Sky and ground were locked together like two plates of cold iron, leaving only a seam where a single line of aurora leaked through.

  When Erika woke at the mouth of the rock shelter, a dark trace of dried blood clung to the corner of her lips. She shook the ashes of a fully burned into her palm, ground them fine with her thumb, and blew them away—like a small offering made to the night itself.

  “We need to move,” she said. Her voice was still hoarse, but steady. “Out of this wind corridor. We need terrain that can block .”

  Jabari nodded. The weakness from last night’s overburn still lingered in him. He tried twice to raise flame along the blade’s spine—each time the wind pressed it down like a fingertip snuffing a wick. He sheathed the knife and switched to rope and ice axe, shifting his strength away from and back to .

  Lucas looked up at the sky. The aurora reflected in his lenses shattered into fragments. He balanced the folding disc in his palm and brushed his thumb across its three axes. The gold threads stirred, lifting like three cautious snakes waking from cold. He didn’t let them extend far—only probing the air to the north by a single inch.

  Wind direction and magnetic deviation crawled across his vision, cold and precise.

  “Seven degrees northeast,” he said, closing the disc and pointing toward a narrow snow valley. “The wind splits there. The middle leaves a pocket of dead air. Converging force doesn’t like straight lines—it’ll have to curve.”

  They walked most of the day along the valley. The snow was a dead white. Occasionally, vultures traced distant arcs high above. In the afternoon the wind paused briefly, and the sky seemed to be pulled open a finger’s width from behind, revealing a paler gray.

  In that short breathing space, all three lowered their heads and conducted quick checks—body, tools, limits.

  Erika flexed her fingers. Her right arm was still numb. She laid out her needles and used her left hand to press key points, guiding her own qi through the simplest circulation possible. She knew the arm wouldn’t recover soon—but the other hand needed to be steady. She practiced the rise and fall of three times in her palm, making sure that if she had to face another illusion, she wouldn’t recklessly raise the threshold again.

  She stopped suddenly and looked up.

  “Last night,” she said, “she pointed to two places—the talisman, and her chest. And… the railing at her feet.”

  “A church,” Lucas answered without hesitation. “Or a guardian array rewritten by one.”

  Jabari frowned. “A church would do that?”

  “Yes,” Lucas said flatly. “Not only churches. Any authority has done it. Sealing. Rewriting. Pacifying. Erasing. Different goals—similar methods.”

  Erika was quiet for a moment. “If she’s really inside a structure like that,” she said, lifting her gaze, “then it should our key. Not open—but locate the seam.”

  “You’re going to look again?” Jabari asked.

  “Not now.” Erika shook her head. “I need to stabilize first. Last night I nearly bled out from backlash—I rushed it. Another attempt like that, and it won’t stop at one mouthful.”

  Both men nodded at once.

  They moved on in silence. The silence thickened—not emptier, but denser with understanding. Wind rose again, snow grains slapping the ice walls like impatient children. Cloaks tightened. They walked.

  At dusk, they set a temporary camp beneath a wind-carved ice arch. The arch curved like the rib of some enormous beast, shielding the front from the gale while allowing fire without suffocation.

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  Jabari went to cut ice for water. When he returned, frozen tears clung to the corners of his eyes. He simmered the pot until fine bubbles formed, dropped in strips of dried meat, and let them soak into something pale but swallowable.

  Erika took a sip. Her stomach recoiled—still sensitive from last night’s backlash. She forced herself to drink slowly, mouthful by mouthful, until the warmth slid past her throat and settled into her gut like tiny lamps being lit in the dark.

  “I’m going in,” she said, setting the bowl aside and wiping her mouth. “Just to look. No linking.”

  Jabari opened his mouth to protest—

  —and stopped.

  The Ancestors’ murmur pressed lightly behind his ear:

  He looked at Erika and nodded. “I’ll watch you. You reach—I block.”

  Lucas spread the folding disc. Three guard needles rose, hovering a foot in front of their chests.

