Dawn Walker

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Mihos listened to him without interrupting. That was worse than getting angry.

When Dickoff finished, the pavilion held silence again.

Mihos leaned back very slightly.

He asked, "They struck in the night."

Dickoff replied, "Yes."

"Before the formal opening of tomorrow’s pressure line."

"Yes."

That answer hung for a beat.

Then Mihos smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. It was the kind that appeared when anger became so sharp it no longer needed noise to prove itself.

"So," he said softly, "they thought they were clever."

Dickoff said nothing.

Mihos’s fingers tapped once against the carved arm of his chair.

"They were supposed to be reacting," he said. "They were supposed to spend the night swallowing panic while your side spread more rot by morning." His smile thinned. "Instead, they went hunting."

That word changed the air in the pavilion.

Stephen did not move.

Dickoff remained bowed enough to show respect and upright enough not to look broken.

Mihos’s eyes sharpened. "How many losses?"

Dickoff gave the numbers.

Mihos’s smile vanished completely.

For a breath, not even the lamp smoke in the pavilion seemed willing to move.

Then Mihos said the most dangerous thing in the calmest tone.

"Tomorrow, I want them hurt where it stains."

Dickoff lifted his head slightly. "Yes."

"Not only merchants. Not only workers. Pride." Mihos’s gaze hardened toward the city beyond the pavilion walls. "The low born have made one win. But it won’t last long."

He stood up. That alone shifted every servant and guard within earshot.

"Then tomorrow," Mihos said, "I will remind them what it means to provoke a line above them."

Dickoff bowed deeper this time.

Relief and fear both moved through him. Relief because Mihos’s anger had not turned on him fully. Fear because anger not spent on him would now be spent somewhere else, and that somewhere else would not be kind.

Back in Dawn House, the day moved forward into noon.

The pressure of the house never stopped, but it changed shape around the middle hours. Morning fear became controlled speed. Controlled speed became work. Work became waiting.

Then Bat Bat arrived. It was not through a hallway. It was not through a door.

It can through the Void Land.

Sekhmet was in the strategy room reviewing the morning’s adjusted movement reports when he felt the pull first. Not the system. Not a threat. A familiar thread of urgency from the hidden world, followed by the sound of someone calling his name from the sealed chamber route outside.

"Master. Master."

It was Bat Bat’s voice. It was not a panicked voice. It was bright and exciting.

That alone made him stand.

He crossed the corridor quickly enough that the nearest maid stepped aside before her own mind had caught up with her body. At the void land, Bat Bat was waiting, hair slightly disordered, eyes lit with a kind of fierce joy that usually meant something either wonderful or disruptive had happened.

This time, it was both.

"She is ready," Bat Bat said the moment he opened the void land.

Sekhmet’s gaze sharpened at once.

"Leaf."

"Yes." Bat Bat nodded hard enough that the motion almost became a bounce before she forced it back under control. "She thought about it properly. She asked again. I explained again. Then she sat in the green patch for a long time and decided." Bat Bat’s expression shifted into something brighter and more serious at the same time. "She is still scared. But she is ready."

That was enough.

Sekhmet stepped into the chamber, and Bat Bat followed him immediately. The stone room was cool and dim, the lamp on the wall still burning from the last passage into the Void Land. Outside, Dawn House continued moving through its noon rhythms, but here the air felt cut away from ordinary time.

He entered the gate.

Darkness folded outward.

The Void Land received them in its usual vast stillness.

The wrong sky hung above them. The black rocky stretches extended into distances that always felt slightly dishonest. But now, in that dead expanse, one patch of life broke the emptiness. The green around Leaf’s chosen ground looked small against the full breadth of the Void Land, yet it was no longer fragile. It had become a beginning.

Leaf waited there.

Auri stood nearby, one black wing half-folded, her posture calm and watchful. She had clearly already been told what was coming. She looked at Sekhmet once, then at Bat Bat, and gave the slightest nod. That was enough to say she would not interfere unless something went wrong.

