The morning after the parting broke clear and sharp, mountain air cutting every edge into focus. Those who had gone to the town were only a memory of footprints and a brief hush among the trees. The twenty-four who remained stood beneath the pines, packs tightened, weapons checked, the last of the embers kicked flat and scattered. They weren't afraid. They had chosen this road and, with the choosing, something in them had steadied.
Garrett raised his hand and they set off. Wolves flowed out ahead and to either side—Amber in front, Luke on the left flank, a pair of greys ghosting the right—silent as breath. The old road up into the foothills had been a strip of tarmac once; now it was a broken ribbon threaded with roots and stone, the white paint of its centre line appearing and vanishing like a fishbone under water. Spruce and pine traded scents on the breeze. Somewhere far off, water talked to itself down stone.
Elara walked near the front with Caleb at her shoulder. The silver under her skin was calm for once, not burning, just a low hum that matched the rhythm of her feet. Behind them, Torvee carried Jonah on her hip as if he weighed nothing. The boy's cheek was pressed to her shoulder, his eyes open and serious in a face that had learned too quickly not to cry. A little way back the three humans who'd chosen to stay—Elise, Kara and Clint—fell into the same lane without speaking about it, as if the mountain had decided they belonged side by side.
They climbed in long, steady pulls. Twice, far across the ridges, a feral called; twice, Amber angled her head and two shadows peeled off to make sure the sound did not become a nearness. The survivors didn't startle when the howls cut short. They had seen enough to read the gap that follows a clean kill. They kept moving.
Conversation began when the slope eased and the road found a shoulder of rock broad enough to walk two or three abreast. Perhaps it was relief, perhaps habit, the human urge to put noise into long stretches of breathing.
Clint started it, because of course he did. "So," he boomed, not quite as loudly as usual—the mountain took even loudness and pressed it flat—"this spirit business. How long till it happens, then? Don't fancy waiting weeks. Be a waste of all… this." He spread a hand down his barrel chest and grinned.
Kara snorted. "Spirits don't give a toss what you fancy."
Clint looked over his shoulder at her with mock offence. "With my size? No way I'm anything less than a bear. Maybe a lion if they're feeling generous."
"More like a goat," Kara said, deadpan. "Stubborn, loud, eats anything."
Elise's mouth twitched. She'd been quiet most of the morning, taking in the wolves' spacing, the way their heads turned to check shadows, the way they never once tripped on broken ground. Now she said, almost to herself, "I'd take something graceful. Doesn't have to be big to be strong."
"A cat?" Clint scoffed. "That's just a pet."
"Better a pet than a fool who thinks he's a king," Kara shot back.
Clint opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again and laughed, conceding the point with a broad grin. "All right, Red. We'll see."
Jonah shifted against Torvee. He'd been listening, solemn as a judge. "I want to be like you," he whispered into the fabric of her jacket, not meaning wolf, not meaning anything so precise—only like Torvee, brave, steady, a harbour. Torvee looked down, startled, and then softened; she smoothed his hair with the heel of her hand and didn't answer, because there wasn't an answer that wasn't a promise she couldn't make.
Luke glanced back at the exchange and smiled to himself without turning it into words. He walked easy, but Elara could tell he was measuring every bend and shadow, counting how long between glimpses of the same ridge, reading the wind like print.
"Do spirits always come?" Elise asked after a time, not to anyone in particular.
The shifter elder, who had been saving his breath, answered without looking round. "They come if you call them properly. And if you're prepared to live with what answers."
"Which you can't predict," Kara said, and aimed the line at Clint without quite looking at him.
"Which no one can predict," the elder agreed mildly. "You might long for thunder and wake with rain. You might dream of wings and find you belong to the ground. Wanting is a poor compass."
"Still wouldn't mind a lion," Clint muttered, but it was bluster for the sake of the shape of himself. No one bothered to correct him. The mountain did that sort of work in time.
They walked. The road pitched steeper; roots took it over like knuckles, rocks shouldered through, the paint line vanished for good. Pines loomed; then the wood opened like curtains and they were on a bare scarp with the world thrown wide below—slopes stacked like folded cloth, a ribbon of river bright as a blade in the far valley, the sky a hard, brittle blue that rang when a kite called. The wind up there had teeth. It took their sweat and left salt.
