Morning found the council chamber colder than the corridors. Pale light crept through the arrow-slit windows and died on stone; the torches did the rest, hissing thin in their sconces like they’d been told to whisper.

  Jonrel leaned forward, hands flat on the table. A strip of linen bound his left palm where frost had kissed skin too long; the bandage was clean, the damage not. Shan stood close enough to touch his shoulder and didn’t. She watched him like someone at a cliff’s edge—ready to yank him back, ready to trust his footing.

  Two seats down, Franz had not unclenched his jaw since Jonrel entered. Arms folded, he looked like an argument waiting for a blade. Near the rear pillar, Draven leaned in a slice of shadow, turning a scrap of parchment over and over so the firelight skimmed it, unread by choice. Giara held herself very straight, as if posture might keep a room from leaning; once, her gaze slid toward the south-facing door—the one that opened to the yard where the Hazens trained—then came back to the map. PJ lingered near the map’s edge, idly rotating a cup, eyes tracking the table like a man weighing a joke that didn’t belong here.

  At the head sat Virella. The Pale Mirror rested loose at her wrist, not flaring, not gone—just there, like winter breath on glass. It caught the fire at angles that made the light look unsure.

  “Tell them what you found,” she said.

  Jonrel exhaled once, clearing the mountain from his voice. “North Frostmarch,” he began. “Ridges like teeth. Wind like a hand that doesn’t open. And between them—signs someone meant us to see.”

  He reached into his satchel and set three things on the wood: a splintered shard of arrow, broken too clean; a curl of half-burned parchment, edges crisped, ink still legible enough to whisper, “She’s lost it. We never signed up for this”—and a smear of blue wax hardened on a flake of stone—pressed with a shallow rosette, thin as tavern stock.

  No one reached.

  “Luthgar boot prints,” Jonrel said. “Cavaryn colors caught on rock. Pig’s blood painted across drift and frozen thin. Smuggler’s wax posing as a northern seal. No bodies. No gear left behind. Just a trail that wants to be read and falls apart when you breathe on it.” He looked around the table. “Someone’s out there, planting evidence.”

  Frannor’s thumb traced a slow circle against the wood until it creaked. He did not look up when he said, flat as iron, “I staged a grave like that three nights ago. South of the Frostmarch. Ash, scorched cloth, a broken spear, dispatch scraps. It’s still where I left it.”

  Jonrel’s eyes narrowed, the frost back for a heartbeat. “So what I found wasn’t coincidence.”

  “No.” Frannor lifted his gaze now, and the air shifted to carry it. “Someone watched. Either far enough that we never felt their eyes, or close enough that I should have. They copied our work and wrote it somewhere else. They know the signs we use and the scouts we mean to fool.”

  Giara’s breath caught and steadied. PJ’s hand tightened around a cup until the wood muttered complaint. Virella’s mouth changed by the smallest degree, a tension at the corner; she blinked once, as if at a sound only she heard, and it was gone.

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  Draven let the parchment fall from his fingers. His voice came measured, like a path set with stones. “If our lies can be copied, they can be aimed—at Luthgar, at Alfareth East, at Cavaryn… or back at us. Two graves, two stories, one truth smothered between them.”

  “Then we stop leaving graves that can be stolen,” Frannor snapped.

  The words hit harder than the mountain wind.

  Franz—silent until now—leaned forward, knuckles pale against the table. “Cavaryn,” he said. “It smells like them. They’d turn captains into proof if it bought them a night of quiet.”

  Giara shook her head. “Or East. Their patrols are pressing into Morric Vale, step by step. Stage a northern brawl, make us stare at snow while they sketch their border with boot heels.”

  “Luthgar is the simple read,” Jonrel said, tone even. “The prints fit. But the seal-work’s wrong. Luthgar stamps deep—you can read rank and regiment in wax. This rosette’s market-stall thin.”

  “Macrelith?” Draven asked, not to suggest but to test the edge. He set it down himself with a shake. “If it were them, the arrow breaks would preach doctrine. Their lies are symphonies; this is a tune whistled through teeth. Sloppy on purpose.”

  Shan spoke low, the kind of quiet you hear because it doesn’t want to be. “Then maybe we stop squinting at the banners. What if it’s a hand we don’t have on the map?”

  PJ’s voice drifted dry from the corner. “The painter hides while we argue colors. Exactly what he wants.”

  Virella’s gaze cooled. “Then we proceed as if the painter is listening.” She let her eyes travel the length of the table. The Pale Mirror caught a tongue of flame and returned it colder. “Whoever is bending these truths wants our sight split. North. South. Inside our walls.”

  Her eyes rested a moment on Frannor, then on Jonrel—the space between them heavy with the knowledge that one brother planted lies and the other pulled them apart.

  “The choice is simple,” she said. “We do not scatter. We answer on both fronts.”

  She turned first to Draven. “The Theater moves tonight. East’s patrol knights have stepped too far into Morric Vale—set their feet on doubt. No names, no faces, just pressure. I want their captains arguing each other by week’s end.”

  Draven inclined his head. “It’ll be done.”

  “Frannor,” Virella went on, “you ride to Eryndral. Watch the passes—East and Cavaryn both. If either breathes, I want to feel it from here.”

  Frannor’s jaw eased a notch, which for him counted as agreement.

  “Jonrel,” she said, and her voice gentled by a hair, “you’ll rest. Bring your eyes back when they’re worth the risk.”

  “At dawn,” he started.

  “Not at dawn,” Shan said, still low, still steel. “He’ll go when he’s warm again.”

  Virella didn’t argue that. She let it be the order beneath the order.

  “Giara,” she finished. “The Hazens are yours. What woke yesterday belongs to this house now. Make sure it holds.”

  Giara dipped her chin, braid sliding against her shoulder. “It will.”

  Silence filled the seams. None of them liked the taste of any of it, and all of them swallowed.

  Franz’s stare stayed on the veil at Virella’s wrist, as if the Pale Mirror had spoken more than its bearer. Jonrel closed his hand over the too-clean arrow shard until the linen tightened white. Draven’s shadow peeled from the pillar and moved toward the door like a promise made to the dark. Giara’s attention slipped again toward the southern door and the chalk rings beyond it.

  Virella rose. The glass-thread weight at her wrist shifted and settled. “We measure at dusk,” she said. “Bring me something that holds true.”

  Chairs scraped. Boots found stone. Orders became movement.

  By the time the room emptied, only the artifacts remained on the table: a lie in wood, a lie in ink, a lie in wax. The torchlight made them look warmer than they were.

  The hall banked what no one had risked saying aloud, like a coal kept under ash:

  Who benefits?