The Extra's Rise

We handed the rim to people who could keep it quiet without us and stepped through the warp to Avalon.

Ouroboros HQ smelled like home and hot copper. Elias met us with a slate and three urgent lines. I didn't read the third, because something wrong rolled over my tongue like old smoke.

Order of the Fallen Flame.

I didn't say it. I opened Grey.

Two flat pages slid apart in my head. Avalon laid itself between them—relations, not streets. Heat to promise. Footstep to intention. Down in the east quarter, under the old catacombs, a thread of pride and blood was waking. In the city's skin, on the surface, another touch burned clean and quiet: the graveyard we tend because someone has to.

I shut Grey. The room came back.

"Rose," I said. She was already watching me.

"Where?"

"Evelyn's line. East quarter, below the catacombs." I lifted two fingers and wrote a thin stroke in Grey between us—no light, no sound, just a rule. "A trail that only you will see. It ignores their mirrors and their decoys. It'll take you to her."

Her jaw set. "Understood."

Reika was there before I finished. "I shadow. Outer ring, no speeches." She brushed Rose's shoulder—a quick, solid touch—and was gone with her.

"Rachel," I said. "Redeemers to the east quarter. Lanterns dim. If they try to turn a room into a mouth, close the teeth."

"On it," she said, voice already soft and steady on the command channel.

"Cecilia," I said. "Salt their ducts. If you smell performance, hum off-beat."

She grinned without joy. "I'll make their fire stutter."

"Seraphina," I said. "If they spike heat through stone, turn it into ice and make it stop."

She nodded once, braid tight, eyes colder than the plan.

Erebus stood in the doorway like a shadow drawn with bone. "Anchors?"

"Two per corridor," I told him. "No tunnels closing on us tonight."

He smiled without a mouth. "Always."

Lyra and Tiamat listened from the back. Lyra's voice came quiet and clear. "If you taste the cadence we showed you, do not test it. Call me."

"I will," I said. Brother lived under the word and didn't need saying.

I didn't take a squad to the graveyard. I took Valeria honest on my hip, Luna quiet in my lungs, and two Redeemers because memory needs witnesses.

We crossed the city in three turns. Grey smoothed the lines under my feet and made the streets forget they were long. The graveyard sat where Avalon stops pretending it isn't old—low wall, black iron, names that still feel warm when the day refuses to leave. Redeemer lanterns made small islands in the dark. It was quiet. Good quiet.

Grey opened again because I asked it to. The pages parted. The graves arranged themselves as relations: grief to name, name to oath, oath to the path a man takes when he promises something he doesn't understand.

That path ran down the center lane and stopped at a stone set a little apart.

Elara.

I closed Grey. I walked.

He was already there.

Jack Blazespout knelt at Elara's grave like he'd remembered how to do one thing right. No entourage. No show magic curling off his hands. Just a coat he wore to feel human, and shoulders that weren't as proud as I remembered.

The Redeemers hung back without a word. Their lantern light gilded the names. Someone had left a string of blue paper flowers at the base of Elara's stone. They moved even though the air didn't.

Jack didn't look at me. He looked at her name. His voice was low, like he was talking to a person who might answer if he said it gently enough. "I told you I'd burn them all," he said. It didn't sound like boasting. It sounded like a vow that had gotten lost on the way to being kept.

"That promise is late," I said.

He didn't flinch. He lifted his head and met my eyes. For a heartbeat I saw the academy boy he used to be—tall, loud, sure the world would clap when he snapped his fingers.

"Arthur," he said. Not Grandmaster. Not Hero. Just my name.

"You're kneeling in front of someone who deserved better than your kind of fire," I said. "Stand up."

He stood. Slow. He didn't glance at Valeria. He glanced at the lanterns, then at the string of paper flowers like it surprised him that someone else remembered to be kind.

"Your people are under the city again," he said. "I came to tell you."

"I know," I said. "Rose is on the line."

His mouth tightened a fraction at her name. Old history. Old failure.

"I'm not here to bargain," he said.

"Good," I said. "I'm not here to forgive."

He almost smiled at that. "Of course you're not."

The Redeemer behind me shifted a boot. The lantern chimed once against its ring. Jack's eyes moved to the light and back. He did a small, tired calculation in his head. He knew how this could end.

"Leave," I said. "Or kneel and stay very still until I say otherwise."

He shook his head—one small no. "Not yet," he said, voice gone soft. "Let me have a minute."

"Elara's minutes were yours to protect," I said. "You wasted them."

His jaw moved like a man chewing a truth he didn't like. He didn't answer.

Under the city, something sharp cracked—far away, the note a ritual makes when a circle sours. Rose's voice came over our private thread, steady. "Found her. Your trail held. Beginning the cut."

"Copy," I said. "I'm at Elara."

Grey flexed at the edge of thought. I let it crack open just enough to taste the path around us. The graves were stone and names. The air was honest. The ground was—

—wrong.

Thin lines under the topsoil, near the base of six stones around Elara's. Not strong. Set to wake under a certain weight. A pattern a man like Jack would draw when he wanted to make a point ugly.

"Jack," I said, eyes still on him, voice even. "What did you plant?"

He didn't look away. He had the sense to keep his hands where I could see them. "A farewell," he said.

Valeria warmed in my palm without leaving the sheath. Trap, she breathed against my skin. Small teeth. Cruel teeth.

"Rachel," I said on the open Redeemer band, keeping my voice the same size. "Static. Don't move your lanterns."

"Holding," she said at once. There was a shift in the air behind me as both Redeemers eased their balance onto their heels.

"Disarm," Valeria suggested, almost amused. We can draw a clean line.

"Not yet," I thought back.

Jack finally looked down. His left hand was flat on the top edge of Elara's stone. His right hand curled on his knee. The skin over his knuckles was too smooth for a man who'd done the work he pretended to do. The smoothness of someone who let others carry the load while he lit the match.

"I loved her," he said.

"You killed her," I said.

He swallowed. "I… killed her."

We stood like that for the length of one bad memory. The lanterns breathed. The city's night ran around the wall like water.

Then his right hand twitched—small, almost nothing—toward the edge of the stone.

Grey blew open on its own. The two pages slammed outward. The six thin lines under the topsoil lit up between them like threads dragged across bone. Each line ran to a tiny seal coin buried at the foot of the nearest stone. The coins wanted one thing: weight, heat, and a name spoken in the right voice.

Jack drew breath.

"Don't," I said.

He smiled without humor. "You think I came to leave, Arthur?"

The buried coin at Elara's feet warmed. The grey page showed a spark crawling toward it.

Valeria's voice sharpened. Now.

I moved—

—and the graves around us answered with a soft, rising hum.