Chapter 103. Crowns of Ash

They came along the ridgeline like a seam unpicked and resewn with darker thread—figures robed in soot, faces pale with wind and discipline, each head wearing a ring of burning script that floated an inch above hair as if the air itself had agreed to be a crown. No mark touched their skin. Every mark burned in the space where thought should have lived.

The moving door at Aria’s shoulder brightened, hungry and naive, flattered by numbers that moved like one body. It remembered that it liked many hands and mistook rehearsal for remembrance. The second mouth along the right flank lifted slightly, eager to mimic whatever the elder hinge praised. The first seam where the leader still chanted bucked with pride, as if this new column were proof that law could be bullied until it called obedience wisdom.

“Steady,” Cassandra said, her blade’s point angling a breath lower, staking iron into the idea of center. “Do not let the hinge think that noise is company.”

Lior’s breath