Mortals believe protection is a gift given to the fragile by the strong.

  It isn't. Protection is a debt. And like all debts, someone always pays.

  Sometimes the price is peace: the quiet life surrendered for a watch post at the edge of something dangerous. Sometimes the price is blood: theirs, or those they couldn't reach in time. The worst price, I've found, is neither of these. The worst is continuity—the duty that does not end with one body, but passes like a curse from one willing pair of hands to the next.

  Children are always the last to know this. They accept the inheritance before they can read the terms. They carry names and gifts and bloodlines they didn't ask for, into wars they didn't start, beside guardians still bleeding from the last one.

  And the guardians? They say yes anyway. They always say yes. Not because they believe they'll succeed—they've lived long enough to know better—but because the alternative is watching the world collapse without having tried.

  That is the cost of protection. Not what it takes from those who receive it. But what it leaves in those who give it.

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  The Veil breathes — 11 months before The Convergence

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  Iakob almost jumped out of his skin when a hand fell on his shoulders.

  “Curious, are we?” Loti’s voice was stern but not unkind.

  He hadn’t even heard her approach.

  “Come away from there, boy. Some things aren’t meant for young eyes.”

  Only then did he realize she was standing on the bench behind him, one hand against the stone as if she’d been watching him longer than he knew.

  She guided him down carefully. From the courtyard below, the castle guards pretended not to stare. Loti gave them a short bow before steering Iakob back toward the infirmary.

  Iakob let himself be led away, his mind still reeling. He clutched Headhunter close, the words twisting inside him, too heavy to speak. Then, as if something cracked, he blurted what had been buried deepest in his chest.

  "Loti…" He said in a low soft voice. "When people die, do they leave pieces behind?"

  Loti just looked at him. His expression cut her deep, but she maintained a stoic face.

  She was composing the right words in her head. But before she could even speak, Iakob continued. "Cedran did. I heard them." His voice still low with grief as he looked down at the floor, "What really happened to him?" Iakob asked.

  Loti paused again before answering, "Nothing that we must know." Loti said firmly. "What happened to Cedran is a matter for The Council. What matters for you is rest and not wandering castle grounds when you should be in bed."

  Had the boy asked the sky above him, it would have nodded. The moons were eaten, yet their fragments still haunt the heavens. Even when they were gone, some part of them kept circling the living—faint, unseen, but never entirely lost.

  As she tucked him back into the narrow infirmary bed, Iakob couldn't shake what he saw—the grief, the tension, the fear.

  He lay in the darkness. Headhunter conjured close against his side. The weight of the axe like an anchor to a world that was rapidly becoming more dangerous than he'd ever imagined. Outside his window, the moon traced its ancient path across the sky, one step closer to an alignment that might determine the fate of everything he'd ever known.

  When sleep finally claimed him, it was shallow and short.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Outside the preparation chamber, shadows clung to the stone corridor. Hortew’s staff cast a pale circle of light around him and Grex as they walked in silence, the weight of what they witnessed pressing heavy in their chest.

  Behind them, Evelyn lingered with Cedran’s kin, while Montzy sat slumped on a bench, pale and shaken from what the raven’s deeper memory had forced him to glimpse.

  “Cedran’s death wasn’t random,” Grex said as he glanced at Evelyn and Montzy. “Whatever he discovered, someone killed to keep it buried.”

  “And now children are drawn into its path,” Hortew murmured. “Not because they are ready, but because who stood before them have been cut down. The Voidcallers do not strike at random. They choose their prey. They do not waste their hunger on the unbound or apprentices. They hunt crowns, relics, and knowledge—the pillars that hold the world steady. Shatter the pillars, and the rest crumbles. Cedran, Kendal, the others who have vanished… each was not just a man, but a keystone."

  Grex said nothing, only watched the silver light of Hortew’s staff trembled against the walls.

  “The old keystones are falling,” Hortew went on. “Armies withered, houses divided, knowledge scattered. What remains must be guarded fiercely. That is why Dayang Marilag secretly came to me after the Council meeting. Two children from Magiting with bloodlines marked by strange but useful gifts. She fears the Voidcallers will find them before we do… If we do not act swiftly.”