By late afternoon the path became less a road and more a set of choices scribbled in stone. The wolves chose without seeming to think about it, taking switchbacks that weren't there until you trod on them, easing the humans round drops that had been edges until the moment the wolves touched them. Once, Amber lifted a hand and the whole column stilled as a pair of yellow eyes peered from a clump of juniper. The eyes blinked, the juniper rustled, and then something decided that twenty-four people and a wall of patience weren't worth the trouble and stole away.
They reached the last shoulder of the mountain in a long, silent pull. Conversation had become breath. Even Clint had given his lungs the right to be in charge. The silver inside Elara kept time with her feet—four steps in, four steps out—and the mountain's quiet sat in her ribs.
They topped the rise and the village revealed itself.
At first it hid in plain sight, stone pretending to be stone. Then Elara's eyes separated angles from shadows and the cliff face broke into terraces and ledges and façades. Houses were cut directly into the limestone, mouths dark and deep, fronts ringed with timber porches dressed with thick posts and planks planed smooth. Between them rose taller lodges built out from the cliff on pilings sunk into the rock, roofs patched with slate and corrugated sheet, gutters catching meltwater in runs that fed into tanks. Cables stitched from lodge to lodge like black thread. Two aerials speared the sky off to the left; a low hum lived on the edge of hearing, softened by baffling boards.
Paths zigzagged between terraces, fenced with rope and chain and rails that had once been scaffolding. Along those paths hung lamps made from jam jars and old brass shades; inside each, someone had fitted a small square of panel to drink daylight and a coil to bleed it back at night. They were already beginning to glow, a warm amber under the gathering blue.
There were people everywhere. Men and women with rifles slung, bows over shoulders, crossbows cradled. A pair of teenagers worked a target butt cobbled from tyres, bolts thudding steadily. Someone under an awning worked at a bench grinder; sparks spat and died, hissing, the scent of hot metal and cutting oil mixing with woodsmoke. From a long, low building came the rhythmic ting of a hammer striking bright steel, the song of a place that still remembered how to make and mend.
And wolves. Dozens of them in the first glance, dozens more in the second—lounging on ledges, pacing stairheads, trotting nose-to-tail along rails as if they'd grown there. Some lifted their heads as the party came into view and watched with an interest that wasn't hungry, only measuring. Some didn't bother; they trusted the ones who did the looking.
Kara's breath left her in a small laugh. "It's bigger than the stronghold."
"And smarter," Elise said, not bothering to hide the awe. "This is… it's a hidden city."
Clint forgot his line. For a heartbeat he just stared with his mouth half open. Then he shut it and found a smile that, for once, didn't need to be wide to be real. "Right," he said softly. "Right."
They filed through a gate fashioned from welded steel frames skin-clad in sheet, its hinges greased so it barely sighed. The square beyond was a broad terrace ringed with porches and the fronts of cliff houses. A water tank gleamed on a frame above one roof; solar panels angled like black leaves to drink what the day had left. Under a timber awning, two long steel tables—canteen salvage—sat already laid with bowls and loaves. Someone had chalked WELCOME HOME in big letters along the rim of one table; floury fingerprints smudged the words.
Children saw Garrett first. Five of them came at him like a pack of puppies, shrieking. The big man didn't try to pretend to be stern. He went down on one knee, laughing, and caught them as if they'd been fired at him, one to a hip, two round his neck, one clamped like a limpet to his forearm. The smallest paused a careful pace away, considered the geometry of all that Garrett, and then seized his free hand with both of hers. Garrett made a face of solemn gravity. "Elowen," he said, "you've grown a foot since morning."
"Have not," she said, dimpling, as the others poured news—lost tooth, found bead, Amber says I can try the little bow tomorrow if I keep my feet apart, Mum says stop climbing the rails. Garrett listened like a general at council, the laugh stuck permanent at the corners of his mouth.
A woman set a stack of folded laundry on a porch rail and came to him with that unhurried purpose of someone who has walked the square a thousand times. She pressed a hand to his shoulder. He looked up and she bent and kissed him; he returned it like breathing. For a beat the village was nothing but that ordinary holiness—work and love and home.
