Few miles away, in the Middle Ring
The roof of Dahlia's inn had become a small hanging spot of its own.
Below, the common room was packed with the living burdens of war, rows of cots and folded blankets and tired bodies wrapped in borrowed warmth. Refugees from the outer ring, families from the middle ring, and a few soldiers who had not found a proper barracks all shared the same shelter now, breathing the same smoke-stung air. From the rooftop, Solis could hear the muted clatter of bowls downstairs, the occasional cry of a child, the careful hurry of people trying to pretend the world was still orderly enough to be repaired.
Above him, the sky was mercilessly beautiful, totally contrasting with the current situation.
The war had not been kind to the night, but it had not yet succeeded in stealing the stars. They hung over Caldemount like cold pins in a black cloth, steady and distant, untouched by cannon smoke. Solis sat with his back against one of the low roof pillars and held Instructor Tedric's medallion in his hand, turning it slowly so the moonlight could catch on the worn metal.
Vaidya sat beside him, knees drawn up, a thin cloak around his shoulders. He looked as if he should have been tucked indoors with books and ink, not perched among tiles and wind. Yet he wore the air of someone who had long since decided that comfort was a luxury for safer days.
Ada was downstairs helping Dahlia with dinner. Solis could hear her voice even from up here, sharp and practical, making sure no one cut the bread too thick and no pot was left to boil over. It seems her part-time job just upgraded to a permanent... for a while though.
The inn had become one of those places that had to run with the precision of a small battle camp. Ada had taken to it naturally, like a blade finding the right sheath.
The silence between the two teens was too severe. Vaidya broke that silence first.
"Do you still remember him?"
Solis looked down at the medallion in his palm. "Tedric?" he said softly. "Yeah. Of course I do."
Vaidya nodded, gaze fixed on the sky. "He was like a father figure, not only for you. For all of us too."
Solis smiled a little, though the smile came with an ache. "Yeah. I admit that too."
"It still feels like yesterday, huh?" Vaidya said. His voice had become quieter now, gentler than usual. "Sometimes I still wait for his voice to bark at us from the yard. I still think I might hear him grumble about our posture. Then I remember..."
Well there was no need to end that sentence. Sometimes silence is more impactful than saying it out loud.
Solis's thumb brushed over the medallion's edge. The metal was old now, polished by years of handling and memory. He had touched it so many times without truly seeing it. The shape of grief had a way of making objects sacred without making their details important. The medallion was more than a keepsake, it was a piece of Tedric, a thing Solis had clung to when the world around him cracked.
"I never really looked at the carvings," Solis admitted. "Not properly, anyway."
Vaidya leaned closer, curious. "You're looking now? What can you see?"
Solis squinted at the circle of metal under the moonlight. The engraving had once seemed like decoration, a subtle flourish on a token of remembrance. But now, with the rooftop's pale light and the memory of so many sleepless nights behind him, the design came into focus.
"It looks like a bird," he said slowly. "A big one. Majestic. Almost like it's spreading its wings over something."
Vaidya's brow lifted. "A bird?"
"Yeah. Some kind of royal bird, maybe. It doesn't look like a common hawk or anything. More like something out of an old crest. Do you have any idea what it can be?"
Vaidya let out a soft breath that was almost a laugh. "If I had found anything in the books, I would not have asked you, genius."
Solis gave him a sideways glance. "You really looked?"
Vaidya shrugged. "I checked histories. Crest records. Regional carvings. Anything that might connect to an old family symbol, a military order, maybe even a local trade mark. Nothing. I found similar shapes in some mountain texts, but never this exact bird."
Solis turned the medallion once more, the moonlight moving across the wings engraved into the surface. "Another mystery, huh?"
Vaidya gave a helpless tilt of his head. "Apparently our life is fond of collecting them."
Solis huffed a quiet laugh. "Why is life so hard?"
That made Vaidya turn fully toward him. The younger boy's face had that look he got when he was about to say something annoyingly wise, the kind of expression that suggested he had been born with old thoughts already loaded in his head.
"Because," Vaidya said, "life does not reward the person who expects things to be easy. It rewards the person who keeps going anyway. Hard work is like a lock. It can resist you for days, but if you keep turning the key, it eventually gives in. Not because the lock has become kind towards you, but because persistence wears down resistance."
Solis blinked at him.
Vaidya, warmed by his own logic now, continued. "People think talent is what wins. Sometimes it is useful. But talent without labor becomes a fancy ornament. Work turns it into a tool. You keep moving, you keep improving, and the ugly parts of the world can't stay ugly forever. That's the part instructor Tedric understood."
The wind shifted and brushed their hair back. Solis stared at Vaidya as though seeing him from a new angle. The boy sitting beside him was sixteen, three years younger than Solis himself, but that age somehow never fit the depth of his speech. Vaidya's strategy, his magical intuition, the way he sorted pain into usable forms, it all made him feel older than the number should permit.
Solis could not help laughing softly. "You know what, sometimes you sound like the older one among us."
Vaidya looked offended for a moment, then relented into a small grin. "And sometimes you sound like someone who is a total amateur. An amateur who can't handle the reality of the world, who can't handle the obvious result of wars."
Solis lowered his gaze again. "Maybe. Maybe I am."
He tucked the medallion into his palm and closed his fingers around it. The thought came unbidden and honest: whatever Vaidya said, whatever complicated philosophies he carried around like a sage, it did not matter as much as the simple fact that he was here. Best friend, scholar, tactician, strange walking library, all of it folded into one person who had somehow become part of the shape of Solis's life.
Whatever happened next, that would not change.