CHAPTER 63: WIND GOES WRONG

The ridge ran like a thin knife. Flags snapped on short lines. Proctors watched from the bowl floor, slates ready. The sponsor in the dark coat stood beside Seraphine with his hands behind his back and the polite smile of a man who never ran.

Sector Two’s rope bridge hummed. Two wagons waited to cross with dummy civilians lashed tight. The gust lanes made a low song.

We moved to the near anchor. Gareth checked the rock lip. Pelham paid out line without tangles. Mira marked our sets, short notes, clean hand. Lyra stood to the side with her folio and that brass badge, eyes on the crowd and the wind both.

The ward post to our left flickered—one hiccup, then solid.

"Post hiccup," Mira said.

"Log it," I answered.

A man in a contractor’s cloak slid out from behind the wagon like he had always been there. Hood up. Tool belt neat. He carried a canvas roll and a coil of copper wire. No crest. No student badge.

"Ward team," he said mildly. "Stabilize and release."

"Who signed you?" Lyra asked at once.

He glanced at her folio. "Operations."

"Which one?" she pressed.

He didn’t answer. He set the canvas roll near the anchor and knelt like a man unboxing lunch.

Every hair on my arms raised. Posture wrong. Too balanced. Hands too quiet.

"Hold," I told my team.

He palmed two dull coins from the canvas and pressed them into the stone with a neat twist. The air went flat. Sound thinned like it slid under a door. Pierce’s voice from the bowl turned to wool.

"Silence," Mira said, eyes wide.

The man smiled without teeth. Then he drew a thin wand from his sleeve and whipped it through the air. Wind cracked across the bridge like a belt.

Three teams on the span lost their feet at once. Bodies went sideways. The ward net under the drop lit blue, caught them, and slung them hard into the far railing. Two boys bounced and stayed down. One girl tried to stand and went to her knees, hands on ears. Lyra flinched, went pale, and grabbed the rope to steady the intake queue even though no one was moving yet.

"Hey!" Gareth barked, then remembered the silence and shut his mouth.

The man pressed a third coin with his thumb. The world got quieter. My own voice came back to me like it had been soaked in felt.

He looked at Cael and me the way carpenters look at wood before they cut. "You two will do," he said. His tone had iron in it. No sparring smile, no fake courtesy. Promise, not threat. "Come forward or I start dropping people until someone stops me."

The words didn’t aim for points. They aimed for bones.

Cael stepped up beside me. He didn’t look at the proctors. He didn’t look at Seraphine or the sponsor. He looked at the bridge anchor and the man who had just made it a weapon. "Name," Cael said.

"Verrin," the man said. He twirled the wand once, tight and neat. "Paid enough that yours won’t matter by sunset."

A gust knifed along the span. Flags on the far bank snapped flat. The wagons rocked.

"Pelham, Mira—back," I said. "Gareth, brace lip. Lyra—clear the lane."

Lyra moved the way trained people move: quick steps, no wasted turn. She got two onlookers up the bank and waved with simple hand cuts—back, back. She kept her badge out where proctors could see who she was, even if the sound had turned to mud.

Verrin tapped the wand against the anchor pin like a baton. He was measuring it.

"Don’t," I said. It came out soft and wrong in the hush. "You drop that, people get hurt."

"That’s the point," he said.

He flicked the wand. The pin jumped. The bridge answered with a deep, unhappy note.

Cael’s aura went into his legs and down into the rock, low and heavy. He didn’t shout. He planted like a beam.

I pulled the Warden off my back, flipped it, and slammed the boar chassis into the anchor base as a wedge. Gareth packed soil hard against the lip with short strokes. Pelham fed me a clean line and I tied the prusik under the sway, fingers firm, dress and bite. Anchor pulse only when the knot took. No flooding. No fuzz.

The bridge steadied—one notch.

Verrin watched like he had paid for a good seat. "Useful," he said. "Shame."

He snapped the wand again. A lateral gust punched the far wagon. One wheel shifted. The ox balked, eyes white.

More bodies on the span wobbled, then went down. The ward net caught two. A third hit the rope, slid, scrabbled, hung by a forearm, and screamed. The sound died to a cough in the hush.

Lyra’s face went tight. She had her pencil out, writing what she could see because that is what a coordinator does even when her stomach is ice.

"Proctors," Mira said, pointing down. Pierce had already started up the slope with two staff. A smoke bell rang on Sector Four and a gray curtain rose at the top of the ridge, thick and wrong. Two Saints turned toward it. Diversion.

"Field’s ours," Cael said, eyes on Verrin. "For now."

Verrin rotated his wrist and sent a pressure wave low along the ground. It hit my ankles and tried to take my stance. Anchor Step ate it. He noted that too.

"Come down off the chain," he said to us. "Or I take it down while you watch."

Cael moved first. He stepped into the open and made the floor honest, a little heavier where Verrin’s weight wanted to be. He didn’t grandstand. He built a box.

I stepped left and set my angle. Marrow slid out of Shade at my heel with skull low. Hollow stayed up under the eave. Weave-3 wasn’t on the menu. Not yet.

Verrin set his shoes square and raised the wand point-down like a knife. He didn’t bounce or twitch. He didn’t try to look bigger than he was. He looked like a man who had done this before and meant to do it again.

