Aldric Starweaver had not left his tower in three days. A dragon owned the sky above his keep now. It circled the fractured battlements in slow rings, and each time its shadow crossed the window, Aldric flinched back from the light. On his worktable lay the reason for all of it: the shards of the sky-crystal that once kept Knotheart's dragons away. He had guarded that crystal his whole life. Two weeks ago it broke in his hands, and the skies opened. He sorted the shards by candlelight and cursed his shaking fingers. He needed the missing center piece to bind the rest. Without it, the crystal was glass. Without the crystal, the dragon stayed. And while the beast circled, no wagon, no messenger, no help could reach him. Someone pounded on the keep door below. Aldric froze. The dragon banked away, and he ran down the crumbling stairs. He threw the bolt and dragged the old door open. Three figures stood in the courtyard, backs pressed to the cracked stone wall. Two were elves, small and quick, arrows already nocked at the sky. Faelan tracked the dragon with steady eyes. Beside them, Sylvra whispered a count under their breath, waiting. Between the two elves stood a knight in dented silver armor, a red plume torn half off his helm. He did not look up at the dragon. He looked at Aldric, and grinned. "You're the crystal-keeper," Galahad said. "You made this mess. Good. That means you can end it." Aldric's face burned. "I need one shard I don't have. Until then, I can end nothing." Galahad pushed past him into the keep. "Then we buy you time. The elves shoot. I climb." He said it the way another man might order supper. The dragon dropped. Its shadow swallowed the courtyard. "Now!" Sylvra shouted. Two arrows flew. One struck the beast's eye. It screamed and twisted, and the wind of its wings threw Aldric against the doorframe. Galahad ran up a heap of fallen stones and leapt. He caught the dragon's foreleg as it rose. Aldric watched from the door, useless, the shards heavy in his pocket. The knight climbed the thrashing beast hand over hand and drove his sword deep behind its skull. The dragon shuddered. It fell. It struck the tower on the way down. Stone burst apart. Aldric threw himself flat as the top of his keep folded and crashed into the courtyard. Dust choked the air. When it cleared, the dragon lay dead across the rubble, and Galahad crawled free, laughing. Aldric climbed to his feet. The sky was empty now. But his worktable was gone, buried under a ton of fallen wall. The shards had been in his pocket. He checked. One was missing. Galahad clapped his shoulder. "See? Solved." Aldric stared at the rubble. To rebuild the crystal, he now had to dig his own tower out of its grave.

The dragon lay dead. The tower lay in pieces. Aldric stood in the dust and felt the three fighters watching him. Galahad wiped his blade clean. Beside him, the two elf archers lowered their bows. Faelan flexed a sore shoulder. Sylvra picked spent arrows from the rubble and counted them under their breath, the same way they had counted the dragon's dives. "Well, crystal-keeper," Galahad said. "We killed your monster. Now we're owed." He held out a gauntleted hand, palm up. "Coin. Or a fight worth our time. We don't work for thanks." Aldric's stomach dropped. He turned out his pockets. Dust, a broken shard, nothing more. "I have no gold," he said. "My treasury is under that." He pointed at the fallen wall. Sylvra stopped counting. Faelan's face went flat. "Then we've wasted a week," Faelan said, and slung the bow across their back. "We move on at first light." Aldric's mind raced. He needed them. Not for the coin he lacked, but for the digging. His worktable lay buried. The center shard lay somewhere in that heap, small as a thumbnail. Alone he would dig for a month. With four backs, days. "Wait," he said. "I can't pay you in gold. But I can pay you in shelter." He hurried past them, out the broken gate. Down the slope stood a small log cabin, three rooms, a well beside it. His caretaker's home once. Empty now. "That's mine. Warm. Dry. A well that never runs dry. Stay in it as long as you like." Galahad crossed his arms. "A roof isn't a wage." "It comes with one condition," Aldric said. "Help me dig. There's a shard lost in that rubble. Small. Grey. I need it to rebuild the crystal that keeps the dragons away." He met the knight's eyes. "Find it, and the roof is yours. Refuse it, and the next dragon that comes has no one to stop it. Not even you can kill them all." Galahad was quiet. Sylvra and Faelan traded a look. They had slept in mud for a week. The cabin's windows caught the last light and glowed. "One shard," Faelan said slowly. "In that." They toed the rubble. "One shard," Aldric said. Sylvra walked to the fallen wall. They set a hand on a broken stone and pushed. It rocked, then rolled free. "Beds beat gold," Sylvra said. "I'm in." Faelan sighed and joined them. Galahad stood a moment longer. Then he sheathed his sword and gripped a slab with both hands. "Fine, wizard. We dig. But when we're done, that cabin is ours." "Done," Aldric said. They worked until dark. Stone by stone the heap shrank. But the pile ran deeper than Aldric feared, and the buried worktable held more than one shard. Near midnight, Faelan's fingers closed on cold metal down in the gap. Not the shard. A locked iron box he had never seen before.

