Chapter 92: Made for You

The request from Avalon arrived while Enna was eating.

That alone made it unusual.

She had left the wheel drawings closed, moved three components away from her plate, and informed Asha that any problem capable of waiting until morning could certainly wait until she finished her supper.

Then Eve read the heading of the new message.

“A reconnaissance expedition.”

Enna put down her fork.

Dinraal, standing near the window with Isolde, turned.

“Where?”

“An old arch on Hyrran.”

Eve continued reading.

The message was brief. It carried the outline of a decision, not the discussion that had produced it.

Lucas intended to investigate a passage that had been sealed for three hundred years.

The last known expedition had returned one survivor.

A woman named Vessa.

She had taken twelve people with her.

She had come back alone.

For a long moment, the room held very still.

Then Enna pushed her plate farther from the table’s edge.

“What are they asking?”

“Nothing yet. They’re telling us why some of the usual exchanges may be delayed. There will be preparations first.”

“How long?”

“Several days. They’re being fitted at the Hyrrani forges.”

Dinraal looked down at his wrist.

The silver lay against his skin in a smooth, familiar band.

It had taken him through things ordinary armour would never have survived.

It had also allowed him to enter places he might otherwise have had the good sense to fear more carefully.

“Who is going?” he asked.

Eve read the names.

Lucas.

His wives.

Dorothy.

Ingrid.

Maura.

Teshka.

Kyria.

Isolde’s hand closed around his.

Not hard.

Enough.

Eve reached the final part of the message.

The expedition had a limited purpose.

Look.

Return.

Report.

No attempt to conquer whatever lay beyond.

No attempt to remain there.

Dinraal listened to those limits and felt the effort required to keep them.

Across the table, Enna picked up her fork again.

“What?” Asha asked.

“If they’re taking several days to prepare,” Enna said, “I can finish supper.”

She took a mouthful.

Chewed.

Then looked toward Eve.

“Find out whether Keir needs anything from us before the relay becomes busy.”

Dinraal asked for the available history.

He did it once.

Carefully.

He did not request every private conversation on Avalon, or a complete account of what Lucas feared, or information the people there had not yet decided was reliable.

Only what could help Hearth understand the destination.

The answer came the following morning.

Vessa had been nineteen.

Her mother had been First Blade.

The twelve who went with her had been among the best Hyrran could send.

She had returned on the ninth day, without her blade.

For a year, she had not spoken.

When she finally described the place, she had used very few words.

It was hungry.

Afterward, she had ordered the arch sealed.

She had lived a long life.

She had become First Blade herself.

She had never gone back.

Dinraal read the account at the long table while Aramaeis stood beside him.

Asha had placed an old image of the ring on the wall.

The far side remained marked with the towers they knew had gone dark.

Nobody drew a line between that image and the account of Vessa.

Not yet.

“Could it be the Questioner?” Dinraal asked.

Eve answered immediately.

“We have nothing that establishes that.”

“I know.”

“Then we should keep knowing it.”

He looked at her.

She was tired.

Not from lack of sleep this time.

From the effort of resisting an answer that would make a frightening unknown feel familiar.

Dinraal nodded.

Aramaeis rested two fingers on the page.

“This woman came back.”

“Yes.”

“And lived for many years afterward.”

Dinraal looked at him.

His uncle’s gaze remained on the words.

“I would like to know more about those years someday.”

“Why?”

“Because everything we have been given about her begins and ends with what happened through that arch.”

He paused.

“She was also someone who brought herself home.”

Dinraal read the account again.

Then he asked Eve to keep Vessa’s name with it wherever the report was copied.

The departure on Avalon had no immediate effect on Hearth’s patrol schedule.

Arcturus made that clear at the morning briefing.

They would continue watching their own routes.

The outer stations would remain staffed as planned.

The small survey vessel preparing to inspect the southern coastal shelf would still depart once its checks were complete.

Dinraal looked up at that.

“The Morrow?”

Arcturus nodded.

“Water samples, seabed mapping, and an inspection of the proposed anchorage. Three days.”

Dinraal knew the mission.

He had approved the plan weeks earlier.

The settlement needed a sheltered place for larger surface craft. Until they understood the seabed and seasonal currents, every proposed harbour remained a drawing with hopes attached.

“Who is commanding?”

“Cressa.”

That reassured him.

She had flown Dinraal and Isolde to the coast for their few quiet days away.

