The Extra's Rise

We held the rim for a quiet watch. The visitors stayed—behind the white line by choice now, no one eager to be the one who ruined a clean record.

The lattice's new undertone settled into something you felt in your teeth if you paid attention. We paid attention.

The first grit came stub-fine. Seraphina's head turned. "There."

"Direction?" Kade asked.

"Crisium again," she said, annoyed at the repeat offender. "Low. Flat."

"Same maker?" Rose asked the air, already moving.

"Probably," Erebus said from a pocket that wasn't there. "They're proud of this trick."

We ghosted: Cecilia wrapped us in a hush that fooled dust; Rose erased foot echo; Reika drew two small lies across angles; Rachel's hands warmed; Vyr's Guard shifted thirty meters without being told.

We expected filaments.

We got a braid.

Seven hair-thin threads twisted into a rope, each thread slightly out of phase with the next. It skated along our feel net as if it had dipped its toes in yesterday's hum and brought a recording.

"Not a bead," Kade said. "A leech."

"It wants the lattice to hum back," Rose said. "Then it'll clap in time and learn our song."

"Teeth?" Reika asked, already measuring.

"Not yet," I said. "Let it commit."

The braid brushed a ghost pillar. The pillar hummed wrong, stopped. The braid waited, then added a tiny echo of the ghost to itself. Unpleasantly smart.

"North," I said without looking. Skadi and Nari didn't need more. They rolled a counter-ripple through mana like a crosswind that never existed, nudging the braid half a degree off a real node.

It corrected. Learning. It split into two braids and tried two nodes at once, banking on lag.

"Ugly sequence defeats loop," Stella whispered like a reminder to herself.

"West," I said. Jin's dark ribbon slid wide and laid a false trail—an edible hum with no teeth behind it. One braid bit, slowed.

The other aimed straight for a clean node.

"Reika," I said.

"Wake alone," she snapped. A tooth unfolded a petal and drew a line exactly as long as a breath.

The braid split again, one thread slithering under our cut like water through gravel.

"Rose," I said.

She pinched space and flipped the under-thread onto the over-thread. The braid tripped over itself.

"Rachel," I said.

Purelight dusted the contact. The stolen hum didn't stick.

"South," I said.

Vyr's cadre opened a lantern a handwidth. Sanctity, thin as silk, stroked the braid and made it forget it had hands.

"Central," I said.

Laurens ran a pallet train through a decoy lane, big enough mass to tempt a thief. The braid bit on instinct, half its threads turning toward the moving target. Teeth stayed sleeping.

"Now," Kade said flat.

Four teeth woke in a cross, drew four lines, slept. Not a net—just scissor cuts at the right joints.

Erebus's bone ampoules clicked shut one after another. Three. Then a fourth that held only regret and the ghost of a stolen hum.

"Maker improved," he said, approving and bored at once. "Still proud. Still careless."

"Any taste?" Rachel asked, jaw tight.

He shook his skull. "A faint want. Not Lysantra's hand. A junior's hunger."

"Good," I said. "Let them stay junior."

Elder Mei spoke for the first time since the count. "Again. But we will be the braid."

She and Seraphina stepped forward together—plum blossom sword and elder's quiet blade. They drew steel and ice at once, two thin arcs that wrote pressure where no air lived. Jin set a shadow ribbon between them. Skadi and Nari rolled a smooth counter-current under the weave. The Redeemers shifted one lantern half an inch. Rose laid a paradox seam you could barely swear existed. Reika drew enough above the test like a lid you keep loose.

We ran it clean: the lattice felt, the ghosts lied once, the teeth trimmed, the hum settled. No flash. No heroics. Magistrate Varas actually smiled; it looked like a crack in granite.

Kade made a second pencil note: BRAID CUT: CLEAN.

We reset. The rim eased. Earth edged higher; Tycho Yard lights ticked on below, work never stopping.

Then the second grit came—deep, not stubby. Not a braid. A mirror.

The hum reflected back at us from nowhere, matched down to a flaw we had joked about hours ago. Rose froze. "That's ours," she said softly. "From the training. Someone recorded the exact wobble and is playing it at us."

"Vector?" Kade asked.

"Above," Seraphina said, looking at nothing. "High. Off the mare."

Erebus peeled a pocket across the sky like ink over glass. The mirror noise smeared against it and showed its edge—a thin disk, color of old smoke, invisible until it wasn't.

"Not a drone," Kade said. "A coin."

"Flip it," Valeria purred.

"Reika," I said.

She wrote two characters in the empty dark. One meant enough. One meant down.

The coin tried to learn those words and failed. It spun faster, copying our hum harder, feeding it back to make our lattice chase itself.

"Teeth?" Kade asked.

"Two," I said. "Opposite arcs. Half draw."

Two teeth woke on arcs a hundred meters apart and drew lines that never met—just crossed where the coin had to pass if it wanted to keep faking. The coin tried to widen its spin.

"North," I said.

Nari snapped an invisible crosswind—mana drag. The spin lost elegance.

"West," I said.

Jin threw a shiver of dark through the coin's center. It faltered, forgot its timing for a blink.

"East," I said.

Rose turned her paradox seam inside out for the span of a breath. The coin's echo sampled the wrong thing and corrupted itself.

"South," I said.

Rachel's Purelight fell like very gentle rain. Whatever residue wanted to cling found no purchase.

Erebus catcher. Click.

The hum under our feet smoothed like someone finished a sentence.

Kade let out a breath and didn't pretend it was nothing. He wrote three more words under his last note: MIRROR CUT: OK.

Elder Mei slid her sword home. "Your moon is learning."

"Fast," Nari added, almost cheerful.

Vyr hooded her lantern and nodded at the cache tags we'd pre-marked. "We'll seed ten more," she said to Rachel. "Same recipe."

"Invoice later," Rachel said, already mentally counting vials.

Prefect Laurens clapped a hand to a pallet crate. "Your lanes will hold a surge," he said. "We'll keep freight boring."

Varas turned his seal ring outward again. "Consider me satisfied."

Jin nudged my shoulder with a grin. "When you're done making a jaw, come let us kick it," he said. "West will bring a new trick."

"We'll build a better lie," Rose said, polite and deadly.

Kade rolled up the paper with care, pencil behind his ear like always. "Teeth are quiet. Jaw works. We listen again."

We didn't close with ceremony. We split jobs: Vyr's team to caches; North to sky lanes; East to a corner to argue about phase math with Rose; West to find a shadow that hadn't been claimed yet; Central to move a pallet train out of a stupid place.

I walked the rim once more with Stella at my side. She pointed at the notes on Kade's map.

"Ugly sequence held," she said, satisfied.

"It did," I said.

Valeria hummed, small and pleased. "Good cuts," she said. "No screaming."

"Keep it that way," I told her.

Earth hung above, blue and impossible. The belt hummed underfoot, steady, aware. We had allies on the rim and a system that answered when pressed without shouting about it.

We left the line marked and the lanes clear.