They left at first light and Helmsworth shrank behind them in layers—stone streets to farms, farms to hills, hills folding into forest. The lake flashed once between trees and then disappeared entirely.

  Tony trotted ahead like he owned the road. They walked in comfortable quiet for nearly an hour.

  Miri lasted fifty-seven minutes.

  “So,” she said, “what’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen an adventurer do?”

  Tamsin didn’t look at her. “Define dumb.”

  “Preventable death.”

  “That narrows nothing.”

  Miri grinned.

  Tamsin relented. “A man once attempted to intimidate a troll by roaring at it.”

  “…Did it work?”

  “For the troll? Yes.”

  Miri barked a laugh. The sound carried easily through the trees. That felt right.

  They camped beneath a line of low firs that first night. Tony circled twice before dropping heavily against Miri’s side, claiming space without asking. She poked at the fire with a stick.

  “I didn’t think I’d make it this far,” she said.

  “From Helmsworth?” Tamsin asked.

  “From waking up in a cave with a talking cat and no idea how to swing a sword.”

  Tamsin nodded once, as if that were a perfectly reasonable origin story.

  After a while, Miri added, quieter, “I used to do reckless things on purpose.”

  “On purpose.”

  “Climb things I shouldn’t. Jump off things I shouldn’t. Say yes to ideas that were clearly terrible.” She smiled faintly. “I never would’ve done any of it alone.”

  “No?”

  “Mason was always there. He’d complain, but he never let me fall. I was brave because he was behind me.”

  Tamsin studied the firelight for a moment. “And now?”

  And now she missed her brother. He was her safety net and now she was afraid of heights in a way she had never been before. She found it so scary that her first instinct was to find another safety net. Her second was to find a cave to hide in.

  Miri relied on Mason because he allowed her to and she was never forced to jump alone until now. Miri stared into the flames. “Now if I jump,” she said softly, “I have to land on my own feet.”

  Tamsin considered that. “Then you plan the jump.”

  On the third day they fought something small—two long-limbed scavengers that rushed together.

  Miri raised Warden Veil too early. It flickered out just before the second creature lunged.

  Tamsin stepped through the gap without hesitation. One clean cut. No wasted motion.

  Afterward she said, “Wait for commitment. Noise is not threat. Motion is not attack. Watch hips and shoulders.”

  Miri nodded.

  On the fifth day, she waited.

  The creature lunged and Warden Veil snapped into place at the last possible second. The impact shuddered through the barrier and died there.

  Tamsin didn’t praise her. She didn’t need to.

  Later, while they walked, Miri asked, “Why’d you become an adventurer?”

  Tamsin didn’t answer immediately. “Money,” she said at last. “The Guild pays reliably. Reliably feeds people.”

  “That it?”

  Tamsin thought about that. “…And I am good at it.” She shrugged lightly. “It is satisfying.”

  There was no arrogance in it. Just fact.

  Miri respected that.

  By the seventh day they’d found rhythm.

  Miri walked point when the forest thickened, Threat Perception humming low behind her thoughts. Tamsin ranged wider, blade or bow depending on terrain. Tony drifted between them like a heavy striped shadow.

  They talked about small things. Bad weather. Cheap boots. How unfair it was that dwarves could drink twice their body weight and still walk straight.

  Miri learned Tamsin had six siblings.

  Tamsin learned Miri once tried to bake cookies from memory and nearly burned down a kitchen.

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  “Was the recipe complex?” Tamsin asked.

  “Yes, it needed sugar.”

  “That is not complex.”

  “It felt complex at the time.”

  Tamsin almost smiled. Almost.

  That night they camped in a meadow where the grass gave off a faint blue glow after sunset, as if the earth itself exhaled starlight.

  By the ninth day, they didn’t need to speak much.

  They moved around each other without friction. Miri no longer flinched when Tamsin repositioned mid-fight. Tamsin no longer checked if Miri had noticed something subtle in the brush. Tony adjusted automatically to whichever one slowed.

  They weren’t battle masters or mirrors of each other.

  They were simply aligned.

  * * *

  On the tenth day, the road widened. Less brush and more sky. Wagon ruts pressed deep into the dirt.