He trusted her judgment.

Arcturus studied his face.

“Is there a reason to delay?”

“No.”

The answer came more slowly than Dinraal wanted.

Arcturus waited.

Dinraal looked at the mission plan.

It would have been easy to call the expedition unnecessary.

A distant danger.

Incomplete knowledge.

The possibility that something might happen while a vessel was elsewhere.

There was always a reason to postpone a future that required people to move.

He set the plan down.

“No,” he repeated. “The checks should continue.”

Alexander nodded.

“We’ll review their recovery arrangements this afternoon.”

“May I join you?”

“Yes.”

Arcturus reached for the next report.

Then he paused.

“Dinraal.”

He looked up.

“This is a survey.”

“I know.”

“Let the crew know that too.”

For a moment, Dinraal felt defensive.

Then he remembered how readily a room changed when he entered it wearing silver over his hands.

“I will,” he said.

The Morrow had once carried maintenance crews between the larger ships.

Its hull was sound.

Its interior had been altered so often that almost every cupboard opened in a different direction.

Cressa met them at the ramp.

“Mind the third step.”

Dinraal looked down.

“Loose?”

“Higher.”

He stepped over it.

Inside, two technicians were checking the environmental equipment. A folded sampling rig occupied most of the central compartment. Someone had labelled the new storage racks in handwriting large enough to be read during turbulence.

Alexander began with the recovery plan.

Dinraal walked the vessel with Cressa.

They discussed weather.

Communications.

The smaller landing craft they would use near the shelf.

Then they reached the emergency equipment lockers.

Cressa opened one.

Inside were pressure garments, harnesses, and flotation assemblies adapted from the fleet’s older stores.

Dinraal picked up a harness.

It was familiar.

Too familiar.

He had seen people wear that pattern when the fleet had still been running from one uncertain destination to another.

“This has been inspected?”

“Twice.”

“The stitching?”

“Replaced where necessary.”

He checked the fastening.

It worked.

The webbing was sound.

Then Cressa said, “The problem isn’t whether it breaks.”

Dinraal looked at her.

She took the harness and held it against herself.

The central fastening sat too high.

The shoulder adjustment reached its limit before the lower straps settled properly.

“I can make it secure,” she said. “I cannot make it comfortable.”

“For a short evacuation—”

“For a short evacuation, I would prefer to breathe.”

Dinraal stopped.

Cressa lowered the harness.

“These were made for people wearing another layer underneath. Most of ours don’t fit the old standard.”

He looked into the locker.

Enough equipment.

All inspected.

All technically available.

He had nearly accepted that as the same thing as ready.

“Show me the rest,” he said.

By the end of the afternoon, four members of the crew had equipment that worked properly only if they stood still.

A fifth could reach the emergency release with one hand but not the other.

Another had been tightening a strap across a healed injury because admitting discomfort seemed less important than allowing the mission to proceed.

Johanna arrived after Cressa called her.

She listened to the explanations.

Then she asked everyone to put the equipment on again.

This time, they sat.

Bent.

Reached overhead.

Crawled through the narrow opening into the lower compartment.

The problems became obvious.

Dinraal watched a surveyor struggle to turn sideways without catching a fastening against the hatch.

“Why didn’t you report this?”

The man looked at him.

Then toward Cressa.

“I could still use it.”

Johanna crouched beside the harness.

“You could tolerate it.”

The surveyor said nothing.

She loosened one strap.

“Those are different.”

Dinraal looked away.

He had heard the difference before.

Often from Isolde.

Often directed at him.

Alexander wrote the defects into the departure record.

The survey would wait until the equipment fitted.

Not indefinitely.

Not because the mission had become frightening.

Because they had found specific problems with specific remedies.

Dinraal helped remove the harnesses from the locker.

One of the technicians approached.

“Will you make replacements with the silver?”

He considered it.

He could probably make something stronger.

Something that would close around each person precisely.

Something they would have difficulty repairing when he was not there.

“I’ll help the people making them,” he said.

The technician looked surprised.

Then nodded.

Cressa leaned against the locker.

“That,” she said, “sounds promising.”

The first picture from the Hyrrani forges arrived that evening.

Heat filled it.

Even without sound, Dinraal could imagine the scale of the place.

Stone cut deep into a mountain.

Work areas built for materials and loads their own workshop had never needed to handle.