Jonah relaxed against Torvee, the hard lines that fear had carved between his brows easing. He whispered something; Torvee nodded and squeezed him, her eyes shiny but steady.
Off to the right, under the shadow of the awning, Corin stood with the healer's apprentices. She was pale as linen, bandage biting clean across shoulder and ribs, but she was upright and the line of her mouth said living. People looked—of course they did. A bite should have ended her. Wolves looked, too, and their looks weren't fearful but assessing, an acknowledgement that the world had just told them a truth they already knew: not all who were bitten fell. No one said it aloud. The square didn't need the words.
An elderly woman came out of a doorway wiping flour on her apron. She spotted Luke hovering at the edge of the square with a bundle of lanterns he'd absolutely not been asked to carry, and her eyes went bright as sparks. "Luke!" she cried, and before he could dodge or pretend to be busy she had his face between her hands and kissed his forehead, then one cheek, then the other. Luke turned a colour Elara would have called beetroot if she'd been allowed to say it out loud. The children howled with laughter. Garrett smirked purely because someone else was being mothered within an inch of their life.
The old woman held Luke at arm's length and looked him up and down like a tailor assessing a suit. "Look at you," she said, voice wobbling with pride. "Delta."
The word landed and rippled. Riven's chin dipped a fraction where he stood, all approval pared down to a thread. Luke tried to look as if this happened to him every day. He failed beautifully.
"Go and wash," the woman said briskly. "You smell like the long road."
"I've been on the long road," Luke protested, earnest.
"And now you're home," she returned, and that settled it.
The square swallowed the newcomers with the matter-of-fact grace of a place that had practised welcome as a skill. Doors opened. Pallets were rolled out, blankets shaken, kettles filled. Someone handed Torvee a folded blanket without being asked; someone else pressed a chipped mug into Caleb's hand and poured something hot and sweet. He blinked at the surprise of casual kindness and covered it with a nod.
"Food in five," called the flour-aproned woman in a voice that had organised armies. "If you can hold a knife, table on the right—mind your fingers."
"I can chop," Kara said at once, stalking towards the table like onions had personally offended her. Elise slid in beside her, sleeves rolled, shoulders settled. Clint offered to shift the big pot and nearly went arse-over-elbow; two wolves in human skin steadied it without comment, the way people do who know the ten seconds before and after a boast are the dangerous bit.
They ate with the focus of the hungry granted permission. Stew thick as hope. Bread that steamed when you tore it. Someone cracked a dented tin of peaches and the syrup was shared around small bowls with a reverence that made Elara's throat tighten. Jonah fell asleep halfway through a second heel of bread; Torvee hitched him higher and kept eating one-handed, utterly competent.
By the brazier near the square's edge, the shifter elder had taken out his bundle—cloth packets of dried leaves, tiny stoppered bottles, shallow stone bowls. He wasn't making the circle; not tonight. He was doing the small rituals of readiness, checking strings and seals, the way people sort tools before they sleep, hands busy so the mind can thumb its ledger.
Clint watched him for a while and then couldn't help himself. "How long, d'you think? Till the calling?" It wasn't a challenge, nor the old brag—more a man measuring the distance to a door he wanted to open.
"When your breath matches the mountain," the elder said, not looking up. "Tonight you arrive. Tomorrow you belong. The night after, perhaps, you ask."
Clint nodded as if that were the schedule he'd been about to suggest. "Right. Fine."
They lounged in the gentle, proper tiredness that follows full bowls and work well done. Talk found its channels again. Elise leaned her arms on the table and breathed as if her bones had finally remembered how to sit. "I'm Elise," she said to no one in particular and to everyone at once, because it felt right to make it true in this place. "I used to sew. I can do other things."
"Kara," Kara said, chin up, as if daring the village not to believe in her. "I don't sew. I can work. Just—give me something that fights back."
"Clint," Clint said, because of course he did, and grinned as if the mountain had been built to hear it. "From the islands. Strong back. Stronger opinions. Will lift anything not nailed down. Will lift the thing it's nailed to, if required."
The square laughed, not unkindly. Names had a way of sticking when you threw them into warm air.
