Morning lifted like a careful lid. Oakwatch blinked — . (ready); the Waystone purred low, a cat under the floorboards; the cairns along Founders' Way hummed when Jory tapped them—each a syllable in ready. 🙂
— Morning Brief — Novaterra• Waystone: Pulse Window 18–22 min per charge (cooldown 40–60)• Cordon: standards pre-planted (diamond tight); sand lines corrected; whipline staged• Parley: hollow at center; no drums; white posted on both posts• Battery: Measured Bite reserved for pivot man (hip lift ×2) or signal cart• After-Sight: Ready (0/1) (may jitter during pulse)• Spawn Window: 12–24 hrs (tightening)• Morale: Work-bright, jaw set 🙂
Kessa ran a fingertip along the prism sleeve; Émile checked the mica washers with a lover's frown; Ansel thumped the brace with a knuckle that meant good; Jory tuned the quiet bands by humming back at a stone. Aiden pressed his thumb to his brow and measured the ache's teeth. Manageable.
"Pulse on two short of my hand," Elara said. "We use minutes, not fire."
Tavi came clean, no mask, rope token visible, four bank-paint foremen with him and no lacquer in sight. Lia's cousin stood the child-sun where it could see everything and judge nothing.
The palisade opened its mouth. The Drum-man walked out dressed like thunder wearing mirrors—lacquer shell, fresh paint, a smile that needed witnesses. He brought two—a drummer with a board too tidy, and a runner with a bead sash he thought looked like a spine.
Elara raised white to waist—parley posture. Two short, soft, rolled the dust flat. Jory's hand hovered near the horn, not touching mouthpiece yet.
"Hollow," Aiden said gently.
Tavi tapped: ponk. Clean.
The Drum-man beamed at the crowd he believed existed. He lifted his stick.
Elara's palm dipped twice—Jory's horn kissed two short to the Waystone; the quiet bands woke like a heartbeat you hadn't noticed until your head lay on someone's chest.
— Waystone Pulse — Quiet Bands (Mk I)• Duration: ~20 min (charge)• Effect: peg consonant attenuation −20–25% (within arc)• Side: Aiden After-Sight jitter (vision sparkle; mild headache)
The Drum-man's t'tap—t-t'tap arrived old and soft. The bank-paint foremen looked at their own feet as if betrayed. Tavi, palm flat to the hollow, spoke stall / edge; the bank-paint answered by shifting weight in unison—with him, not with lacquer.
The Drum-man doubled down: beads hissed at the shrines, strings twitched—the arc ate the conversation before it became a rumor.
"White stands," Elara said. "Grass."
Mokh tilted his chin the length of a breath—fine.
The Drum-man smiled where teeth should be and moved to the table. With two fingers he flipped it like a card. The plank clapped mud. His stick snapped to the board—THRUM—not count, not edge, but anger loud enough to be a law if you had been raised to obey weather.
"Sally," he told the gate.
It moved.
Gates that had learned manners all week forgot them. Palisade mouth opening, brush-bearers shoving through, runners hip-lifting twice—pivot men, just like Clove's note had promised. The Drum-man took three strides into white and put his stick on a peg as if law didn't apply to his wrists.
Elara did not blink. "Two short," she said, and white — the corridor itself — stepped back one pace as a body, semicolons anchoring its ends. Jory's hand fell to the horn, not to panic, to grammar: 1 long (spine) soft, 7 steady (stakes) like a quiet spine up the air.
Rinna's palm floated half-high. Thorn looked at the pivot runner—hip lift twice—and the crew got to be elegant once. The bolt kissed the dirt two paces in front of the man and convinced him he'd been born a stake without exercising the coroner. The bands behind him tripped on their own timing.
— Battery — Measured Bite (pivot check)• Target: hip marker (runner) → neutralized without kill (dirt kiss; panic pulse)• Enemy cadence: stutter; bank-paint foremen disengage hips from drum
The Waystone hummed again—low, kind, as if asking the sky to take a breath. Aiden's head filled with sparkles like sand being poured behind his eyes. He stayed upright on purpose.
Tavi walked into white—not past it—stood with his palm still on the hollow drum, and raised his voice so men inside a wall could hear their own decision. "We cut grass under white," he said in their tongue. "We eat bread. We do not eat weather. Stand."
Two foremen who had looked like followers all week became men. Their paint wasn't a costume anymore. They took a step back from the Drum-man and forward into the rules they could explain to boys without blushing.
Mokh—bank-paint, habit and hunger—lifted his chin to the shivering ranks. "Cut, not crush," he said. "Roots, not."
The Drum-man laughed too loud for his own joke and smashed his stick into the peg for the third time like that made him a government.
The gate finished opening. Brush and runners and boys who should be arguing about fishing stepped into a day they hadn't written.
Elara's hand hovered over one long and did not fall. "White has eyes today," she said, low to Aiden. "We hold it one pace wider than pride thinks it is. Then we work."
"Good arithmetic," he said through a static of stars.
— Contact State — Opening Moments• White: holds (shrinking one pace on command)• Waystone: pulse active (~14–16 min left)• Enemy: gate open; brush-bearers & runners sally; bank-paint foremen split (Mokh holds; lacquer presses)• Battery: one bite spent (pivot neutralized); silent now• Standards: diamond anchored; Don't-Chase live
The Drum-man saw his clock fail and reached for volume. He beat the board like a man trying to make a storm remember his name.
The Waystone answered with quiet.
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the white posts that had learned to act like doors, "we put a heart in the tower and asked sound to forget a little. Pride threw a table and a gate at us. We will spend minutes like rope. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
And then the rain began in earnest, as if the sky had decided to be the Drum-man's lawyer—just as the gate gave the day teeth.
— Cliff — End Chapter 48• Gate: open; lacquer Drum-man advancing• Waystone: pulsing (quiet bands on)• White: holding; shrunk one pace by order; hollow at center• Next: stand the first shove; cut bead shrines; pull hip markers; walk bank-paint into bread