Figures in leather aprons standing beneath the light of enormous furnaces.

The description named the smith directing the fittings.

Odra.

She had made armour for Andraste.

For Kyria before her.

For Kyria’s mother before that.

Dinraal studied the small woman in the picture.

Her hands looked shaped by a lifetime of work.

Aramaeis leaned closer.

“She’s looking at them.”

Asha glanced toward him.

“Of course she is.”

“No. At them.”

Dinraal understood.

Odra was not looking at eleven sets of measurements.

She was watching how people stood.

Where they put their hands.

Which movements came easily.

Which garments they were reluctant to remove.

What they were already carrying.

The next packet described Dorothy’s fitting.

Fine Hyrrani iron beneath the dark coat she would not give up.

Her hands left free.

A short blade.

No attempt to make her resemble someone who had spent a lifetime fighting with one.

Dinraal thought of Cressa holding the old harness against her chest.

“They’re making it for the work each person does,” he said.

Enna nodded.

“As they should.”

There was no envy in her voice.

There was interest.

The kind that made her put another task aside and find a clean page.

She asked Eve whether any details of the fastening arrangements could be shared.

Then she looked at Dinraal.

“You found something on the survey vessel.”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

He told her.

Enna sighed.

“Bring the worst one.”

Rhiannon arrived at the workshop carrying a sewing case.

Enna looked up.

“I didn’t ask for decorations.”

Rhiannon placed the case on the bench.

“Then we are both spared disappointment.”

Dinraal, standing between them, decided not to speak.

Halen had brought offcuts for replacement stiffeners.

Johanna had marked the places where pressure needed to be relieved.

Cressa stood beside the workbench with the old harness in her hands.

Rhiannon inspected the damaged lining.

Then the seam.

Then the adjustment range.

“Who chose this material?”

“A procurement office that may no longer exist,” Cressa said.

“That seems convenient for them.”

Rhiannon opened her case.

The work took longer than Dinraal expected.

Not the cutting.

Not the replacement of worn pieces.

The fitting.

Cressa put the harness on.

Moved.

Took it off.

A seam shifted.

A fastening was turned.

The assembly was tried again.

At the next bench, the surveyor with the old injury learned that he had been adjusting the harness to protect the wrong place. Johanna showed the makers where the load should fall.

Nobody told him to endure it more gracefully.

Dinraal helped hold pieces while Halen drilled new mounting holes.

The silver remained a tool at his wrist.

A clamp.

A temporary support.

Something used for a clear task and withdrawn when the task was done.

Rhiannon glanced toward his hand.

“Hold that exactly there.”

He did.

“Not tighter.”

“I’m not.”

“You were considering it.”

Cressa laughed.

The sound eased something in the room.

By evening, the first harness fitted.

Cressa sat in it.

Reached both releases.

Crawled through the test opening.

Stood.

Then she took a full breath.

Dinraal saw her notice the difference.

She looked at Rhiannon.

“Thank you.”

Rhiannon smoothed the edge of the new lining.

“You should have been able to do that before.”

The reports from Avalon continued in small pieces.

Maura had asked for pockets.

Eleven of them.

Warm enough to carry bread.

Rhiannon read that account and nodded with such satisfaction that Dinraal knew the request had entered some permanent private standard by which future armour would be judged.

Ingrid’s protection had been made from a black material drawn from beneath the forges.

It could move with her.

It could survive what she became.

Risa’s was lighter still.

A small cloud marked one shoulder.

Her son had asked for it.

Isolde rested her fingers against that part of the picture.

“Of course he did.”

Dinraal thought of the child’s cloud in the earlier images.

A little weather following a sleeping head.

Now a mark carried where his mother would see it.

They learned that Luna’s ice had been given a supporting frame.

That Hana’s protection would fit beneath the cardigan in which people already recognized her.

That Sera, whose fire could consume almost anything worn around it, had been given a ring that remained.

Dinraal turned his own ring with his thumb.

Ordinary metal.

Warm and pale.

Aramaeis had made it to stay a ring when Dinraal stopped thinking about it.

He had never appreciated that more.

“Is it the same kind?” Asha asked, studying Sera’s ring.

“No,” Eve said. “The notes describe something from the deepest forge. We don’t have enough information to identify it beyond that.”

Dinraal was glad she said so.

There was no need to turn every resemblance into a shared origin.

