Wren Caldwell had guarded the iron gate for nine hundred nights, and she could not remember the last time she sat down. Her skin was gray stone, cracked like old riverbed. Iron armor hung on her, rusted and split. She never slept. Every dusk she planted herself before the towering gate, its ember highlights glowing like coals, and let no one pass until dawn. Somewhere under her cracked skin, an old guardian bloodline lay sleeping. If she could wake it, the cracks would close. She could finally rest. But no one in Embervein knew how to wake it, and she had never left her post to ask. Tonight the cracks ached deeper. A thin dust sifted from her shoulder when she moved. She pressed her palm to the gate's cold iron and stared at the dark road beyond it. Out there, somewhere, might be someone who understood her stone. But leaving meant the gate stood open. Leaving meant she failed the only thing she had ever done. "You're leaking," said a small voice. Wren turned. A child sat on the gate's base, swinging her boots. Her coat was stitched from a dozen scraps of cloth. Wren had chased strangers from this road for years, yet she had not heard this one arrive. The child grinned, showing a gap in her teeth. "Go home," Wren said. "No one passes." "I don't want to pass." The child hopped down. She pressed one finger to the crack in Wren's shoulder, right where the dust fell. "I want to tell you something. But secrets cost sweets." Wren had no sweets. She had nothing but iron and stone. "I have nothing to give you." The child studied her a long moment. "This one's free. Just this once." She tapped her own chest. "Same blood as yours runs in me. Older than any grave in this town. I've watched your kind turn to statues at their posts because they never went looking." Wren's hand curled into a fist that ground like millstones. "Went looking for what?" "For the ones who can wake what sleeps in you." The child pointed down the dark road, past the gate. "They're out there. Half a night's walk. But you have to leave the gate to reach them. And you never leave the gate." The dust kept falling from Wren's shoulder. She looked at the road, then at the child, then at the gate she had never once abandoned. If she stayed, she would crack apart standing up. If she left, the town lay open behind her. Wren reached up and unhooked the gate's iron bar. It swung wide with a shriek. For the first time in nine hundred nights, the road lay open, and she was not standing in it. "Take me to them," she said, and stepped through her own gate. The child laughed and ran ahead into the dark.

The child ran ahead, and Wren followed her down the strange road. Her legs had never walked this far. Each step ground louder than the last. Then, halfway into the dark, her left knee locked. Her foot would not lift. Dust poured from the joint. She pushed, and the stone screamed but did not move. She was hardening in place, far from any help. "You have to keep moving," the child called back. "If you stop, you stay stopped." Wren gripped her own thigh and pulled. The leg held like a buried post. Her right knee began to stiffen too. Panic rose in her chest, cold and useless. Nine hundred nights standing still, and now stillness was killing her. A woman stepped onto the road ahead. She was pale as chalk and cracked like Wren's own skin. Two stone tears sat fixed on her cheeks, and she did not wipe them. She walked straight up to Wren and looked at the locked knee. "You stood too long," the woman said. "Now your body forgets how to bend." Her voice was flat, every word placed like a stone. "Who are you?" Wren forced out. "Lacrimosa Stones. I share your blood." She pressed two fingers into the seam of Wren's knee. "Cold makes it worse. You need heat. There is a market close. It burns all night." Wren could not walk. Lacrimosa looked past her, into the dark trees, and made a low sound in her throat. A white stag stepped from the brush. It had three heads, and its antlers glowed like coals. The child clapped once. The stag knelt beside Wren in the road. "Lean on it," Lacrimosa said. "It will carry your weight." Wren threw her arm over the stag's warm back. Its heat sank into her locked knee. Slowly, painfully, the joint gave. She dragged the stiff leg forward one step. Then another. Lacrimosa walked at her other side, steady, silent, holding her upright. They came out of the trees into a market square. Ember light glowed under stone arches. Braziers burned at every stall. Warmth rolled over Wren like water. She lowered herself onto a low wall near the coals, and the fire soaked into her legs. The cracks stopped spreading. Both knees loosened. For the first time in the whole long night, Wren could move both legs freely. But the warmth showed her something new. In the bright ember light, the cracks in her arms had spread wider than before. Fresh lines she had not seen at the gate. The heat had saved her legs, yet it lit up how fast the rest of her was failing. Lacrimosa sat beside her and studied the new cracks. "The heat buys you time," she said. "Nothing more. You need the ones who wake the blood. And they are not here." Wren looked at her spreading cracks and knew the market was only a stop, not the cure.