Dran Z'vinn knelt beside the dead lamp on his own patrol route and pressed two fingers to the oil. Still warm. The snuffer had come and gone within the hour. For three months Dran had chased this hunter of lights across the Moonlit Stretch, and every dark post pushed the eternal night closer. Only the reforged Sunburst Blade could banish that night. But he could not forge a weapon while blind, and the trail before him would go cold before the oil did. He found the footprints in the mud below the post. Small boots. They led toward the treeline and split, as if the snuffer wanted him to guess. Dran had no dog and no time to guess wrong. Guess wrong once and the cold rain would wash the trail to nothing. A voice came from the dark. "You're breathing on the tracks." Vessa Dre'kiir stepped from the trees. Her jade armor caught the last light, plate laid over plate. Dran had hired the half-serpent sellsword a week ago to guard the eastern posts. He did not trust her. She took any coin. But she read ground better than any man he had. "Two sets," Dran said. "Both fresh." Vessa crouched and touched the mud without disturbing it. "One's a decoy. Dragged branch, not a foot." She pointed left. "That one. The real one goes right, toward the ridge." Before Dran could move, a big man crashed out of the brush behind them, sword already drawn. Dark beard, blue eyes, a star buckle at his belt. Dran's hand went to his own blade. "Peace," the man said. "Bronan Goldhammer. I hunt the tyrant who runs these valleys. I saw your dark post and thought it his work." He looked at the split trail. "Someone put your light out and walked off. I hate men who work in the dark." Dran measured him and made a choice. He had one hour and three sets of eyes now. "Then help me follow him. He's climbing the ridge." They ran. Vessa led, reading the ground. Bronan smashed a path through the thorns. Dran kept the fading trail in sight. Rain began, fat drops striking the leaves. Vessa moved faster. "We lose it in five minutes." They topped the ridge. Below sat a hollow ringed with cold stone. In its center stood a crystal ball on a carved stand, its heart swirling with dark smoke. The snuffer knelt over it, hood back. A woman. She dropped something into the smoke, and Dran's dead lamp was not the only light gone out—every post along the ridge went black at once. "She's not snuffing them by hand," Dran said. "She's pulling them into that." The woman looked up, saw the three of them, and ran into the stone hollow. Dran chased. She reached the far wall and vanished through it. But she left the orb behind, still smoking, still warm to his touch. Dran lifted it. Now he knew how the lights died. And he knew what he had to break.

The snuffer stood cornered against the far stone wall. Her crystal orb hovered on its stand between them, dark smoke turning inside. Dran raised his blade over it. He struck. Steel rang and slid off the crystal like ice off glass. The orb did not crack. A hairline split ran up his blade instead. He pulled back before it snapped. The orb was harder than his weapon. He could not break it by force. A cold voice cut the hollow. "Your steel is wrong for that." A woman came through the gap in the stone. Her lower half was serpent, thick coils sliding over wet rock. Jade armor plated her body, green and gold. A boy's sword hung untouched on her back. Dran knew her by reputation only. Shr'va Orvanos, once a guard of the Jade Throne. He did not know why she stood in a dead hollow at night. "You want the orb broken," she said. It was not a question. "You need to see what holds it whole." She lifted a monocle on a fine chain and held it out. Dark shapes drifted across its glass like feathers. "Look through this." Dran took it. He did not trust her. But his blade was cracked and the snuffer was still breathing. He fit the monocle to his eye and looked at the orb. Thin threads of shadow wrapped it, twisting from the smoke inside to the snuffer's own hands. The orb was not simply hard. Her will held it whole. Break her grip and the shell would fail. "Cut the threads, not the glass," Shr'va said. The snuffer saw his eye change and lunged for the stand. Dran moved first. He swung the cracked blade flat, not at the orb, but across the smoky threads between her hands and the crystal. The dark strands parted. The snuffer screamed and clutched her fingers. The orb's inner smoke spun loose and wild. Dran reversed the blade and drove the pommel down onto the crystal. This time it shattered. Shards burst across the stone. The trapped smoke poured out and rose into the night sky. Far off, across the whole Moonlit Stretch, lamps caught fire again one by one. Cold posts flickered gold. The eternal night pulled back. The snuffer sank against the wall, hands ruined, orb gone. She was no longer a threat. Dran lowered his broken blade and breathed. Shr'va slid forward and lifted one long crystal shard from the floor. She turned it in the lamplight. "This is your Sunburst Blade," she said. "Or the heart of it. The rest you must forge." She held it out. "But shards like this cannot be worked by any smith on the Stretch. Only one forge can shape a snuffed light back into steel. And I will not tell you where for free." Dran took the shard. The light was back. The blade was not.

Dran held the crystal shard in his fist. The light was back across the Stretch, but Shr'va would not name the forge without her price. "Name it," he said. She smiled and slid closer over the wet stone. "A thing I want. Bring me the healer's book. The one Grisandra Svetlana keeps. It holds cures I do not have." Dran knew the name. Every hurt soul on the Stretch knew it. He did not know the old woman would refuse him. He found her hut by a creek two days later. Smoke rose from the chimney. She sat on a stool outside, mixing a paste in a clay bowl, and did not look up. "You walk heavy for a man with light armor," she said. "Sit. You are bleeding under that plate." He was. A shallow cut from the hollow. She had seen it from across the yard. "I need your book," Dran said. "The one with the cures. I can pay." Grisandra kept mixing. "No." "I broke the orb. The lights burn again because of me. You owe—" "I owe you nothing." She set the bowl down. "That book is bound in old leather and marked with signs I still cannot read. I gave a man a bad leg once because I moved too fast. I keep the book so I stop doing harm. I do not hand it to a stranger for a snake's bargain." Dran's jaw tightened. "Then I take it." She looked at him then. Her brown eyes did not blink. "You could. You have a sword and I have a stick." She lifted her walking stick, then set it against the wall. "But you came here to save the light. A man who steals from an old woman is not that man. Sit down before your wound rots." Dran stood over her. His hand rested on his hilt. Then he let go. He sat on the log by her fire. She cleaned his cut with the paste. It stung, then cooled. "Shr'va wants the book to trade," he said. "For the forge that can reshape this." He opened his hand. The shard caught the firelight. Grisandra studied it. "I will not give her the book. But I know that forge. It is in a tower of iron and old stone, three ridges north. Graveborn, they call it. A wizard worked curses there once. His fire still burns." She wrapped his arm. "Go there. Do not tell Shr'va I told you. Let her keep waiting for her price." Dran left at dawn with the shard and the tower's name. He had not paid Shr'va. He had cut her out. She would learn it soon, and she was not a woman who forgave a debt turned to nothing. But now he knew where to forge the blade.