Raze.
He sat with the na on the Pathfinder screen and looked at the active designation beside it and then looked at the settlent wall and then looked back at the screen because the screen was not going to change and he needed to confirm that it was not going to change before he incorporated the information fully.
She was alive. He had the mory of the antechamber — the last coherent seconds before the shackles and the darkness, the Morag warriors falling, the Ghost dissolving, Raze going down alongside him. He had assud the sa conclusion for her that the Vel-Thak head had assud for him.
The Vel-Thak head had apparently made the sa mistake twice.
He turned the phone off and set it down and did not say anything for a mont because the information was still arranging itself into sothing he could work with. Two things were true simultaneously: Raze being alive was a complication he had not accounted for, and Raze being alive was — he held this honestly, because honesty was his policy about things he would prefer not to hold honestly — not entirely unwelco.
He would address what to do about Raze when he had done what needed to be done first.
He looked at the backpack. He looked at the settlent. He looked at his hands, which were functional but thinner than they had been, operating below the capability the Strand evolution and Stage Two cultivation had built.
Ten days, he decided. He would give himself ten days and then he would move.
-----
Day one and two were the most demanding days, which was counterintuitive given that they principally involved eating and sleeping.
He ate with the thodical commitnt of soone treating food as operational infrastructure rather than pleasure. He slept in actual sleep cycles rather than the irregular unconsciousness of forest survival, and the quality difference was significant enough that by the end of day two he felt like a system that had been running on auxiliary power for a month and had finally reconnected to the main supply.
Day three, his Stage Two cultivation ca back.
Not gently. The reassertion of established cultivation after a suppression event had a different quality from initial breakthrough — not the threshold mont of sothing new arriving but the recovery of sothing returning, the pathways reopening like circulation returning to a limb that had been compressed, initially uncertain and then with increasing confidence as the channels confird they were intact. By midday he was circulating at Stage Two with the reliability that weeks of established practice had built before the injection.
He ran sessions. Without the ring’s crystal storage — the ring was in the secured chamber with the Seal, both inaccessible — he had only his own natural Aether generation. It was sufficient. Not luxurious — sufficient. The difference between having the crystals and not having them was the difference between running with a full pack and running without one. He could still run.
By day five the Stage Two was stable. Not at its previous peak but stable, reliable, available when he reached for it.
’The engine is running,’ he said, to no one in particular, during the evening session on day five. ’Slowly. But running.’
-----
The second five days were for intelligence work.
Thura ca every day and stayed for hours. The quality of intelligence that two years of embedded observation produced was extraordinary in the way that very patient work was extraordinary. Thura had spent twenty-four months inside the Vel-Thak palace compound not doing anything dramatic. Just watching. Just rembering. Building the granular, detailed picture of how a specific place operated on a daily basis, which was the kind of picture that could not be obtained by any other thod.
The palace compound’s layout resolved in Max’s mind over four days of conversation. Not as a floor plan — as a living system, with its rhythms and its habits and the specific points where its design created gaps in its own coverage. The guard rotations. The change intervals. The sections that were actively monitored versus those that were monitored in theory.
The secured chamber’s location: third level, interior corridor. Both the ring and the Seal were inside it together, locked behind two layers of protection. The outer layer was a standard Vel-Thak military enchantnt — Grade III, detection-oriented, registering unauthorized Aether signatures. The inner layer was the secured chamber door itself, reinforced with the most sophisticated locking enchantnt the palace’s enchanters had produced.
’It is not a recognition system,’ Thura said, on the third day of intelligence work. ’It does not wait for sothing specific to open it. It resists everything. Every attempt to force or bypass it has failed. The Vel-Thak head had it built to be permanent.’
Max looked at the floor between them and thought.
’How does the Vel-Thak head himself access the chamber?’ he asked.
Thura paused. ’He has a master override — a device he personally carries that was built into the chamber’s enchantnt system when it was constructed. Only his device opens it. It cannot be replicated.’
’How often does he open it?’
’Rarely. Perhaps once a month for inspection. And once—’ Thura stopped.
Max looked at him.