The iron box sat on a flat stone by morning. Faelan had hauled it from the rubble at midnight, and now the whole camp studied it. No keyhole. No hinge Aldric could find. He ran his fingers along the seams and found no seam at all. The metal was cold and smooth as ice. He did not know this box. He had never owned it. Yet someone had buried it under his tower, and now he wanted it open. Aldric tried a chisel first. The blade skipped off and left no mark. He tried a spell of unbinding, three words his master taught him. The box drank the magic and stayed shut. Sweat ran down his neck. Faelan crouched nearby, red braid over one shoulder, turning a spent arrow in their fingers. They watched Aldric fail with a flat, patient look, the same look they had given him when he admitted he had no gold. "You've cut yourself twice," Faelan said. "The box hasn't noticed." Sylvra sat on a fallen beam, silver hair catching the light, eyes half shut. They said nothing. They rarely did. But they were counting under their breath, the way they always counted, and Aldric knew they had already judged him useless at this. He wiped his hands. "Then we need muscle. Not magic." He looked down the slope, toward the town roofs in the valley. "There's a smith down there. A big one. Arms like tree roots. If any man can crack this, it's him." Faelan and Sylvra traded a glance. "You want us to fetch him," Faelan said. "You're faster than me. And you know how to talk to strangers without setting fire to anything." Aldric pressed two silver buttons off his robe into Faelan's palm. "Pay him with these. Tell him there's more work after." Sylvra stood, slung their bow, and started down the slope without a word. Faelan followed. Aldric watched them shrink into the trees, then paced the wreck until the sun climbed high. They came back at dusk. Alone. "The smith wouldn't come," Faelan said. They tossed the silver buttons back at Aldric's feet. "But he told us why the box won't open." Aldric's stomach tightened. "Why?" "He knew the shape of it. Said sky-keepers used boxes like that to hold cracked shards too dangerous to carry loose." Faelan crouched and set a hand on the cold iron. "He said one sits in the old keep across the valley. Sealed the same way. And inside it, they trapped a piece of a broken crystal." Sylvra finally spoke. "A grey piece." Aldric stared at the box. He had sent them for a man to force it open. Instead they had brought back the truth. The shard he had been digging for was not in the rubble at all. It was locked inside this box, and the only key lay in a keep he had never entered.

The box would open only across the valley. Aldric knew that now. But the keep sat far off, past open ground, and his tower was a heap of broken stone. He had no roof, no worktable, no walls to plan behind. He stood in the wreck at dawn and understood the crossing came first. Reach the keep, breach the second box, free the shard. Everything started with the walk he could not stage. "We leave today," Aldric said. "Before the light fails." Faelan looked across the valley and read the wind. "Open the whole way. No trees past the stream." Sylvra squinted at the far ridge, judging distance. "Half a day at speed. Longer with him." They meant Aldric. He knew it. Boots crunched behind them. Galahad came up the slope, the knight who had killed the dragon that buried this tower. Red plume, dented armor, sword already drawn from habit. He had freed Aldric from the beast, and Aldric still owed him more than he could pay. Galahad stopped at the rubble and frowned. "You mean to cross in daylight," Galahad said. "With no place to fall back to." He kicked a fallen beam. "Your tower's gone. If the crossing turns bad, there's nowhere to run." "There's the cabin," Aldric said. "Too far the wrong way." Galahad sheathed the sword. "We stage from the stream. The willows there give cover. Rock at the bank. We rest, we watch the open ground, then we run it at dusk when nothing sees us cross." Aldric had thought only of the ruin at his back. He had not thought forward, to the water and the trees between here and the keep. "You've scouted it." "While you fought the iron." Galahad almost smiled. "I don't dig. I look." They packed what the rubble gave them. Aldric wrapped the sealed box in cloth and carried it himself. The twins moved ahead, bows strung. Galahad walked at Aldric's shoulder, matching his slow pace without a word of complaint. They reached the stream by afternoon. A cluster of willows leaned over the bank, and flat stone ran along the water. Galahad set them behind the trailing branches. "Here. We wait for the light to drop." Aldric set the box on the flat rock and sat. For the first time since his tower fell, he had walls of a kind, green and living, and stone under him, and a plan that was not his own but held. The open valley stretched ahead. Beyond it, the keep waited with the second box. "We watch, then we cross," Galahad said. "After that, the keep is your problem." Sylvra rose suddenly and pointed across the water. Something moved on the far ridge, near the keep's broken wall. Not wind. It walked with purpose. Faelan drew an arrow and went still. "That's my creature," Faelan said. "It found the keep first."