Caleb had kept his counsel, but he drifted close to Elara now, the mug cupped in both hands as if it were the only hot thing in the world. He watched the wolves on the terraces swap out with a quiet click of discipline, two men with rifles take a slow circuit of the upper path, a pair of greys shadow them like echoes.
"Not what you expected," Elara said.
"No," he admitted, and then—because he was who he was—added, "Don't let it turn your head. This took blood to build. It'll take blood to keep."
"I know," she said, and she did.
Later, when the square had softened into the murmur between day and sleep, when children had been counted and tucked and lanterns trimmed, Elara crossed to the brazier where the fae healer sorted herbs into neat piles with fingers that didn't seem to tire.
"Can I ask you something?" Elara said.
"You already have," the healer replied, not unkindly, eyes still on the stems.
"At the tree line," Elara said. "When you touched the ones who chose the town. What did you do? Not the blessing. The thing behind it."
The healer's hands stilled. She looked up and the fire put copper in the dark of her eyes. "Gave them what they needed to walk away without breaking," she said. "Courage for the first steps."
"And the other thing."
"Silence," the healer said simply. "I stitched their tongues against our truth."
"You took their choice," Elara said, and kept her voice level, because she was not a child and she didn't want to sound like one.
"I took their panic," the healer corrected, iron under calm. "Fear talks louder than vows. Fear bargains with strangers and sells blood for a night behind a high door. We have buried enough because someone couldn't bear to hold a secret for an hour." She set down a bundle of thyme. "This place stands because some things are not said. We saved their lives. In return we asked a price they will not feel unless they try to spend it. If you want me ashamed, you will be disappointed."
Elara looked at the brazier. The core was white; the edges went red and then dull. The silver in her veins hummed in slow agreement and slow protest both. "I don't know if I want you ashamed," she said, which was the truest shape she could give it. "It sits wrong and right at the same time."
"That's because it is both," the healer said, and went back to her work, not dismissing Elara, simply trusting her to carry the weight herself.
Across the square, Amber crouched by Corin's pallet, checking the line of her breathing with the blunt tenderness of a woman who has seen too many not breathe. Corin's lashes lay dark on her cheeks. The bite at her shoulder was cleanly wrapped, the skin around it warm but not angry. The healer's apprentice trickled a bitter draught between her lips; Corin swallowed without waking, as if some deeper part of her had decided to live and the rest of her was catching up.
Not all wounds mark the end, the healer had said earlier in the day, almost to herself, when they'd got Corin settled and the square had breathed out. Elara hadn't asked what that meant. She didn't need the words yet. The proof was there—breathing, sleeping, wrapped in borrowed wool with a wolf sitting not quite at her feet, not quite touching, like a saint's dog in a painting.
Elara stood a while longer, matching her ribs to the mountain's pace. The lamps along the ropes made small golden planets out of the jars. On an upper ledge a wolf yawned and showed knives and then laid its head on its paws like a dog at a hearth. Kara laughed quick and bright at something Clint said; Elise took a loaf off the cooling rack as if her hands had known that job all their life. Luke strode past with a string of lanterns, trying very hard not to look like a boy who had been called Delta in public and kissed by an old woman. Riven moved through the square like a dark tide and people shifted without looking to make space for him, not out of fear—out of alignment, the way iron filings find north.
Caleb came to stand beside Elara and didn't speak. He didn't need to. Between them the night pooled. Above them, the first hard points of starlight needled through the blue. Somewhere beyond the ridge the moon was lifting, not yet seen but felt the way you feel a river through your boots on the bank.
"Do you hear it?" Elara asked at last, so soft it might have been thought.
"What?"
"The place. The way it breathes."
He listened. After a moment, he nodded. "Aye."
They breathed with it. Tomorrow, or the night after, the elder would lay out bowls and bitter draughts, and people who had chosen shadow would drink and meet the truth of themselves. Not tonight. Tonight was for names, bread, the clean astonishment of enough, and the knowledge that choosing had brought them to a square where laughter lived.
Elara turned towards the lodge where a pallet waited under a window the mountain had kept for her. The silver under her skin went quiet and sure. The village's lamps burned on, and the wolves watched the dark with patient, golden eyes.