  Miri was feeling good about their progress. Things had started clicking into place. She wasn’t guessing anymore. She and Tamsin moved like a well-oiled machine — they trusted the other to be exactly where they needed to be. Tamsin tossed charms at just the right moment and even Tony had settled into a rhythm. No overexcited lunges or unnecessary drama; he was controlled power now.

  Miri rolled her shoulders once, feeling the weight of her sword settle naturally against her hip.

  Tony slowed; the shift in him was subtle. Miri felt it a heartbeat later — Threat Perception rising from hum to tension.

  “Tamsin.”

  “I see them.”

  Six of them stepped out. Leather stitched from mismatched hides. Curved blades. Hooks. One with a length of chain looped over his shoulder.

  Bandits.

  “Three left, three right,” Tamsin murmured. Tony lowered his head.

  The man with the chain smiled. “That’s a big cat you got there.”

  “He bites,” Miri replied pleasantly.

  All was still. No birds, not even a whisper of wind through the trees.

  Adrenaline roared through her. Tony’s tail twitched. They moved.

  Not a charge — a tightening ring.

  Tamsin’s bow came up. She used Spellbind Thread, a shimmer of wind tangling one bandit’s legs. The arrow left with a sharp crack and punched through his shoulder, spinning him sideways.

  Miri stepped forward, Warden Veil snapping into place—

  Steel rang against structured mana. She felt her mana drain faster than expected as she flared her shield too hard and felt a moment of panic. Too much, overextended. She had to pull it back.

  Tony lunged and clipped one man at the hip, sending him stumbling into another and breaking their line.

  “Left!” Tamsin barked.

  Arc Bolt snapped from Miri’s hand — tight, clean — slamming into a rusher’s chest. He staggered.

  She stepped in. Short extension. Precise. The blade opened his thigh and he went down. She finished him before he could rise like the bile in her throat.

  Killed a man. Killed a man. Killed a man.

  The mantra echoed in Miri’s head, like a klaxon alarm inside her skull. She fired on instinct. Didn’t even aim, didn’t see if it landed. She shouldn’t be here. She had no business killing people. She was supposed to be a museum curator. She—

  An arrow punched through a man’s neck, forcing Miri out of her own head and back into the fight.

  Two dead.

  The bandit with the wounded shoulder tried to rejoin the fight.

  She tracked him—

  And almost missed the hook coming low.

  She jerked Veil up on reflex. Too early.

  The hook didn’t land, it was a feint. The real strike came from the side.

  Steel scraped her sleeve. Not deep, but close. Too close.

  “Focus,” she reminded herself.

  Tony barreled past him, forcing him wide. Miri raised Veil again — this time perfectly timed — and absorbed a rushing strike. She dropped the shield and cut across another attacker’s forearm. He lost his blade.

  Tamsin’s Gale Step blurred her sideways in a shimmer of silver light.

  She reappeared at the bandit’s flank, but he reacted as if he'd anticipated it and backhanded her across the cheek. Tamsin barely flinched and drove her blade forward.

  Three dead.

  Miri felt it again — the rhythm.

  Tony pushing.

  Tamsin thinning.

  Miri controlling space.

  “We’ve got them,” she breathed.

  The words tasted premature even as she said them.

  The chain wielder hadn’t committed and he moved now. Not toward Miri.

  Toward Tony.

  The chain snapped low and fast, looping around Tony’s foreleg. The tiger roared and surged forward anyway. The bandit planted his feet and hauled. Not enough to topple him — but enough to wrench him sideways.

  The trio’s formation split.

  The man Tamsin had shot through the shoulder staggered back into the fray, teeth bared. He rushed Miri together with the last untouched attacker.

  Two at once. Shit.

  “Tamsin—!”

  The first bandit came high. Miri raised Warden Veil and the blade slammed into it. Mana flared as he drained her shield. Miri dropped it to strike, fast as a snake. Her blade opened the first man’s gut and he fell.

  Four dead.

  But she couldn’t spare him glance; the second was already inside her reach. Miri couldn’t reset. She had no time.

  He slammed into her, the air exploding from her lungs as she hit the dirt hard.

  Boot on her wrist.

  Blade rising.

  Veil on cool-down.

  Too close for Arc Bolt.

  Too slow.

  Time turned into syrup...

  The shout from Tamsin.

  The sky above.

  The sound of Tony’s roar.

  The taste of blood in her mouth.

  The man above her grinned, sun glinting off the blade of his saber.

  He brought the blade down.