The creature paced the keep's broken wall. It moved on four legs, low and quick, and its eyes caught the last light. Faelan held the drawn arrow but did not loose it. "Too far. And it guards the box." Aldric watched it turn along the stones. If they crossed the open ground, it would see them and reach them before the keep. He needed a way past it that did not put the group between its teeth and the wall. Sylvra touched Aldric's arm and pointed the other way, up the slope behind the willows. A great white bear stood among the rocks, watching the water. Snow still clung to its shoulders. It was thin, and its ribs showed. "Hungry," Sylvra said. "That helps us." Aldric understood. Two beasts, and only one guarded the box. He knelt and unwrapped the dried meat from his pack. "We feed it. We lead it. We point it at the wall." Galahad frowned. "You mean to send a bear ahead of us." "I mean to send it first," Aldric said. "While it fights, we cross." They worked through the failing light. Aldric laid meat along the bank, one piece, then another, closer each time. The bear came down slow, wary of the twins' bows. It took the first strip and then the next. Faelan whispered the wind to Sylvra, and she read the distance to the keep. When the bear reached the flat rock, Aldric threw the last of the meat toward the open ground, past the willows, toward the wall. The bear followed. It caught the creature's scent and rose on its hind legs. The creature on the wall went still, then dropped and charged. Faelan drew again. "Now it sees the bear. Not us." The two beasts met on the open ground with a sound like breaking branches. They rolled, claw and tooth, kicking up dust in the dusk. "Run it," Galahad said. He pulled Aldric up by the arm. They broke from the willows and crossed the open ground while the beasts tore at each other. Aldric clutched the wrapped box to his chest and ran, slower than the rest, the knight at his shoulder. The twins loosed two arrows into the creature's flank as they passed. It shrieked and turned on the bear again, blood dark on the white fur. They reached the keep's broken gate. Aldric fell against the cold stone, chest heaving. Behind them the bear pinned the creature and did not let go. Faelan looked back once. "It's my creature. It dies here." His voice did not shake. Galahad pushed through the gate. Inside, on a low stone table, sat the second iron box, sealed like the first. Aldric set his own box down beside it and pressed both hands to the cold lid. The crossing was done. Now only the iron stood between him and the shard.

Outside the gate, the bear finished the wall creature. Aldric heard the wet crack of it, then a long silence. Galahad turned from the doorway. "That thing won't hold the bear much longer. When it's done eating, it comes here. We have minutes." Aldric pressed both hands to the two iron boxes on the stone table. He had crossed the whole valley for this. Now he had to open them before the fight came through the gate. He knew the boxes resisted force and magic alike. But two boxes, side by side, had to matter. The sky-keepers had made them as a pair. He set the seals of both facing each other and spoke the old binding words, the ones his master taught him for crystals. The iron warmed under his palms. A thin line of light traced the lid of his own box, then died. "Nothing," Faelan said from the gate. The elf stood small in the broken doorway, arrow nocked, eyes on the open ground where the bear fed. His voice held no anger now that the creature was dead. "It's coming soon. I can smell the blood on the wind." Aldric tried again. He pushed his own box hard against the second, iron to iron, until the seals touched. This time he did not command. He asked. He pictured the shard inside, grey and dull, and the crystal it belonged to. The two lids trembled together. A seam split along both boxes at once. Cold air hissed out. His box fell open. Inside sat the grey shard, no larger than his thumb. Aldric snatched it and closed his fist around it. The second box lay open too, empty, its purpose spent. He had what he came for. "I have it," he said. His voice shook. "I have the shard." A roar rolled across the open ground. The bear had finished. Sylvra ran in from the gate, bow up. "It sees us. It's coming." Galahad drew his sword and stepped between the table and the door. "Then we don't stay. Wizard, move." Aldric grabbed his empty box off the table. He would need it to carry the shard safely home. But the ground shook now with the bear's weight, and the gate was the only way out. The white shape filled the broken doorway, ribs still showing, mouth red. It had killed one beast and wanted another kill. Galahad braced. "We can't fight it in here. Too tight." Faelan and Sylvra loosed together. Two arrows struck the bear's shoulder. It shrieked and reared, blocking the only exit. Aldric backed against the cold stone table, the shard hot in his fist. He had the thing he crossed the valley to take. Now a starving bear stood between him and every road home, and the walls of the old keep pressed close on every side.