"Last chance," he said. "Walk away."

Cael’s jaw worked once. "No."

Verrin smiled without humor. "Good. I hate boring."

He cut the air. The wind cracked. Cael slid two steps, planted, and took it on his shoulder instead of his chest. I slipped inside the follow-up pressure and put the sabre point where I wanted—his wrist. He skipped it with a small turn and flicked the wand at my eyes. I ducked. The gust grazed my hair and tore dust off the ground behind me.

He didn’t overcommit. He tested. His footwork wrote neat little letters on the stone.

"Contractor," I said.

"Stay in your lane," he said.

He feinted at me and stamped for Cael’s ankle. Cael took it, let it flow, and sent the weight past. Verrin didn’t stumble. He rolled the motion into a rolling lash that chewed a groove from the bridge rail. Two students pressed against that rail went very still. One started to pray and remembered the hush and stopped.

"Armand," Mira called, low. "Anchor pin."

Verrin’s wand tip tapped it three times in a count that said he was going to break it on the fourth.

"Gareth, more pack," I said. "Pelham, on my line."

They moved. The prusik sang. The Warden’s ribs creaked and held.

Verrin lifted the wand a hair and cocked his head at me, curious. "You don’t flood," he said.

"Waste," I said.

"Not today," he said, and swung.

He didn’t aim for me. He cut the air just above the pin with a tight whip. The metal rang, hopped, and slid halfway out. The bridge made a deep, sick sound like a throat trying to swallow something too large.

Cael dropped one heel, aura down, arms loose. He bought us two heartbeats with mass alone.

I went to the pin, pressed my palm over the head, and pulsed only when iron met bone. It seated a breath. Verrin twitched the wand again. It came out two fingers more.

He stepped in to finish it.

Cael met him. It wasn’t pretty—no big arc, no heroic shout. He pushed his forearm into Verrin’s bicep, stole space, and tried to clamp the shoulder. Verrin slithered under, slid off angle, and rapped Cael’s ribs with the wand hard enough to make him grunt.

I took the opening and cut at the inside of Verrin’s elbow. He twitched a fraction and my point kissed cloth, not skin. He flicked the wand at my hand. The gust tried to tear the sabre from my grip. I kept it by remembering the count: heel, hip, hand. No more.

"Step back," he said.

"No," I said.

He smiled again, the same flat line. "Then break."

He turned his wrist and the gust went sideways under the rail toward the silent crowd. Two first-years lifted off their feet and hit the ward net like fish hitting water. One didn’t move after.

Lyra flinched. Her pencil broke. She didn’t scream. She didn’t drop the folio. She tore a page and started a triage list for proctors who hadn’t reached us yet.

"Enough," I said.

"Say when," Verrin said.

"Now."

I grabbed the coins he’d pressed into the rock with my free hand, ripped one up with a bone pick, and shoved a pinch of chalk under it. Sound crept back like a shy dog. Not full. Enough.

"Up," I said, and Cael heard it, small but clear.

He took the floor again. I set my angle. We moved together the way we had at Gate Six, unspoken. Verrin tried to split us; we refused to split.

"Proctors!" Pierce’s voice bled through the thin sound field from the bowl. "Hold the line! Ward team incoming!"

Verrin heard it too. His eyes thinned. He stopped playing with pins and went for blood.

He brought the wand up in a straight line at my throat. There was nothing tricky in the swing. It was a simple, fast, ugly cut meant to end something.

I ducked. The air burned my ear. Cael’s shoulder hit Verrin’s hip from the side and the man slid a half-step but didn’t fall. He used the slip to roll behind Cael and flick the wand at the back of his knee. Cael’s leg buckled and he caught himself on the anchor post with both hands.

Verrin pivoted to finish him. I went through the gap and put my point at his eye because that is where you put a point when you need someone to change their mind. He parried with the wand and shunted my blade off to the side with clean economy, then smashed his elbow at my mouth. I turned with it and felt bone meet bone and not break.

He grinned with teeth this time. "Better," he said.

I saw his stance change. The polite contractor lines disappeared. Murder settled into his hips. He looked past Cael and me to the wagons and the students and made a choice that had nothing to do with tests.

"Your school can replace you," he said softly. "They can’t replace donors. Pick."

He snapped the wand at the anchor pin with full intent.

It leapt.

The bridge sagged a hand-span. The prusik screamed. The Warden’s ribs cracked. The near wagon slid an inch toward the drop. The far ox bolted until the handler got a hand on its neck and whispered something brave that didn’t matter to physics.

I grabbed the pin and felt it moving under my palm like a live thing. The wind noise roared back a fraction. Pierce’s orders came through ragged. Someone blew a horn wrong.

Verrin stepped in to cut us off the anchor for good.

Cael bared his teeth and planted like a wall. I set my feet and pulled, heel to hip to hand, pulse only when iron pushed back.

The wand rose like a guillotine.

And then Verrin said, very calm, very cold, "If you don’t let go, I’ll open your friend’s throat to make you watch."

He wasn’t looking at Cael.

He was looking at Lyra. She had moved closer without meaning to. She stood with her folio and her badge and her pencil and a face that said she knew how to count, not how to fight wind with a knife.

Verrin took one step toward her, making it real.

"Don’t," I said.

"Make me," he said, and cut.