Malachar Voidweaver had not slept in two weeks, and tonight he would write a name on the wall or die trying. His black robes hung in strips around his knees. His staff leaned against the cracked blackstone, the black crystal at its head dull as a closed eye. Behind him, the ring gate his order had built before the massacre pulsed once, slow, like something breathing in its sleep. Poison vines gripped its rim. The runes on the iron band still held. Six months ago, soldiers had come through these doors and killed everyone he knew. He had crawled out under a dead man. Now he meant to rebuild the order. But he did not know who else had lived, and the wrong letter, sent to the wrong survivor, would bring the soldiers back before dawn. He spread six scraps of parchment on the floor. Six names he half-trusted. Beside each name he set a token from the ruined vault: a bone ring, a burnt sigil, a lock of hair. He needed a way to test the names without sending a word into the world. He turned to the gate. The hollow center showed nothing. Looking at it made his nose bleed. He wiped his lip on his sleeve and kept looking. The void remembered its dead. If he asked it right, it would answer. He cut his palm and pressed the blood to the first token. The bone ring went cold. Dead. He worked down the row. Burnt sigil, cold. Copper coin, cold. Iron nail, cold. His hands shook so hard he dropped the fifth token twice. Cold. One left. A braid of black thread. He pressed his bloody hand to it and it grew warm against his skin. Alive. He almost laughed, then he heard boots on the stone stair below. He swept the tokens into his sleeve and turned. An elf in blue and gold stepped into the ring of the doorway. A silver circlet sat on his brow. He held no weapon. He did not need one. Behind him stood a second figure in mossy woodland robes, antler headpiece low, a large staff in his hand. Malachar knew the elf prince by reputation only. Highborn. The kind of man who arrived where he was not expected and left with what he wanted. "Dark mage," the prince said. He smiled, small. "My druid felt this place wake up." Thornwick did not speak. He watched the gate. Then he watched Malachar's sleeve. Malachar's throat closed. He had a living brother in the order. He had a name in his sleeve. He had two witnesses at his door who could hang him for either. "I was praying," Malachar said. "No," Thornwick said. "You were not." The prince stepped inside. "Show me what you were doing. Slowly."