Page 29 of Orc’s Hex

“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”

He hasn’t stopped looking at me the same way since.

“The sigil is afraid of you,” he repeats. Low.

“It reached for me in the Foundation Crypt. Not to target me—to read me. It wanted to understand what I am.”

“Did it.”

“No.” I hold his gaze. “What I am took ten years to build. It doesn’t read in one pass.”

A beat. Then his face opens, marginally. The look of a man already decided.

“What you are,” he says, “walked into this hold five days ago and has been taking the curse apart from the foundation up. What you are stood in my chambers this morning with my hand at your throat and told me to look at you.”

He turns back to the valley.

“The sigil should be afraid.”

I pull my sleeve back down and look at the valley. The Veil mist has crept up the ravine walls—it does this before storms. The iron pine forest is just a darker dark now. The torch bracket nearest us groans under a gust strong enough that I have to put a hand to the parapet to keep my footing.

His hand moves to the parapet beside mine. Not touching. Close.

He does that. Gets close without crossing. Like he’s learning the edges of what the curse will tolerate and pressing against them without breaking them, and he does it without making anything of it.

“Isen’s going to want to document the Bondmark formation.”

“Isen documents everything.”

“I’m going to let him. The formation pattern might tell us something the main inscription doesn’t.”

“Brynna will want to see it too. She’s been treating the garrison for the curse’s effects for fifteen years. She’ll catch things about the mark that would take you longer without her.”

I turn to look at him.

“You’re giving me your people.”

“I’m giving you everything in this hold.” He meets my gaze steadily. “Whatever you need. Whatever it costs. The bloodline ends if you don’t finish this.”

“And if the escalation gets worse before it gets better?”

“Then it gets worse.” No flinch. No qualification. “I can manage it.”

I believe him completely.

“All right.”

He registers it the same way he always does—something in him goes quieter, small enough to miss if you’re not watching.

The wind has been building for the last ten minutes, and when the hold shudders I feel it before I hear it.

Not wind. Not the mountain settling. A shudder from below.

It travels up through the parapet stone and into my hands and my forearms and my teeth. Not a pulse—not the single deliberate beat of the sigil registering a decision. This is structural. Something massive moving in the foundation three floors below, the movement carrying up through every layer of stone between it and the sky, the rampart beneath our feet vibrating with it for three full seconds before it stops.

The torch brackets scream.

All of them—every bracket along the rampart wall, the iron groaning against stone under the combined force of wind and shudder, and two of the torches gutter out completely and the darkness between us thickens.