Valen watched him go, then looked at the others. "He'll be back," he said quietly. "Eventually."
Nobody answered.
The lamp flickered. Somewhere in the walls, something settled — old wood, old stone, the inn breathing around them. Neo hadn't moved. His hands were wrapped around the mug, not drinking, just holding it like it was the only fixed point in the room.
Nyra's eyes moved from the door to Alinda. "What happened out there?"
"Not now," Alinda said.
"Alinda—"
"I said not now." Her voice was quiet but it had edges.
Nyra looked at Valen instead, the question still in her face. Valen opened his mouth, glanced toward the bar — and stopped.
Jason was already moving.
He didn't look at any of them. He set down the cloth he'd been using, folded it once, and then paused at the hatch, hand resting on the handle. He looked at the table — not at any face in particular, just the shape of the room, the lamp, the cold tea, the silence that had followed Thal out the door.
"I've had enough years in this business," he said, to no one specifically, "to know when a room's got more in it than I need to hear."
He lifted the hatch. The stairs creaked once beneath his weight. The hatch closed after him with a soft, final sound.
The room was quieter for it.
Valen exhaled and pulled out a chair, turning it backward and sitting with his arms folded across the top rail. He looked at the table, at the cold tea, at the lamp.
"You don't have to tell us everything," he said, to no one in particular. "But something happened today that cracked all three of you open, and we're going to be walking into whatever comes next together, so."
He shrugged and said nothing else.
Luken's fingers had stopped drumming. He sat with his hands flat on the table now, watching Neo.
Alinda's hand lifted from Neo's arm. She sat back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest, crimson eyes moving across the table.
Neo stared at the mug. The tea had been cold for a long time.
"I met the Archon," he said.
Three heads lifted simultaneously.
Nyra straightened. Valen's arms unfolded. Luken's hands came off the table.
"What?" Nyra said.
"In Black Hollow." Neo turned the mug slowly in his hands. "He was working there. Looked like a regular shop worker until he didn't." He paused. "He talked to me. Then there was another one of him behind me. Different body. Same eyes."
"He approached you directly," Luken said. "Velmyn himself."
"Yes."
"The Archon of Threads," Luken said, not looking up from his staff. "Multiplicity. Many bodies, one mind." His thumb traced a worn groove in the wood. "You saw two of him. Did they speak in sequence, or simultaneously?"
Neo blinked at the question. "What?"
"Simultaneous speech would confirm unified consciousness," Luken said. "Sequential suggests relay control. It matters for how we anticipate him. Which was it?"
Neo thought back. "The second one picked up where the first left off. Like he'd already heard himself."
Luken nodded once, grim. "Relay. That means distance between bodies, however slight. That means reaction time." He returned to his staff. "Useful."
Neo was quiet for a moment. "He knew about Tar," he said. "About the tavern. Things he shouldn't have known unless he'd been close. Watching." He paused, fingers tightening on the mug. "He knew where to find me. Where I'd be alone. Where Alinda wouldn't be."
"He wanted you rattled," Valen said. "Not caught. Not taken. Just rattled and talking."
"And now we're all talking," Nyra said quietly.
Nobody answered that.
Neo turned the mug again in his hands. "And Thal had kept it all hidden," he said, not as an accusation — just as a thing that was true, sitting in the room alongside everything else. "Not lied. Just — not said." He frowned slightly, like he was still working out whether the distinction mattered. "I don't know what to do with that yet."
Nobody tried to answer it for him.
Tar's head bowed again. Not lower. His nostrils flared, broad and wet, the sound of air moving in and out too controlled, too deliberate. He held it. Held it. Then let it go in a long, uneven rush that shuddered through his massive chest, the kind of breath a man took when he realized the blow he'd been waiting for had already landed somewhere else, on someone else, and the waiting had been worse.
Neo looked at him.
He held his gaze for a moment, then looked back at the lamp.
Valen looked around the table and said nothing.
The lamp burned. The tea stayed cold.
Then, from outside — distant but clear, the way sound carried at night when the city had gone quiet — a scream.
Not one. Several. Building on each other, overlapping, the particular pitch of people who had turned a corner and found something that shouldn't exist.
Nobody moved for a breath.
Then Nyra was on her feet, axe already in hand. Valen was a half-step behind her, both swords clearing their sheaths. Luken's staff was already off the floor.
Valen cracked the door.
The smell hit first.
Iron and something underneath it — older, wetter, the kind of smell that lived in the back of the throat and didn't leave. Then the sound came in full, no longer muffled by the inn's walls — screaming from the left, screaming from further right, screaming from somewhere above them that cut off mid-note and didn't resume.
And down the street, catching the moonlight, moving between the cobblestones in slow, branching channels the way water found the lowest point —
Red.
It ran from the alley mouth in a thick, unhurried current, spreading fingers across the stone, pooling in the gaps between the cobbles, finding the gutter and filling it. More coming from further up the street, joining it. The volume of it was wrong. Too much for one person. Too much for several.
Luken stepped to the window, his face draining. "Multiple directions," he said, his voice very controlled. "Listen."
They listened.
He was right. The screaming wasn't coming from one place. It was coming from everywhere.
"Gods — gods, he just — he just — there was nothing left—" A woman's voice, somewhere close, high and fractured with disbelief.
"Don't stop — don't stop moving—" A man, already past the inn, not slowing.
"It came from inside him — from inside — I saw it—" The voice cracked. Kept going, getting further away. "I saw it happen—"
"My brother — my brother was just standing there and then he—" A sob swallowed the rest.
From further away, wordless — just volume, just the raw sound of a throat doing the only thing left to it.
A man came sprinting around the far corner, slipping in the red as he hit it, going down hard on his hands and knees. He looked at his hands. Looked at what he'd fallen in. Looked up the street at where he'd come from with the specific expression of someone whose mind was refusing to finish a thought.
He scrambled upright and ran without making another sound.
"It's spreading—" someone screamed, from a direction that hadn't had noise in a moment ago. "They're just — they're just — someone do something—"
Then that voice too cut off.
Valen looked at the street. At the red moving between the cobbles. At the screaming that wasn't stopping, wasn't localizing, was coming from everywhere at once like the city itself had opened a mouth.
"Ohhh fuck this," he said. Not loud. Almost conversational. The way a man spoke when the worst thing he'd imagined turned out to be the floor, not the ceiling. He pulled the door closed.
"He's not hiding anymore," Alinda said.
Nyra's knuckles were white on the axe handle. She looked at the door, then at the table, at the cold tea, at the space where Thal had been sitting and wasn't.
He was out there. Alone. Already walking into whatever this was before any of them had known it was coming.
"We move," she said. "Now."