CHAPTER 202: RESPONDING

The guildhall had stopped pretending to be calm.

When Inigo and Lyra pushed through its doors, the first thing they noticed was the sound: not shouting, not panic, but voices forced too low, every syllable carrying strain. Runners darted across polished floors, their boots leaving smudges that nobody paused to clean. The scribes’ quills scratched like teeth on bone.

The great scrying bowls still pulsed with ugly light—Stonebridge split into halves, Marrowport steaming under its own ruin. One clerk wiped her eyes openly while another scratched her notes until blood from her knuckle smeared the parchment.

Guildmaster Thorne stood above it all, sleeves rolled, jaw like stone dragged from a quarry. He looked older than the day before, as though each red circle on the map of Eldrath had added a year.

"Inigo. Lyra." His voice cut the noise without needing to rise. "You saw the smoke from here?"

Lyra nodded once. "We saw. We heard."

"And you know who."

Neither answered. They didn’t need to. The bowls had shown enough: the warhammer that cracked air, the eyes like molten ore, the way cities ceased to be cities after he left.

Thorne pointed at the map. Two fresh circles marked Stonebridge-on-Rell and Marrowport. "These aren’t raids. This is demonstration. The Lord of Destruction means to carve a line west to east until Elandra is the only stone left standing."

Elise stood off to one side, lips pressed thin around a ledger she hadn’t opened. For once she had no clever words, only a grim look that matched the ink stains on her fingers.

Lyra folded her arms across her bowstring. "Then what are we doing here instead of out there?"

Thorne’s eyes narrowed, measuring her like a commander deciding which soldier to risk first. "Because it’s not a matter of hunting raiders in hills. You’re talking about stepping into the ruin he leaves behind while he still walks it."

Inigo’s voice stayed level. "So send us."

That earned a stir from the chamber. A few scribes looked up, horrified. Elise almost laughed, but it caught in her throat.

Thorne didn’t laugh at all. He leaned across the table, knuckles pressing into the wood. "Understand this: no pair of Platinums is meant to face him. Even a full muster of seven wouldn’t be enough. But you—" his gaze flicked between them "—you’re closest. You can move before the others assemble. Delay him, harry him, keep him looking over his shoulder. Buy us hours. Nothing more is expected."

"Hours," Lyra repeated, flat.

"Sometimes hours mean the difference between a city falling or standing," Thorne said. "You’ll not be alone. Once I call the other Platinums, reinforcements will ride to you. Oak, Storm, Spear—whoever can reach you first. But until then..." He let the silence finish.

Elise finally spoke, voice dry. "Until then, you’re the knife we have on hand, whether or not it’s the one we’d choose."

Inigo nodded once. He didn’t waste breath on agreement; he simply adjusted the strap of his vest rig, the leather creaking under the weight of flash-cylinders and caltrops.

Lyra’s eyes burned sharper. "Fine. Give us direction."

Thorne gestured to Elise, who slid two wax-stamped packets across the table. "Stonebridge is gone, but its refugees scattered. Some made for the northern farms. If any lived, they can tell you how he moved, what he spared. Marrowport still smolders. Reports say the inner district hasn’t collapsed entirely. If he dug for something beneath it, you’ll find traces there. Either way, we need eyes."

"And if we find him still there?" Lyra asked.

Thorne held her gaze without blinking. "You survive long enough to tell me so. That is the mission."

The words landed like iron. It wasn’t reassurance. It was a boundary carved in stone.

Elise tucked the slates under Inigo’s arm. "Use your machine. Roads west are clogged, but the JLTV doesn’t ask permission. Supplies are staged at the guild’s lower gate. Fuel, rations, spare arrows. Take what you can carry, leave what you can’t. Don’t linger."

Lyra glanced at Inigo. "You hear that? Don’t linger."

He gave the faintest tilt of a smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes.

Thorne’s mouth twitched, but his voice stayed grave. "You go with the guild’s charge. Platinum prerogative holds in every district until I say otherwise. If anyone challenges you, speak it once. If they still stand in your way—remove them."

Silence followed. No one in the chamber breathed too loudly.

Lyra finally set her bow across her shoulders. "Then we’ll move."

The guild’s lower gate stood open to the square, its heavy timbers reinforced with iron that seemed suddenly too thin. Two stablehands had already lashed crates to the JLTV’s rear bed—arrows, salted meat, spare bandages in rolled cloth. Beside them sat three sealed drums of the specialized fuel Inigo had drawn from the Freedom Shop system, their markings unfamiliar to any eye in this world.