’Once for the ceremony,’ Thura finished slowly, arriving at the sa place Max was already standing. ’The binding ceremony requires him to physically retrieve the Seal from the chamber and carry it to the ceremonial space. He has to open the inner chamber himself to do it.’
’When does that happen?’ Max said. ’In the ceremony’s sequence — when specifically does he open the chamber?’
Thura thought carefully. ’The night before the ceremony. He retrieves the Seal the evening prior and holds it in his private quarters overnight. The ceremony itself is conducted at dawn.’
Max looked at the floor for a mont.
’So there is a window,’ he said. ’Between the mont he opens the inner chamber to retrieve the Seal and the mont the ceremony incorporates it permanently. A window where the chamber door is already open, the Seal is already out, and the ring is accessible inside an unlocked room.’
Thura was very still. ’Yes,’ he said quietly. ’But the Vel-Thak head will be present when he opens it. And his personal guard. And the palace enchanters who oversee the pre-ceremony preparations.’
’How long does the retrieval take?’
’The Vel-Thak head enters the chamber alone. Always alone — it is a ceremony of personal authority, he makes a point of it. He is inside for approximately four minutes before he erges with the Seal.’ Thura paused. ’His guard waits outside the chamber door during those four minutes.’
Max looked at his hands. He looked at the superior shotgun in the backpack. He looked at the dagger.
’Four minutes,’ he said. ’And while he is inside the chamber retrieving the Seal, the chamber door is open but the corridor outside has his personal guard.’
’Yes.’
’Which ans the window is the mont the outer layer is deactivated by his presence and the inner door opens.’ He paused, working through the sequence. ’He deactivates the outer detection layer with his authorization to approach the chamber. He uses his device to open the inner door. He enters alone. The guard waits. The door is open. The ring is inside, unattended, for four minutes.’
Thura looked at him steadily. ’You would need to be in position on the third level before he arrives. Past the outer detection layer before he deactivates it, or entering behind him in the window of his authorized deactivation. In the corridor. Invisible to the guard. And able to enter the chamber and retrieve the ring in the sa four minutes he is retrieving the Seal.’
’Which ans we would both be in the chamber simultaneously,’ Max said.
The room was quiet for a mont.
’Yes,’ Thura said.
Max sat with this. Four minutes. The Vel-Thak head retrieving the Seal. Max retrieving the ring. Both of them in an unlocked secured chamber the night before the ceremony that would make extraction permanently impossible. The Vel-Thak head’s personal guard outside the door.
It was the kind of plan that had a very small margin and a very clear logic, which in his experience were the only kinds of plans worth making.
-----
On day seven, he presented it to the settlent.
He sat with Sera and the elders and Thura and outlined the approach with the thodical clarity of soone who had been thinking about nothing else for seven days. Not a raid. An infiltration tid to the ceremony’s own preparation sequence — using the Vel-Thak head’s own ritual as the chanism that opened every door that needed to be opened. He was not breaking in. He was walking through a door the Vel-Thak head was opening for himself, at the one mont the Vel-Thak head had no choice but to open it.
He outlined the entry route through Thura’s maintenance passage. The positioning on the third level. The four-minute window. The exit.
When he finished, the room was quiet.
Sera looked at the assembled clan mbers. She looked at Thura. She looked at the plan’s structure on the floor between them — functional, spare, every elent present because it needed to be.
She looked back at Max.
’You are still smaller than the prophecy suggested,’ she said.
He waited.
’But you plan like a Morag.’ A pause that contained sothing that was not quite a smile but was in the sa territory. ’We move when you say we move.’
-----
Day ten, Thura arrived two hours early.
He sat down and delivered the information without preamble because Thura did not use preamble when ti had beco a specific resource.
’The ceremony has been moved forward,’ he said. ’The Vel-Thak head announced it this morning. It is now in twelve days. He retrieves the Seal the night before — which ans eleven days from now.’ He held Max’s gaze. ’We have eight days before that window closes. After that the plan does not work. After the ceremony, nothing works.’
Max looked at him.
’Eight days,’ he said. ’We move in eight days.’
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