Sometimes people far apart simply understood the same need.

He glanced at Isolde’s hand.

She caught him looking.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Then he corrected himself.

“I was remembering the wedding.”

Her expression softened.

“The collars?”

“The rings.”

“Good.”

She slipped her hand into his.

They watched the next image arrive together.

It showed Teshka in grey armour.

Plain.

Unmarked.

Made for her.

No inherited insignia.

No pattern identifying a rank she had never chosen.

The account was short.

For much of her life, what she wore had defined where she belonged in a formation and what she was expected to do there.

This armour belonged to her.

Nobody had worn it before.

Nobody would inherit a claim over her by making it.

Aramaeis asked Eve to leave the image on the wall.

He stood before it for a long time.

Dinraal joined him.

“What are you thinking?”

“About the inventories.”

The word needed no explanation.

Lists of silver.

Lists of bearers.

Lists that had made people appear to be extensions of whatever valuable thing had been assigned to them.

Dinraal looked toward his wrist.

The silver was his father’s inheritance.

It was also the subject of records that had treated inheritance as an administrative inconvenience.

“We’ve corrected some of them,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Not enough.”

“No.”

His uncle sat.

Dinraal sat beside him.

Aramaeis opened a folder he had brought from the archive room.

Inside were copies of older equipment records.

Some named the people who had used an item.

Others named only a position.

A function.

A unit.

“When the system stopped naming people,” Aramaeis said, “it became very easy to describe what happened to them as a change in allocation.”

Dinraal read one line.

Then another.

“What do we do with these?”

“Keep the originals.”

His uncle’s answer came firmly.

“Even the ugly ones. Especially those. And attach the corrections where we can support them.”

He turned to a clean form.

At the top was a new heading.

Made for.

Below it, room for a name.

Dinraal looked at him.

Aramaeis glanced toward Teshka’s picture.

“It is a small difference.”

“Yes,” Dinraal said.

Then he took a pen.

Cressa was the first name on the new workshop record.

She appeared embarrassed.

“It’s a harness.”

“It is,” Enna said.

“Does it require an entire page?”

“It already required three fittings. The page is inexpensive.”

Rhiannon handed it over.

The measurements were there.

The materials.

The changes.

Who had made them.

Who had checked the releases.

And at the top, Cressa’s name.

Not pilot.

Not standard adult assembly.

Cressa.

The rest of the crew received their records over the next two days.

One surveyor asked whether this meant the equipment could not be used by anyone else in an emergency.

Johanna shook her head.

“It means the next person will know it was made for you and what may need adjusting.”

That reassured him.

Dinraal watched him fold the copy carefully.

He had expected the new equipment to make the crew more confident.

He had not expected the records to matter.

But people read them.

Asked questions.

Corrected details.

One technician pointed out that a repair to her old shoulder injury had happened on the opposite side from the one listed in the medical summary.

The discrepancy was corrected before it became another thing someone carried silently.

At the end of the day, Cressa put on her finished harness and stood in the central compartment.

“Ready for the test?”

Alexander nodded.

This time, Dinraal waited outside the marked area.

The crew released themselves from their seats.

Reached emergency equipment.

Moved through the narrow sections.

Helped one another through the hatch.

Nothing caught.

No one had to stop to force a breath.

When the test ended, Cressa looked toward Dinraal.

“Well?”

He smiled.

“I think you should go and look at the seabed.”

She grinned.

“That was the plan.”

The Morrow left on the sixth morning of the Hyrrani fittings.

Dinraal and Isolde watched from the edge of the landing ground.

There was no ceremony.

Cressa walked up the ramp carrying her flight bag.

The survey team followed.

One of them had a flask that refused to fit into the compartment intended for it.

After a brief argument, he put it somewhere else.

The ramp rose.

The engines warmed.

Then the vessel lifted into the morning.

Dinraal followed it with his eyes until it became a small point above the hills.

Isolde stood beside him.

“Would you rather be aboard?”

“A little.”

“Because you like coastal surveys?”

He smiled.

“Because I know what to do when I’m there.”

She nodded.

He thought about that.

Then said, “Or I think I do.”

The vessel vanished beyond a cloud.

He waited for the old impulse.

The need to find a display.

To watch the route.

To remain involved simply because involvement felt like protection.

It came.

He let it pass long enough to choose what to do.

“Shall we go to the school?” he asked.

