The tide had gone out, leaving strands of seaweed stuck to the barnacled stone beneath Harbinth’s eastern docks. The waves lapped in slow rhythm, brushing wood and rock with a sound like steady breathing. Sails hung limp on the anchored ships, and the wind barely stirred them. The night was clear, with stars scattered sharp across the sky and a half-moon hanging low, its silver glow spilling across the black water.

  The docks stood mostly deserted. Nets and ropes lay coiled in corners, and a few empty crates leaned against one another as if for comfort. Watchmen kept to the streets closer to the walls, leaving this stretch of harbor in darkness.

  A figure stepped out from shadow, his movements almost too quiet for a man. The Seeker moved like someone more at home in the wild than in a city, his green cloak shifting faintly as he crossed the damp planks. He stopped near the cover of stacked nets and waited.

  Another figure came soon after, broad and tall, his golden-blond hair gleaming even in moonlight. His polished cuirass caught the light, though his long ride south had dulled its shine. He carried himself like a soldier used to command, yet in the silence of the harbor his face softened.

  First Captain Halric Vane.

  They stopped a pace apart. For a heartbeat they only looked at each other. Then, slowly, Vane reached forward, and the Seeker stepped in. Their arms wrapped around one another, the embrace quiet but strong. It carried the weight of fifty years gone.

  “Brother,” Vane said, his voice rough with restraint.

  “Too long,” the Seeker whispered. “Too long.”

  They stepped back. In their gazes was something deeper than recognition, an old understanding that time could not erase.

  “I feared I would not see you for another century,” the Seeker said.

  “I hoped it would be another,” Vane replied, almost smiling.

  They sat down at the edge of the dock, boots swinging just above the water. For a time, they let the sounds of the harbor speak in place of words: the groan of wood against tide, the faint rattle of chains, the sea’s pulse steady beneath them.

  The Seeker finally spoke. “The dryads are stirring. Nethira’s visions grow sharper. She has more courage than she realizes.”

  Vane rested his arms across his knees. “The humans stir as well. Ennett drives herself to exhaustion but still stands firm. The men follow her because they believe she won’t fall. Haldrin’s resources are stretched, but he gives what he can. The dwarves…” He gave a short exhale. “They’re harder to judge. They fight, but not all of them know why yet.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “And the boy?” the Seeker asked.

  “Velthur.” Vane’s face grew thoughtful. “He found something. I don’t yet know what, but when he carried it back the air itself shifted. The city changed.”

  The Seeker tilted his head. “That fits with what I’ve felt in the hills. There’s something festering there. It has the feel of our kind’s magic, but not whole. Twisted. Hidden in shadow.”

  Vane’s eyes narrowed. “Drakes do not hide from each other. Even the fallen leave a trace. We can always tell when one of us has turned.”

  “This one has masked itself well,” the Seeker murmured.

  They sat with that thought, the silence heavy and old. Both of them felt it, that faint pulse in their blood, like a drumbeat only drakes could hear. It had started days ago, and it called to more than soldiers. It drew guilds, priests, wanderers, survivors. All of them converging on Harbinth, as if pulled here by an unseen hand.

  “They are being gathered,” the Seeker said. “Like twigs before a fire.”

  “But whose fire?” Vane asked. His voice was low but sharp.

  The question hung in the night. Neither answered.

  The Seeker looked across the black water. “Do you remember the River Kingdoms well?”

  Vane’s jaw tightened. “I remember.”

  “Their flames reached the mountains that year,” the Seeker went on. “We swore to guard them. But when the humans turned, when they broke their oaths, you told me to walk away.”

  “I told you,” Vane said, turning to meet his brother’s eyes, “that if we stayed, we would burn with them.”

  The Seeker’s expression softened. “And yet I stayed.”

  “And yet you stayed,” Vane agreed, but there was no anger in his tone. Only the weight of memory. “You hid yourself among dryads. I chose the path of the sword.”

  They both remembered. Fifty years since they last stood together. Fifty years wearing shapes that were not fully theirs. Fifty years of watching kingdoms rise and fall while they kept to shadows.

  “I thought you dead,” Vane admitted. “When the reports reached me, I thought the fire had taken you. It nearly broke me.”

  The Seeker shook his head faintly. “I thought you had forgotten me. That you had chosen to live as a man, to let the drake in you fade.”

  Vane looked up at the stars. “The fire does not die, brother. It only waits.”

  The Seeker let the silence hold for a long moment. Then he spoke again. “We cannot wait any longer. We must warn the High Council. High Peak needs to know the balance is trembling.”

  “I’ll call to the sky,” Vane said. “The old way. They’ll hear me if they still listen.”

  “And I will reach through the Rootways,” the Seeker added. “The trees remember my voice.”

  They rose together, their cloaks brushing against the damp wood. For a moment neither moved to leave.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Vane said.

  The Seeker placed a hand on his shoulder. “This moment feels more like home than any place I’ve stood in years.”

  Vane gave a quiet nod. Then, slowly, the two pulled up their hoods. The First Captain of Arnathe’s Watch. The wandering druid. Their roles slid back over them like armor.

  They stepped into opposite ends of the night, each carrying the old fire in his blood, each bearing the same truth:

  The storm was near.

  And this time, it might not spare the sky.