Leaf hovered above one of the broader leaves near the center of the patch, tiny and bright against the green. Her glow was not as playful as usual. The little spirit’s wings trembled faintly, and the green-gold light around her body pulsed with nervous energy. She was afraid. That much was plain even without Bat Bat’s strange understanding of her. But she had not hidden.

That mattered more than courage without thought ever could.

Bat Bat went to her first.

Of course she did.

Sekhmet stepped close enough that Leaf could see him clearly. He lowered himself as well, one knee touching the softened ground beside the growing patch. It was absurd, in one way, that a bloodline decision touching the future of an entire hidden world should come down to one tiny spirit girl no taller than his hand. But absurdity did not reduce importance.

He asked quietly, "She still wants it?"

Bat Bat listened.

Leaf answered in a string of tiny sounds and bright flickers.

Bat Bat nodded. "Yes. She wants it. She understands the painful part now. She wants the stronger part more."

He thought, "Interesting."

Sekhmet looked at Leaf. "And she understands this may change her."

Bat Bat translated again.

Leaf hesitated longer this time. Her light dimmed, then rose. She lifted both tiny hands and made a motion outward, then downward toward the green patch. Then she looked at Bat Bat and made another soft sound.

Bat Bat smiled faintly. "She says the Void Land is too empty. She wants to help fill it."

That landed deeper than he expected.

Of course it did. Because Leaf had been born into the green patch. To her, the Void Land was not a prison or storage world. It was home, but an injured one. A spirit born from growth would feel the dead stretches of it more keenly than any of the rest of them ever could.

Auri’s eyes shifted once toward the black distance beyond the patch, then back to Leaf. Her expression did not change, but something quieter moved in it.

Sekhmet asked, "And if it hurts too much."

Bat Bat translated.

Leaf made a little uncertain trill and then fluttered up from Bat Bat’s hands just far enough to hover between them. Her tiny body shook once in the air, though whether from fear or resolve even Bat Bat needed a second to untangle.

Then Bat Bat said, "She says she wants you to stop only if she is breaking."

"Interesting. Very interesting."

That was more trust than many adults gave him.

He glanced at Bat Bat. "Can she understand instructions during the process?"

Bat Bat thought. "Some. Not much. If it hurts badly, I think I can keep talking and she will hold onto my voice even if she cannot answer right."

That was useful.

Better than useful.

Auri finally spoke. "What do you need from me?"

Sekhmet answered without looking away from Leaf. "Stay close. If her spirit form destabilizes, calm her first. Do not let panic become flight."

Auri inclined her head once. "Done."

Bat Bat looked at him. "How are you doing this?"

He had already considered that question in his room, and the answer still felt strange even now.

"Not like with Lily. Not like with Mira. Not like with the twins." He lifted one hand slightly. "Leaf is too small for that."

Bat Bat’s face tightened. "I know."

Sekhmet raised his other hand and formed a thin blood-thread between two fingers, then let it gather into a single suspended bead at the tip. Deep red. Dense. Controlled. Too much of his blood too quickly could drown her tiny body in force before the conversion line even settled. That meant precision mattered more here than it ever had before.

He turned inward.

"System. Minimum viable conversion method."

The answer came at once.

[Ding! SYSTEM Notification-

Target: Leaf.

Recommended conversion process: controlled blood infusion.

Warning: excessive volume may destabilize spirit form.

Suggested method: one stabilized blood drop followed by guided host intent.]

"Good."

That matched his instinct.

He looked at Bat Bat. "Tell her this will end with my blood. Only a little. She must take all of it."

Bat Bat translated carefully. Leaf listened, then nodded once. The little motion was so small it might have looked like a tremble to anyone who did not know to watch for it.

Sekhmet extended his finger.

The blood bead hovered there, held by control rather than gravity. It was almost beautiful, in a terribly precise way. Too much power was packed into too little shape.

Leaf looked at it.

Her glow shivered faintly.