  “They do one thing,” he said. “If something pulls you, they stitch you back—one stitch.”

  His finger hooked the rim of the disc. The three needles pulsed together, like lamps that could be called.

  Erika took a deep breath. She dimmed the to the bare minimum needed to see. She warmed the jade pendant gently in her palm. Her eyelids lowered.

  The polar night didn’t change. The wind didn’t change. Snow continued to fall in small, patient grains over the ice arch.

  But it was as if she passed through a veil no thicker than silk.

  From the fog ahead, a paler white approached. The figure within sharpened—

  Sophia.

  She looked even paler than the night before, the blue shadows at her eyes pressed deeper. She seemed sealed inside some transparent vessel, wrapped in dense lines. Each knot in those lines felt like a prayer.

  Erika’s heart tightened—but she forced herself not to trace every strand. She knew that to analyze too closely was to sink.

  “I’m here,” Erika said softly. “But I can’t come closer.”

  Sophia nodded. She raised her hand and pressed her fingers to the half-talisman. It flared faintly, then dimmed. She looked up at Erika’s jade pendant, her gaze steady and intent.

  “I know.” Erika clenched the pendant tighter.

  She shifted her focus downward.

  Between the lines at Sophia’s feet was a gap. Within it lay a darker structure—stone, perhaps metal. Small, dense text was carved into it: something like Old Latin, something like northern prayers. The lines looped again and again over the text, cinching it into the vessel’s flesh.

  Erika’s heart sank hard.

  This was a double seal

  An outer layer of rewritten prayer. An inner layer of structural load.

  They had turned her into a counterweight

  Sophia moved suddenly. She pressed a hand to her chest. Her lips formed two words.

  Erika held her breath to read them.

  “Cold. Pain.”

  Her throat tightened. She fought the instinct to reach out—she knew it was only an image, and touch would only leave a hook.

  “Hold on,” she whispered. “We’ll find you.”

  Sophia nodded.

  Her gaze flicked past Erika’s shoulder, as if she saw someone else. Her lips moved again, barely—

  The word never finished.

  The illusion shuddered, as if yanked violently from the other side. The light in Sophia’s eyes died. She fell backward into nothing.

  “Back!” Lucas’s shout detonated in Erika’s ears.

  The guard needles hummed. One stitch yanked her soul back from the edge. Her chest clenched; sweetness rose in her throat again. She swallowed hard.

  Jabari caught her wrist, the Ancestors’ strength pressing her firmly back into herself.

  The white mist vanished.

  Under the ice arch, only fire and wind remained.

  Erika opened her eyes. They burned—but were clear.

  “She’s being used as a counterweight,” she said immediately. “On the far side of a door. Outer seal is prayer. Inner seal is load-bearing.”

  Lucas was silent for a long time.

  “…They made her into the latch,” he finally said.

  Jabari clenched his fists. His knuckles cracked dryly, one by one. The Ancestors sighed a single word at his ear.

  “I can extrapolate the door’s rough location,” Lucas said. “But the cost is high. In my current state, I can only derive the first layer of the path before the stitching force pulls me in. If I push further, I’ll fall.”

  “Then don’t push,” Erika cut in at once. Her gaze was firm. “We resupply. Change terrain. Find blind angles where converging force can’t converge cleanly. Then we push.”

  Lucas looked at her. For the first time, something like gratitude surfaced in his eyes.

  He closed the disc, pressing it back to his chest like a page returned to the heart. Firelight washed his profile—pale, but steady.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly. “But I won’t wait long.”

  “No one asked you to,” Jabari replied coldly. “But someone knock you out first.”

  Erika let out a brief laugh—short, but enough to loosen the air by half an inch.

  Later, as night deepened, the wind stopped for three breaths.

  All three lifted their heads.

  The aurora smoothed, drawn into a broad band across the sky. At its far end, a thin seam appeared—like the crack of a door—slowly opening toward the north.