Riko and Maddy were there too, faces pale but stubborn. Riko clutched a chalkboard with half a farewell scrawled and smudged. Maddy carried a pouch of fried dough still warm from the stall.

"You’ll come back," Riko said fiercely, as though saying it made it a contract.

"Keep the codes," Lyra told him, voice firm but softer than usual. "Don’t test them. Don’t change them. Just keep them."

Maddy pressed the pouch into Inigo’s hand. "Eat on the road," she said, her jaw clenched against anything else.

Inigo tucked it into the cab without comment, but his hand lingered on hers a moment longer than necessary.

When they climbed into the JLTV, the machine’s growl seemed louder than the bells. Its armored frame filled the gateway like a beast eager to be unchained. Guards stepped back instinctively, even those who’d seen it before.

Lyra buckled in, her bow across her knees. "Two cities in one day," she murmured.

"Yeah, he is making a comeback," Inigo said, shifting gears.

The JLTV rumbled forward. Elandra’s streets bent reluctantly aside, merchants pulling carts tight against walls, children staring wide-eyed as the iron beast passed. The horns of the city still rang, steady and grim, like the heartbeat of stone.

Behind them, the guildhall’s windows glowed with scry-light. Above them, smoke from the west smudged the sky darker than dusk. And ahead—the ruins of Stonebridge and Marrowport waited, broken sentences in the story of Eldrath.

Thorne’s words clung to them both, heavier than any pack: hours matter.

The JLTV picked up speed. Wheels struck cobbles, then dirt. Wind clawed through the open slit of the cab.

Lyra closed her eyes for one breath, then opened them sharp. "Let’s go see what destruction looks like up close."

Inigo nodded once, his hands steady on the wheel. "And how loud two people can be against it."

The road carried them west, toward smoke, fire, and a warhammer’s echo still hanging in the air.

The JLTV rolled out of the last stone arch of Elandra’s gate, its heavy wheels crunching into the dirt road that led west. The air outside the walls smelled different—less of bread ovens and forge smoke, more of ash drifting from far-off ruin.

Lyra leaned her head just enough to look back once. The city’s towers caught the dim light, bells still beating a rhythm that wasn’t panic, but preparation. For a fleeting breath, she thought of Riko practicing his chalkboard signs, Maddy’s hands steady on a ladle. They had left something fragile in those walls. Fragile, but not weak.

"Eyes forward," Inigo said, not unkindly.

"I was," she replied, turning back.

The road ran flat at first, then bent through low fields where refugees had already begun to gather. Families with carts laden in haste, farmers leading oxen without reins, children staring wide-eyed at the armored beast as it growled past. Some waved—not in joy, but in the sharp, desperate way of people needing to believe someone was going to meet the storm. Lyra lifted two fingers off her bow in silent reply.

Inigo did not wave. He kept his eyes on the line where smoke bruised the horizon. His voice, when it came, was steady. "Stonebridge will still be hot. Buildings cooling, stones cracking. If we move through fast, we can find survivors before the rest of the wreckage makes up its mind to fall."

"And Marrowport?"

He shifted gears, the JLTV climbing a rise. "If the fire’s still running, we go perimeter first. Look for traces beneath the collapse. If he was digging, there’ll be signs. Stone doesn’t forget being touched."

Lyra nodded slowly, but her jaw tightened. "And if he’s still there?"

Inigo’s hands stayed loose on the wheel, but his words came clipped. "Then we don’t fight him. Not head on. We watch, we mark, and we live long enough to get word back."

The machine ate distance. The farmland thinned into scrub, then into dry stone where nothing grew but stubborn weeds. The wind picked up, carrying flecks of ash that settled on the windshield.

Lyra rubbed a circle clear with her glove. "Feels like we’re driving into someone else’s memory."

Inigo almost smiled. "Then we’ll write our own before he finishes his."

The JLTV crested the ridge. Ahead, smoke rose in columns that painted the sky black. What had been Stonebridge-on-Rell was now jagged silhouettes and a scar where the river cut without a bridge. Beyond, Marrowport’s harbor still spat steam like an injured beast.

Lyra drew a slow breath, stringing her bow though no target yet stood. "Well," she said, voice hardening. "Looks like destruction kept the fires warm for us."

Inigo eased the wheel straight, the JLTV rumbling down into the valley. "Then let’s see how close we can stand to it."

The horizon swallowed them both.