Isolde looked surprised.

“You remembered.”

“You need the new containers.”

“And the supports.”

“And the supports.”

She took his hand.

They walked away from the landing ground.

At the school, the gardening group had already begun rearranging the room without them.

Teren had brought three seedlings.

The woman who remembered the bitter leaves had found a plant in the seed records that might grow into something similar enough to try.

The older man who worried about leaving his plant alone had arrived with a neighbour.

He was explaining the watering schedule.

Incorrectly.

His neighbour was correcting him.

Dinraal put down the containers.

Then he went outside to fetch the supports.

For the next two hours, he helped people prepare for things that would grow slowly.

On Avalon, Andraste’s old armour had been melted down.

Dinraal learned that in the afternoon.

The message made him sit.

He had never worn it.

Had never seen it in the places where it had mattered most.

Yet he understood how an object could become attached to a version of oneself until changing it felt like surrendering evidence.

The old armour no longer fitted her.

So Odra had made it again.

Larger where it needed to be.

Stronger over the child.

The image showed a small figure standing on a wall.

Looking outward.

Isolde came closer.

She did not speak for a long time.

Then she opened her notebook and set it beside the picture.

The page for Andraste’s daughter remained brief.

Their questions waited below the facts.

What she would like looking at.

What would make her laugh.

Dinraal looked from the page to the armour.

The figure on the wall could have become a burden in his imagination.

Another declaration made before a child had the opportunity to answer.

But here it was set into something intended to protect her.

Made by a woman who had listened to the family.

Made with room.

He did not know exactly what Andraste had felt when she saw it.

He hoped she had felt that.

Room.

For the child.

For herself as she was now.

Isolde touched his ring.

“What?”

“You’ve been very quiet.”

“I was thinking about things we keep because changing them feels disloyal.”

She looked toward the image.

“Do you have something?”

He considered his answer.

“Some habits.”

“That is a substantial collection.”

He laughed.

Then leaned his forehead briefly against hers.

She stayed close.

After a moment, she said, “You can keep what mattered.”

“Yes.”

“And still need something different.”

He looked at the armour again.

“Yes,” he said. “I think that is the difficult part.”

Lucas’s armour arrived in the last packet from the forges.

Silver.

Dinraal felt Isolde’s hand tighten around his before he realized his own had closed.

At first, the image was simply bright.

Then the details resolved.

Fine work.

A field.

Wheat.

A small scarecrow standing with its arms out.

Nobody in the relay room spoke.

The description followed.

The silver had been given by the Hyrrani queen.

Freely.

Odra had worked it.

It had been made for Lucas.

Dinraal read those statements slowly.

Given.

Worked.

Made for.

He knew the material.

He recognized something in the pattern without being able to describe it fully.

The same living silver that linked their worlds.

Yet its history had reached this moment through a path different from his own.

No recovered claim.

No army’s right to reclaim a bearer.

No frightened inheritor trying to discover whether the gift carried an instruction hidden inside it.

A queen had given something of her own.

A smith had made it into protection.

A person had accepted it.

Aramaeis stood near the door.

His eyes remained on the scarecrow.

Dinraal looked at him.

His uncle nodded once.

He understood.

Asha began to speak, then stopped herself.

Eve saved the full description.

Enna studied the workmanship with the concentration of someone seeing a colleague’s answer to an unusually difficult problem.

Isolde looked at Dinraal.

“How does it feel?”

He glanced at his wrist.

The silver there had not moved.

“Familiar.”

“And?”

He searched for the word.

Then found a simpler answer.

“I’m glad someone made it for him.”

Isolde smiled.

“So am I.”

They sent a short reply.

The armour was beautiful.

They were glad he would be wearing it.

Then Dinraal added something for Odra, if the message could be passed along.

Thank you for looking after our friend.

The Morrow returned that evening.

Its hull carried salt.

Its central compartment carried samples.

Its crew carried the expressions of people who had slept adequately, eaten badly, and spent three days finding the work more interesting than they had expected.

Cressa came down the ramp first.

“Two useful anchorages,” she told Alexander. “One less useful than the old survey suggested. We have the reasons.”

“Any difficulties?”

“A jammed sample rack. Weather near the southern point. One flask with a defective lid.”

The owner of the flask looked offended.

Cressa ignored him.

Dinraal asked about the equipment.

She lifted a hand.

“Worked.”

