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The mist village kept strange hours because iron did. Dawn never arrived all at once here. It seeped in like heat across a black anvil, edging and brightening until the world remembered it had outlines. The chimes along the bowl rim did not ring when morning came. They did not have to. Every smith in the hollow could tell the hour by the way smoke rose from a first lit fire and how quickly the white breath of the mist accepted it.
Up on the ridge path a young guard ran. He was a barreled breath and a pair of boots and the nervous wisdom of someone who knew when to hurry. His name was Palt. He was not very good with words and was honest about it, which is how he had ended up with a spear and a whistle and a job that required legs. The thin bell on the far stake had barely trembled when he had seen the shapes on the road beyond the mist. Shapes that waited. Shapes that did not creep. Shapes that held a letter up with two fingers like the patient end of a question.