The bear filled the doorway. Two arrows stuck from its shoulder. Galahad stood between it and the stone table, sword up, but the space was too tight for a knight to swing. The bear swiped. Galahad's blade caught the blow and skidded. He slammed into the wall. The bear pressed in, ribs heaving, mouth red from its last kill. It was starving, and hunger drove it harder than pain. Aldric knew now that no arrow and no sword would turn it back. Galahad's voice came ragged. "I can't hold it alone. It wants meat." He shoved off the wall and struck again. The bear barely flinched. Faelan and Sylvra had backed to the table, arrows nocked, but there was nowhere to send a shot that mattered. Aldric's mind raced. The beast did not care about them. It cared about food. That was the only lever he had. Then he heard it. A low growl from beyond the gate, behind the bear. Shadowpaw. The direwolf had followed them across the valley, and hunger had turned him savage too. Aldric had fed the wolf scraps for a week. Now the wolf's eyes were fixed not on the bear but on the wall creature's carcass outside, half-eaten and steaming. Two starving beasts. One kill between them. Aldric grabbed the empty iron box off the table. He would not use it for this. He set it down and instead snatched Faelan's belt pouch, the one holding the last of their dried meat. "Throw everything through the gate," he said. "Past the bear. Onto the carcass." Faelan did not ask why. He flung the meat over the bear's back. It landed in the open ground, on the wall creature's body. Shadowpaw lunged for it. The bear whipped around at the movement behind it, catching the wolf's scent and the meat both. For one moment the bear stood torn between the people it had cornered and the food behind it. "Push it," Aldric said. "Now. All of you." Galahad roared and drove his shoulder into the bear's flank. Faelan and Sylvra loosed together into its haunch. The bear shrieked and spun toward the open ground, toward Shadowpaw and the fresh kill. It chose the meat. The two beasts collided over the carcass outside, snarling, tearing at the body and at each other. The gate stood clear. "Move," Galahad said. Aldric grabbed his empty box, the grey shard still locked in his fist, and ran. They spilled out through the gate and away, keeping to the wall while the bear and the wolf fought behind them. They did not stop until the keep was small behind them. Aldric opened his hand. The grey shard sat there, safe. He had it. But Shadowpaw was gone, left snarling over a corpse with a starving bear, and Aldric had no way to call him back.

They stopped in the open valley, the keep small behind them. Aldric held the grey shard up to the light. Its facets caught the sun and threw a cold gleam across his hand. He had crossed the valley and lost a wolf to hold this. Now Galahad was staring at it too, and not the way a guard watches for danger. "That stone is worth coin," Galahad said. He wiped his blade and sheathed it. "Real coin. More than a burned tower can pay." He planted himself in Aldric's path, sword hand loose at his side. "I killed your dragon. I dug your rubble. I hauled you across open ground with a bear at our backs. I'm done working on promises." Aldric's stomach dropped. The valley stretched flat around them, no cover, no walls. Without a knight between him and the ridge, he was a lone old man with a stone in his fist. He looked at the twins. Faelan stood with an arrow half-drawn, eyes on Galahad, not on Aldric. Sylvra read the distance to the far ridge and said nothing. They had taken no side yet. That could change fast. "I can't hand you gold I don't have," Aldric said. "You know that." "Then you understand my problem," Galahad said. Aldric turned the shard slowly. He would not lie to a man holding a sword. So he gave the truth instead. "This shard rebuilds the crystal that kept dragons from these skies. The one that broke two weeks ago. You slew that dragon. You know what one costs." He held Galahad's eyes. "Another will come. When it does, every village in this valley will pay a slayer everything they own to stand between them and its fire. I can't give you coin today. I can give you the thing that makes your work worth ten times as much tomorrow." Galahad said nothing. His jaw worked. "He's right." Faelan lowered his bow. "No crystal, no shield. Then the sky fills with them." He looked at his sister. Sylvra nodded once. "A share of what the crystal earns you," Aldric said. "In writing, before a valley smith as witness. Not a promise. A debt." Galahad stood a long moment. Then he stepped out of Aldric's path. "A share," he said. "Witnessed. And I guard you until that stone is whole." He offered his hand. Aldric took it. They started down toward the willows by the stream, Galahad ahead now, watching the ridges again. Aldric closed the shard in his fist. He had kept his guard and his life. But he had signed away part of the crystal's future before it existed. Whatever the finished stone was worth, it was no longer only his.

