”

  She glanced at him, briefly. The look wasn’t cold. Just matter-of-fact.

  “They already know you fumbled. They just want to see if you’re useful despite it,” a pause. Then, quieter, “you were.”

  Junior blinked.

  Writ turned back to the blade.

  “You helped dismantle the trap. You followed instruction. You learned.”

  A breath hitched in his chest, surprised, maybe moved. Then he lowered himself beside her, folding his legs carefully, as if afraid he’d break the moment.

  “Thank you...” It came quiet, almost a whisper. Then louder, firmer, “for not throwing me to them. For... for making it easier to survive this.”

  Writ didn’t answer right away.

  Another long stroke across the whetstone. Then another. She tested the blade, turning it toward the fading light.

  Satisfied.

  Finally, she spoke. Softly. Not tender, but true.

  “I wished someone did it for me.”

  She’d begged for a lifeline once.

  None came.

  Junior turned to her. Something raw flickered behind his eyes.

  But Writ was already standing, “don’t make me regret it.”

  She sheathed her blade in one clean motion and walked toward the stairwell without looking back.

  Junior stayed where he was, eyes lifted to the sky above the treeline.

  Not trembling. Not doubting. Just still.

  His hands, resting on his knees, were steadier than they’d ever been.