“Everything?”

“Everything we used.”

He nodded.

One of the surveyors followed carrying a hard case.

As he passed, he paused beside Dinraal.

“The harness helped.”

“I’m glad.”

“No. I mean—”

The man shifted the case.

“We had to get down into the lower compartment while the vessel was moving. I could turn properly.”

Dinraal looked at him.

The surveyor smiled, a little embarrassed by how much the ordinary fact mattered.

Then he went on.

Cressa watched him leave.

“He would have done the work in the old one,” she said.

“I know.”

“He would have said it was fine.”

“I know.”

She looked at Dinraal.

“This was better.”

He nodded.

“Yes.”

Later, the crew brought their records back to the workshop.

A few notes were added.

A strap needed a keeper.

One fastening could be easier to identify in poor light.

Rhiannon inspected the stitching.

Enna listened to the account of the jammed rack.

Nobody called the mission flawless.

Nobody needed to.

They had gone out.

Done the work.

Come back with information.

Dinraal hoped, fiercely and without pretending the two journeys were comparable, that he would soon read the same simple sequence from Avalon.

On the morning the expedition walked toward Vessa’s arch, Hearth’s skies were clear.

Eve had told Dinraal the expected departure window the previous evening.

He woke before the signal.

For a while, he stayed still.

Isolde slept beside him, one hand near his shoulder.

Through the open window came the faint sound of an early cart.

He could have risen quietly.

Dressed.

Gone to the relay room alone.

Instead, he touched her hand.

She opened her eyes.

“Time?”

“Nearly.”

She nodded.

They dressed together.

Dinraal’s collar fastened on the first attempt.

Isolde noticed.

Neither joked about it.

At the relay room, the watch technician had already prepared the receiving log.

Eve arrived with two cups.

Asha came shortly afterward.

Enna was there because she had been finishing a note for Keir and claimed the timing was incidental.

Nobody challenged her.

They received confirmation that the group had left the forges.

Fitted.

Walking the ridge.

The next image showed snow.

Dark stone.

People moving in a line along the mountain.

Dinraal searched the figures instinctively.

Dorothy’s coat.

The cloud on Risa’s shoulder.

Luna’s pale armour.

Andraste at the front.

Lucas in silver.

The picture was not clear enough to see the scarecrow.

Dinraal knew it was there.

Then came the arch.

Small beside the larger ones they had seen in other drawings.

Old.

Filled from the base to the keystone with stone placed there by hands three centuries gone.

A worn place marked where people had rested their palms.

Dinraal leaned closer.

Eve read the brief accompanying note.

Kyria would name the twelve before the wall was opened.

The names were not included.

They did not need to be sent to make the act matter.

Aramaeis arrived quietly and took the chair beside him.

For a little while, they waited together.

Dinraal did not ask the silver to reach farther.

The possibility occurred to him.

Of course it did.

There was a pattern.

A connection.

People he cared about standing before something none of them fully understood.

The temptation to push beyond what had been agreed was immediate and familiar.

He looked at the cradle.

Then at Eve.

She was watching the same quiet measurements she had watched through the ring’s evacuation.

Doing the work that could actually be done.

Dinraal kept his hands on the table.

Isolde rested hers beside them.

A final departure message arrived.

The group had reached the sealed opening.

The reconnaissance order remained unchanged.

Look.

Return.

Bring an account.

Enna read it over Eve’s shoulder.

“Good.”

Nobody asked her to expand.

Dinraal considered what he wanted to send.

A warning would contain nothing they did not already know.

A request for reassurance would give them another task.

A promise that everything would be all right would be dishonest.

He looked at the picture of Lucas’s armour still pinned beside the forge notes.

The little figure in the field.

Arms out.

Something made so he could return to the people who knew him.

Dinraal turned toward Eve.

“Tell them we’ll be here.”

She entered it.

Isolde added, “All of them.”

Eve nodded.

We’ll be here when you come back. All of you.

The words passed through the silver.

Dinraal waited until the transmission was complete.

Then he looked around the room.

His uncle.

His wife.

The people tending the connection.

On the other world, eleven people stood before a wall built because one woman had brought herself home and understood that nobody else should follow without being ready.

Here, a chair waited beside the receiver.

Dinraal pulled it closer to Isolde’s.

He sat.

And somewhere beyond the silver, on a ridge under another sky, the first stone began to lift.