The message from Harth arrived two days later, carried by a second traveler who found Vesh in the workshop and handed her a sealed tube of dark glass. When Vesh broke the seal, the lens on Lira’s bench flared in answer. A low, directional pulse moved through the lattice—north and upriver, toward a place that was not Veythra.
Vesh’s face lost its usual scholarly calm. “That is not a letter. That is a summons. Something under Harth’s oldest foundation stone has begun to move the same way your fragments moved before the binding. They want the living boundary there within a fortnight, or they will try to bind it themselves with methods we abandoned for good reason.”
The workshop went quiet. Sera straightened. Kael’s easy posture hardened. Elene set down her tools.
Lira felt the pulse again
