The relic on the dais pulsed, muffled beneath the roar of celebration. Ahto navigated the back corridors of the Harbinger Guild Hall, the shouts of the crowd turning to a dull thud through thick stone. His skin retained the hum of the rapier's hilt, the harmonic pitch he had dialed into the steel. Oskari took the applause and the flowers; that was the trade they had struck. But the dying hiss of "Weaver" and that golden strand anchored in the amber lattice soured the exchange into something perilous. He found Oskari in the Guild’s private training grounds, a vast chamber floored with gleaming dark wood. Oskari remained in his ceremonial leathers, sweat silvering his hairline as he carved through straw targets with the thin blade, the edge flashing white. The crossguard murmured a low chime of compliance—a frequency meant solely for Ahto's ears. Oskari merely adjusted his stance, admiring his form in the mirrored panels. “Oskari,” Ahto’s voice was lower than usual, tight with an unfamiliar urgency. He leaned against the reinforced doorframe, the scent of polished leather and metal cleaner sharp in his nostrils. Oskari paused, resting the flat against his shoulder. He turned, a casual, almost lazy smirk on his face. “Ah, the quiet artisan. Come to bask in my glory, smith? Or perhaps you’ve finally decided to ask for an autograph?” He chuckled, a self-congratulatory sound that grated on Ahto’s raw nerves. "It’s about the Echo," Ahto said, pushing off the timber. "Its stance was wrong, the way it ignored you to reach the relic dais—and the syllable it dropped." Oskari rolled his eyes, a dismissive flick of his wrist. "Of course it was typical. Fractured glass, attracted to high-grade fuel. Textbook. I severed its core with my blade." He rapped the fuller against his shoulder pauldron. "And battlefields are noisy, smith. Ears trained to the tap of an anvil miss the crack of splintering bone." "It wasn't a screech. It pronounced 'Weaver,'" Ahto pressed, crossing the floorboards. "And at the altar base, there was a cord. A strand woven straight into the ward." Oskari scoffed, a short, sharp burst of air. He flicked the sword in a measured arc, pushing a gust of cedar dust across Ahto's boots. "Ahto, you spend your life in soot. You understand iron and charcoal, not the behavior of high-tier anomalies or imperial relics. Leave the vanguard work to the men who shed blood. You shape iron; you don't parse strategies. What would an unranked craftsman know of frontline hazards?" The familiar lethargy crept behind Ahto's collar, urging him to yield, turn around, and return to his quench tanks. He kept his teeth shut. His thumbs hooked into the leather of his tool belt, resting against cold iron rivets. "Mind your tongue!" Laina entered from the arcade, boots snapping against the planks, a folio pressed against her ribs. She set herself between them. "Master Ahto kept you intact out there. Your rapier bounced three times until he altered its pitch. He corrected your arc while you were busy playing to the front row!" Oskari’s smug expression faltered, replaced by a flicker of irritation. "Laina, this chamber is reserved for guild rankers. And what nonsense are you inventing? The weapon responds to my grip alone." "It stalled tonight," Laina said. She dropped the folio onto an equipment bench, binding ribbons sliding across the varnished pine. "Look at the records. Transcripts from house archives. Not mythology—inquest reports from the eastern front during the war. An intrusive consciousness that commandeers resonance patterns. It is named three times in these margins. The Weaver. The anomaly did not mutter that title by coincidence." Oskari lifted a vellum sheet, scanning the faded iron-gall ink. His shoulders dropped half an inch. He flicked his eyes between Laina and Ahto's blank stare. The Echo's carapace had deflected his first three lunges without a scratch, an irregularity he had dismissed once the kill was recorded. The strange kickback through his pommel suddenly felt deliberate. "These bear house seals. Your father's vaults?" Oskari turned toward Ahto, the easy grin absent. "You spotted a link? In the amber housing?" Ahto simply nodded, his gaze unwavering. “A filament. Tethered to the flagstones.” Oskari exhaled through his nose, combing fingers through his sweat-damp fringe. "Fine," he said, the word clipped. "If some parasitic entity is tethering itself to metropolitan wards, standard hunting forms won't hold. We look into it. Quietly. The guild council would strip my commissions if I cited an apprentice's old ledgers and a smith's hunches. But if this turns out to be bad lighting and dust, Ahto, you're grinding my practice blades until winter." Ahto held his ground, shoulders squared against the cedar wall. "And if I'm right, you tell the guild warden who actually tempers your steel."

An Unwanted Partnership