We camped in the College courtyard. Lyra said the wards were degraded but still better than nothing, and it was the best-protected site for miles.

  I couldn't sleep.

  I sat against the courtyard wall with the Sealstone in my lap, doing what Dren had been drilling into me — generation and absorption, back and forth, getting used to using them as separate tools. The stone responded to both. When I generated a flame, it caught the light and threw it back warm. When I tried absorption — pulling inward, the way I'd pulled the granary fire back — the stone went a little brighter. Like approval.

  The others were asleep. Dren's slow deliberate breathing. Lyra muttering through her thoughts. Tam's breathing, which I'd know anywhere, which made the whole thing slightly more bearable.

  I was thinking about what it would actually feel like. Absorbing Seraphine's force. Lyra said "ride the wave, don't brace against it." Dren had said "survive." Very different pieces of advice.

  At three in the morning, I felt it.

  Low hum, barely sound at all — more felt in the chest and feet. Coming from the northeast. From the direction of Ash-Mordhen.

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  Dren was on his feet before I'd finished registering it.

  "Up," he said. "Everyone up."

  They were up.

  I looked northeast.

  The sky was wrong. Not lit with fire or lightning — wrong in a deeper way. Like looking through warped glass, like the light itself wasn't sure what to do.

  "Expansion wave," Lyra said, watching it. Her voice was controlled and her hands weren't. "Not full power — she's not there yet — but she's testing range." She turned to look at me. "She knows the stone was activated. The ward here isn't strong enough to mask it." She paused. "She knows we're here."

  "How long until she focuses on us?" Dren asked.

  "Hours. A day at most."

  Everyone looked at me. I hadn't noticed that happening — this quiet shift in the group where I'd become the person decisions depended on — but it had happened, and here it was.

  "We don't wait for her to come to us," I said. "We move to the edge of her influence radius at dawn. On our terms, before she can send anything our way." I paused. "That's better than sitting here letting her choose the timing."

  Dren nodded, once. The nod of someone checking a box.

  "Dawn," he said.

  I sat back down with the stone.

  Tam sat beside me. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. We just waited for the light to come back, the two of us, the way we used to wait for dawn when we were kids fishing on the river — the best part of which was never the fish but just the sitting there, together, in the dark, watching the sky decide to change.