Chapter 149: Roots of ashes [2]
While Soren rewrote the rotation board, Veyra inspected every arrow weaver.
She took apart three poor shafts and made the makers build them again. She spoke without heat, but no one dared cut corners. At the tower, she sat with a child who had lost a brother and taught her how to fletch a straight feather.
The child watched her hands and followed.
Torren tried to walk away with a load of rootstone twice his size, but the local police finally cornered him as Lorn blocked him with a living wall.
Torren blinked. "W-what?
"You will sit," she said, voice stern.
"I can still move," he said.
"You will sit!" She said again, her voice offering no resistance.
He sat and five minutes later, he fell asleep sitting up against the wall, his Pyreaxe placed across his knees. Veyra walked by and when she saw him snoring, she hid a smile and moved on.
Mirra set up three extra cots and two extra basins outside the clinic. She trained twelve new hands that afternoon in bandage work and splint tying.
"Tight," she told them. "Not cruel. You hold the body like you hold a pot that will spill."
Civilians came without being asked.
They carried water, they brought broth, they swept shards off the steps, and they also stitched torn cloaks. They were eager to help in any way they could.
They straightened lines of gear and stacked them in clean rows, and they gave the wall to the fighters and took the ground back from the mess.
There was no gap between Awakened and unawakened today. Today, everyone was the Rootsite.
By evening, the corpse had been picked clean of use.
Harrick oversaw the work. "No waste," he said. "Ever."
Bark plates were cut to shield-size and stacked. Some would armor doors, and others would brace bridges.
Thorn cable was stripped from the tail and braided into lengths thicker than a man’s wrist. Sinew cords were coiled for bowstrings that would never snap. Sap was collected, filtered, and sealed in clay for paste and light.
Veyra took charge of the crown shards.
She ran a finger along an edge and nodded once. "These will make good arrowheads," she said. "They’re sharp, they’ll bite even plated hides."
Kaelin claimed four hollow spine sheaths and said nothing about them. He simply vanished with them and came back later without them, looking satisfied.
Clayton stood alone with the skull for a time. He placed his hand on the cracked conduit where Veyra’s arrow had gone through. He felt nothing now, no hum, no hate, just dead matter.
"This is strength," he said under his breath. He turned and walked back toward the light.
And night eventually rose again.
The south field glowed with lanterns. The wall was uglier now but stronger. The clinics were quiet, and the bunkers were open again. Families returned to their floors, tired and hollow but walking.
In the market, pots bubbled with stew. Someone found a fiddle as a soft tune floated out. It did not chase grief away, but it sat beside it.
Clayton ate with the wardens. There was bread, stew, and water. There was no wine but that was fine, there was also no noise.
An Initiate slid onto the bench, eyes wide, arm bandaged up to the shoulder. "Sir," he said, then swallowed. "My mother asked me to say thank you."
Clayton shook his head. "Tell her to thank the wall."
The boy smiled, quick and bright, then winced when it pulled at his stitches. He stood and left.
Across the square, elders carved names into a living plaque that Lorn coaxed out of the Spire’s bark. The plaque would grow and hold. It would not weather; the names on it would never fade.
Children ran in small circles around the plaque, then stopped as if they felt the weight there. One child touched a letter with two fingers and whispered it. Another child placed a pebble at the base and nodded, serious.
Stories started at the fires.
"You didn’t see it," a young fighter said. "Kaelin climbed the beast like a lizard and cut the whole crown off with a spoon."
"It was a knife," Kaelin said from the shadows; he didn’t shy from these type of conversations and the other Awakened were used to him.
"Fine," the fighter said. "A small knife."
Torren groaned and put a hand over his eyes. "I split its chest open alone, yes, but only because Soren stole its feet first."
Soren did not look up from his bowl. "Feet don’t belong to beasts that size," he said. "Not near our wall."
Veyra watched them all from a low step, arms around her knees. When her name came up, she shook her head but did not correct the tale. The part about the arrow was already changing in the telling, it always would.
Someone called Clayton "Crownbreaker."
He did not like the word. It sounded too heavy. It also sounded too easy, but the people needed a name to hold onto and so he let it pass.
After the meal, he walked the city again.
He stopped at the western Night Spire. Its beacon root glowed faintly, calm and steady. He touched it and felt the network pulse. All twelve beacons answered; no threats, no tremors, and no red flares.
He crossed a bridge of woven vines and checked the hinges. They were sound; Lorn’s work held.
He paused by a bunker entrance. There, two guards stood, spears up, eyes clear. He asked for their names.
"Rika," one said.
"Jon," said the other.
"Thank you," Clayton said.
They straightened a little more.
At the clinic door, Mirra sat with her back to the wall, head tipped forward. She slept sitting up, palms still glowing faintly where healing had not fully drained.
Lorn stood over her like a tree, arms folded, eyes half-closed, listening to the soft sounds inside.
Clayton moved on.
He climbed the Spire.
The wind was cool tonight. The lights below were green and gold, and the city did not groan. It breathed.
He set Regalia down and leaned both hands on the rail.
He thought of the names... Hale, Pietta, Sol, Jano, Ruth, Thann, Viko, Neri, Tomas, Eryx, and Dale. He said them again, quiet, so only the wind heard.
He looked toward the east where the horizon was a black seam. He felt the pull, low and certain. The Heartseed mirrored it; the Genesis Protocols hummed like a drum far away.
Trial III was coming closer. The Behemoth had not delayed it, it had only proved the Rootsite could stand while he was gone.
He had chosen Torren already, three more to pick. He knew the shapes, he would watch one more day and he would decide.
But not now.
Now the city needed sleep.
In the morning, grief rose again, as it always did after a battle’s first quiet.
Clayton did not hide from it. He met with the families who asked to see him, he shook hands, and he listened. He stood still when a mother beat at his chest with weak fists and said it should have been him.
He stood still when a father took his hand, kissed it, and thanked him for doing what no one else ever had.
He did not defend himself. He did not explain, and he did not argue with pain. He carried it away with him like a stone in his pocket.
Torren limped less by noon.
Veyra strung a new course for the towers. Kaelin built two small things on a roof and would not tell anyone what they were until he smiled and said, "Surprises."
Soren made three fighters run their drills again from the start because their elbows were lazy, while on another side Harrick finished the new brace and hit it twice with a hammer to make sure it sang true.
Lorn also found the rotten support that had failed the night before and grew two to replace it where no one would ever see.
The plaque finished growing at sundown.
The names gleamed dark against the living wood. People kept touching it as they walked by. Some with fingers, some with heads bowed. Some with their whole palm pressed flat, holding on.
Clayton touched it once and left his hand there longer than he meant to. The wood was warm.
"Thank you," he said to it. He knew it was silly, but he said it anyway.
At last, he went back to the south field.
The corpse was only bone and plate and claw now. The crown was a ring of broken holes, the conduit Veyra pierced was a black seam.
He stood beside the skull.
He spoke to the dead thing like it could hear. "You were made for teeth," he said. "We were made for hands."
He turned back to the wall where the lamps were coming on again. The Rootsite glowed.
He went to the balcony and looked over his city.
"Rest," he said to it, though it could not hear. "You’ve earned it."
He took one last breath of sap and ash and smoke.
Then he went inside to sleep, for the first time in two days, with his armor on the floor and Regalia leaned against the door like an old habit.
Tomorrow would bring choices.
Tonight belonged to the fallen.