Rain turned arguments into weight. Oakwatch blinked once—— . (ready)—and the Waystone purred like a cat under the floorboards. The horn cairns along Founders' Way hummed the same note when Jory tapped them—each a syllable in ready. 🙂
— Contact Brief — Gate Sally (T+00:00)• Waystone pulse: ON (~14–16 min left)• Enemy: ~450 mixed (brush-bearers, runners, levy with tubs & short spears) under Drum-man• Our Shape: Diamond Calm (Garran W, Orla E, Fen N, Piet S), white one pace back on command• Battery: Measured Bite spent (pivot neutralized); silent now• Pathfinders: Rella/Lute serpentine screens staged; Ras/Hale rope stems ready• After-Sight: Ready (0/1) — may jitter during pulse• Morale: Jaw-set, rain-steady 🙂
The gate coughed men—brush like bad eyebrows, runners with hip lifts searching for a clock that wasn't there, levy boys pressed into tubs with eyes that wanted bread. The Drum-man advanced lacquered and laughing, stick high for witnesses.
Elara raised two fingers. Jory breathed 1 long (spine) low enough to teach feet, not hearts; 7 steady (stakes) to make the day remember it had a sentence. White shrank one pace more; semicolons planted like grammar with a will.
"Two short," Elara said, and the corridor made way—space to absorb the first shove.
Brush crashed, runners hip-lifted twice and found air instead of consonants. The Waystone's hum peeled the teeth off their beat; bank-paint foremen glanced to Tavi's palm on the hollow and matched stall/edge by eye. You could feel two scripts lay over each other—noise and law—and the feet that chose law lived.
Left mouth: Garran took half, gave back whole. Orla's right refused the wrap with Row Rhythm—shields like grammar; Stand Tall (Wet) settled breath. Fen became a stone with opinions; Piet's south kept tomorrow stacked under his boots.
"Screen!" Rella sang, and she and Lute unrolled a serpentine curtain ten paces out—linen slatted with reeds that taught push to forget its angle. The brush-bearers hit the slits and came apart without breaking. 😌
The Drum-man felt his clock failing and threw volume at it—THRUM-thrum-THRUM—pegs like fists. The Waystone answered with quiet. He tried bead shrines—strings twitched along eaves; the arc smothered the chain into private jewelry.
"Five rising—left, early," Jory carried, setting our timing a half breath before rain could lie. Garran's hinge ate the mouth; Hale slung a rope stem where greedy ankles would overstep; Ras dropped pebbles into puddles that wanted to be pivots and made them honest again.
The levy tubs tried a drag on Piet's shed—hooks out to make the scorpions talk. Piet stepped into the drag with his pole like a sheriff who owns mass, and the shed decided to weigh more. Hooks learned shame.
"Measured Bite?" Rinna asked once.
"Spent," Aiden said, palm to temple, seeing sparks at the edge of sight and calling them tolerable.
"Then the sermon is silence," Rinna answered, and shut the shed doors with a love tap.
The bank-paint foremen stood down a flank—Mokh's chin said bread. You could see it: boys meant for fields adjusting stance, mirrorless hips waiting on white instead of rain.
The last ten minutes of the Waystone pulse lived like a secret in everyone's shoes. The Drum-man's cadence kept arriving late to its own orders; runners stumbled; a pivot man looked for the man who had been shot and found dirt instead.
"Two short," Elara breathed, and the diamond pressed in one pace together—Don't-Chase folding like a lung.
The pulse faded. Aiden winced; stars behind his eyes went from sand to salt. The Drum-man sensed the quiet thinning and struck for volume again, desperate.
"Re-pulse window?" Jory, without glancing up.
Kessa's fingers—two, then a spread hand: 5–7 minutes for the stone to catch its breath.
"Hold with boards, not tricks," Elara said. "Work."
They worked.
A runner tried to plant a hip-cue with two quick lifts. Orla's pennon did not move; Lucien's fox wing washed through, herding him into a pocket of Diamond Calm where even ambition learned to stand in line. Lia's cousin stood at clinic with child-sun, counting loops aloud so hard men would rather fight than be corrected by a nine-year-old. 🙂 "One is a finger! Two makes a question! Three is work!"
Morale is a weapon if you give it a voice.
"Pulse," Elara said when Jory's hand drew a quiet circle. Two short kissed the tower; the Waystone woke a second time—smaller, steadier—and the consonants fell flat again.
The Drum-man—stripped to volume and rage—made one bad decision loudly. He shoved into white with his stick raised like law and put his boot on the line.
Elara didn't blink. She lowered white by a finger—not retreat, definition—and signaled screen. Rella and Lute stepped forward exactly a pace and hung fabric between word and weapon. The stick hit linen; sound died; pride entered the chat and found it had been muted.
"No bells," Jory reminded the sky. "No crowns." He gave 7 steady like a lullaby.
Twenty slow minutes later the sally came apart—not a rout, just a day that had been told no by circumstances and law enough times to consider later.
"One long," Elara said when the lungs agreed. Jory breathed it—a period.
Men walked backward who had wanted to run. The bank-paint foremen kept their backs to their hungry boys and not to us—a kind of courtesy. The Drum-man backed into the palisade like a man outraged that physics exists.
Mokh left white with two fingers to his temple. "Bread," he said to Tavi. "Soon." Tavi's palm stayed on the hollow drum—stall/edge—and the storm inside the wall lost an argument.
— Battle Log — Spawn Break• Enemy: ~450 (mix) under Drum-man• Our Doctrine: Diamond Calm, Don't-Chase, Measured Bite (pivot neutralized), Serpentine Screen• Waystone pulses: 2 (total attenuation window ~35–38 min)• Our casualties: 0 dead; 6 minor (sprains/cuts; treated)• Enemy: dozens bruised/exhausted; 1 pivot broken by dirt-kiss; morale decay +medium• Outcome: Sally fails; gate forced shut; white intact; bank-paint tacit split from drum
Venn chalked 48–72 down to done and boxed the box. The spawn hour had come and learned the price of grammar.
Rinna re-traced NO GREEDY SHOT with Mira's careful brush because triumph is a solvent and signs need ink. Hadrik put his palm on Thorn's jaw and told it it had been a good dog.
Clove slid a folded leaf under the Green Terms board.
He cannot win on noise now.He will run to the bead shrine that makes his hands feel like law.If you end him, do it under rope, not glory.Let white be the witness.— C.
Elara's gauntlet found Aiden's shoulder—habit and math. "We'll walk rope where he wants drum," she said.
"Good arithmetic," he answered, stars draining from his eyes to tolerable.
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the white posts that had learned not to blink, "we spent minutes like rope, fed quiet to loud, and let a wall hold its breath without applause. The gate learned to say no. There is a shrine with beads that wants a story. We will give it a ledger instead. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
— Evening Summary — Novaterra / Gate• Spawn Break repelled; white intact; Waystone proofed in battle• Bank-paint openly follows hollow calls; Drum-man isolated• Next: bead shrine action (rope-sanctioned); Tavi to speak; Pathfinders to cut spine• Morale: Quiet-proud; ready for ledger work 🙂