  Grex exhaled slowly, "And you trust her on this?"

  "My oracle gift, the signs, her knowledge, they all align. Marilag hasn't seen the whole shape, but she is right about the children," Hortew said as he gazed at the Lake of the Still Moon.

  Grex’s brow furrowed. He also looked at the lake where he and Kendal used to train. “Would you set these children against Baku’s tide?”

  “Not set,” Hortew corrected gently. “Protect. Train. Strengthen. They are not the whole answer, Grex, but they are threads in it. If cut too soon, we weaken before the fight even begins. If safeguarded, they might tip the balance.”

  They paused at a narrow window, moonlight pouring through, the lake below reflecting it like scattered diamonds in still water. Grex exhaled slowly. “And you want me to find them.”

  “You must,” Hortew said. “Marilag has given names and directions. We'll give accompanying letters, but parchment is not enough. Their tribes will not trust Wolfpit on faith alone. They must see you, hear you, judge your intent. Convince them that the Academy is not a prison, but a shield.” Grex’s silence stretched, heavy with resistance.

  Finally, he was able to speak his mind. "You're asking me to pull children from their homes and promise to keep them safe." His voice dropped, almost dangerous. "What happens when I can't keep that promise? When one of them ends up like Cedran—cold on a table while we search their memories for scraps?"

  Hortew met his gaze without flinching. "Then you will mourn them, as you mourned those who fell beside you. But if we do nothing, Grex, we won't even have that mercy. We'll simply lose—everyone, everything, all at once."

  The old man's hand trembled slightly on his staff, and for the first time, Grex saw past the Supreme Grand Meister to the man beneath—fragile, desperate, carrying weight that would crush lesser men.

  "I am asking you to do the impossible," Hortew said quietly. "Again. I know. But you are the only one I trust with this… and the only one capable."

  Grex looked at him. Really looked. The tremor in Hortew's hand. The exhaustion carved into every line of his face. The way his oracle sight seemed to burn him from within.

  "You're not well," Grex said.

  "None of us are. Some of us are just better at pretending." Hortew straightened, though it cost him. "Take Iakob with you. Go to Magiting. Find the children before the Voidcallers do."

  "And if the tribes refuse? If they see our stretched hand as another kind of threat?" Grex asked.

  "Then you convince them otherwise." Hortew's voice hardened with the weight of command. "Iakob's presence proves our sincerity. If we entrust even our own bloodline to this path, the tribes may entrust theirs."

  "And let the boy see Magiting with his own eyes, not just through stories. He will need such lessons sooner than he wishes."

  Grex did not argue.

  Hortew touched the wall steadying himself, then spoke once more after catching his breath. “Take Montzy too. His birds are our lifeline. The Voidcallers are moving, Grex. If we do not act now, they will find the children first. And if they do, we lose not only them, but the hope they may carry into the coming storm.”

  Hortew gave Grex a pat in the shoulder. "You did remarkably well with Montzy, you will also do the same for these kids. I have no doubt." The staff’s glow dimmed, leaving only moonlight to gild the stones.

  Hortew turned fully to face him. His voice was calm, but the light in his eyes was fierce. “Dayang Marilag named the children: Larina, with water’s inheritance and Kahel, who walks between flesh and spirit.”

  "One to command the tides. One to walk the spirit paths. And Iakob—bound to a power feared and coveted in equal measure." Hortew's eyes burned with desperate conviction. "These three, Grex. Each a thread of the same tapestry. Together, they may weave a knot the Voidcallers cannot sever."

  Grex just bowed and said nothing. He turned toward the lake, where moonlight shattered across black water. The old man’s words lingered like a tolling bell.

  Beneath an old tree, Grex settled, watching the Lake of the Still Moon. He remembered the days when he and Kendal trained there. Breathless. Loud. Alive. Now it was empty. Now there was only stillness where their voices used to be.

  The full moon blazed in the water below, white against all that black—and Grex could not tell, looking at it, whether the light was something rising or something drowning.