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“I placed one in a private archive outside Vaerith’s reach,” Syrenya continues. “One went to a cousin who despises him but owns excellent scribes. One remains with me because I enjoy leverage close to the skin.”

“You are helping,” Isolde says carefully.

“I am helping myself in a direction that presently benefits you.”

“That is honest.”

“I find honesty refreshing when it costs me nothing.” Syrenya’s gaze shifts to me, and the humor fades by a shade. “Vaerith is humiliated. His circle burned open in front of witnesses, two nobles have questioned his accounts, and guild clerks are beginning to use words like preservation and review. He will respond with a spectacle that makes the last one look quaint.”

“Forbidden ritual?” Rhazek asks.

Syrenya’s eyes move to him. “You feel it too.”

Rhazek turns toward the east window, his face carved from shadow and old violence. “Infernal pressure beneath the estate. Deep anchor. Not civic warding.”

My skin prickles.

The hunger wakes, not roaring this time, but lifting its head with awful attention. Beneath the safe house wards, beneath the rain, beneath the ordinary scents of smoke and wool, something distant pulses from the estate district. Slow. Heavy. Old. Like a drum wrapped in earth.

Rhazek’s voice lowers. “Summoning architecture.”

Isolde’s face loses color, though her voice remains composed. “Vaerith cannot anchor a major summoning inside a populated district without catastrophic bleed.”

“He can,” Rhazek says. “He should not.”

Sable’s hand tightens around the knife. “Define catastrophic.”

Rhazek looks at her. “Ash.”

The room changes around that word.

Bren stops muttering. Syrenya’s amusement vanishes. Isolde looks down at her ledger for one second, as if the answer might arrange itself between columns if she glares hard enough.

I feel the pressure again, deeper this time.

Vaerith is preparing to turn an entire district into proof.

I laugh once, without humor. “He loses a public argument and jumps straight to forbidden summoning. Man has range.”

Syrenya glances toward me. “If he frames the summoning as containment response, and if the district sees you near the origin point⁠—”

“He blames me.”

“Yes.”

“Creative bastard.”

“Dangerous bastard,” Sable says sharply.

Rhazek looks at me. “You need more precision before you stand near that ritual.”

“I absorbed two ward anchors last night.”

“You stole two crumbs from a burning table.”

“Encouraging.”

“Accurate.”