By the time they reached the cabin, the sky had gone grey. Aldric set the grey shard on the table and stared at his empty hands. His tower was rubble. His worktable lay buried under stone. He had the shard now, and the two smaller pieces from before, but no place to fit them together. A shattered sky-crystal needed a steady surface and a still room. One knock, one shudder, and the fragments would scatter again. He had crossed a valley and lost a wolf for this. He would not lose it to a wobbling floor. Galahad dropped onto the plaid-covered bed and pulled off his boots. "Rest first," he said. "You've had no sleep." "There's no time." Aldric tore a piece from the harvest loaf on the shelf and chewed without tasting it. "I need a worktable. A real one. Flat and heavy and true." A low sound came from the doorway. Shadowpaw stood there, ribs sharp under grey fur, one eye scabbed shut. The wolf they had all believed dead at the keep. He had followed their trail across the valley through the rain. He limped to the table, sniffed Aldric's hand, then sat. He did not run. He did not growl. He had chosen. Aldric offered him the rest of the bread. The wolf ate it in two bites. "You tracked us," Aldric said. "Three ridges," Shadowpaw said. "Your scent is clean." He looked at the shard on the wobbling table, then at the far wall. "Wrong table. Too light." Aldric followed the wolf's gaze. Against the back wall of the cabin stood a long worktable he had not used. Its top was wide and unmarked. Carved vines twisted down its legs. Dried flowers, a magnifying glass, and small tools lay across it, left by whoever owned the cabin before. It was solid oak. It did not rock when he pressed his weight on it. "This," Aldric said. He swept the flowers and tools gently to one side. He ran his palm across the surface. Flat. True. No gap under any leg. He knelt and checked each foot against the floor. They held. Galahad came to look. "Steady enough?" Aldric set the first small shard down. It did not slide. He set the second beside it. Then the grey shard, the one that had cost him the most. Three pieces, still on the wood, none rolling away. His hands stopped shaking. "This is the space," he said. "This is where I rebuild it." Shadowpaw lay down beneath the table, blocking the door with his body. Guard and hearth in one. Aldric looked at the three shards lined up before him and felt the ground of the work settle under him at last. But the pieces did not name their own order. He knew where to work now. He did not know how the shards joined. For that he needed the sky-keepers' method, and no book in the cabin held it.

Aldric held the grey shard to the window light and pressed its edge against a smaller piece. The two would not meet. The break lines were sharp and hard, like glass left in frost. He needed heat to soften them, a forge flame steady enough to work the crystal soft. The cabin had a cold hearth and a few sticks of kindling. No forge. No bellows. He struck a fire in the grate, held a shard to the flame, and watched nothing happen. The crystal stayed brittle. One press and it would crack again. "This fire is too weak," Aldric said. "I need real heat." Galahad looked up from sharpening his blade. "The valley smith has a forge." "Two days there and back," Aldric said. "And the smith already refused us once." A knock hit the door. Shadowpaw rose from under the table, hackles up. Faelan opened it, bow half-drawn. A knight stood outside in dented armor, a crossbow scar cut deep in his breastplate. Mud caked his boots. His face was grey with hard riding. "Buster," Galahad said, standing. The two knights had ridden the same roads. Galahad's shoulders eased only a little. "My mill burned," Buster said. "A dragon did it. I'm hunting it north." He looked past them to the shards on the table. "You have crystal. That traps dragons." "If I can join it," Aldric said. "The pieces are too brittle. I have no forge heat to soften them." Buster stepped in. He crouched by the weak fire, then studied the shards. "You don't need a forge," he said. "You need dragon fire. My family worked metal. Sky-crystal came from dragons. Only dragon heat softens it clean." Aldric went still. "There is no dragon here." "There's dragon in the crystal," Shadowpaw said from the floor. "Trapped. Burning slow." Aldric turned the grey shard over. Deep inside it, a faint red thread pulsed, like a coal that would not die. He had never looked close enough to see it. He set the shard on the oak table and held a smaller piece against it, break to break. Then he spoke to the shard the way he had spoken to the iron boxes. Not a command. A request. "Give up your heat. Let the edges yield." The red thread brightened. The crystal warmed under his fingers. The sharp edge went soft, like wax near flame. He pressed the two pieces together. They held. No crack. No slide. The seam glowed once, then cooled to a single grey line. Two shards, now one. Aldric let out a breath. His hands did not shake. But as the seam cooled, the red thread inside dimmed and shrank. He had spent some of the dragon's caged heat to make the join. "The third piece," Buster said. "Same way." Aldric nodded slowly. He could finish the crystal. But each join drained the fire that kept the dragon inside. Weld the last seam wrong, and he would free the very thing the crystal was built to hold.