Edrin stood at the rail, hands resting against cold stone, and looked down into the Sunscar. The overlook was closer than most people were allowed. Not close enough.

Even now, years later, the Sunscar did not read as absence. The light falling upon it gathered, refused, and held too tightly. The land itself had not finished deciding what had happened there.

A pair of wardens stood at the rear of the platform. They watched the visitors, not the Scar.

Below, a narrow path cut toward the inner boundary. A scholar in ash-gray sash was being escorted along it, head bent slightly, not in reverence, but in focus. That was the only kind of entry permitted. Observation. Measurement. Recording what could be recorded.

Edrin watched the scholar pass from view. He could not follow, not truthfully.

He could lie. Say he worked metals, which was true enough. Say he had reason to study the remains, make it convincing.

The Empire would find out. It always did. This was not a place you risked questions for. Not when the answers would lead nowhere useful. Not when even those allowed inside came back with nothing that could be held.

He let the thought go. This was where he was permitted.

He reached into his coat and felt the small weight wrapped in cloth. Still there, as it had been since the moment he finished it.

Someone to his left spoke quietly.

“My brother,” a man was saying. “He worked near the southern districts.”

The woman beside him nodded, as if that was enough. As if naming where a person had stood still mattered.

Edrin looked back down.

Varosk had been a place of districts. Of streets. Of rooms you could return to. Now it was a crater, measured by how far you were allowed to approach.

He closed his eyes.

It had been a clear morning when Dask left. The light fell as it always had. The road carried its usual traffic. Someone down the street was arguing over the price of grain.

Dask had packed the night before. Not much. He never kept more than he needed.

Edrin had woken before him anyway.

He had stood in the doorway, watching the rise and fall of Dask’s shoulders beneath the blanket, telling himself there was still time.

“You’re staring,” Dask said, eyes still closed.

“I am not.”

“You are.”

Dask rolled onto his back, blinking up at him, beard loose, hair unbound. “If you’re going to start missing me before I’ve left, we should’ve had that argument last night.”

“I’m not missing you,” Edrin said. “I’m making sure you don’t forget anything.”

Dask huffed. “I’m taking less than you think I should.”

“You always do.”

“I won’t be gone forever,” he said, like it was a simple fact.

Edrin nodded, because that was how things had always worked. Dask went out. Dask returned. The work changed. The rooms stayed theirs.

He turned toward the stove, reaching for the kettle before it could boil over.

“Don’t let the hinge on the back door stick again,” Dask said. “It’ll warp if it keeps catching.”

“It won’t.”

“It will if you ignore it.” Dask paused, then added, “Write to me when it does.”

“That’s not a reason to write.”

“It’s as good as any.”

Edrin glanced back. He could have said it then. The words were there. Not perfect, not arranged the way he wanted, but plain. Dask would have understood plain speech. But Varosk was not a small thing. Runesmithing in the Republic meant something. Edrin didn’t want to put uncertainty in front of that.

Besides, the band was not finished.

It was close. Closer than anything he had made before. But the inner line still caught, just slightly, when he ran his thumb along it. It needed to be right.

He wanted to do it all properly. Not like this. Not in a doorway, with a kettle starting to whistle.

“When you come back,” he said instead, turning away again, “we’ll need to look at the roof.”

“Aye,” Dask said, as if that settled it.

The morning moved on. They ate. They walked the road together until the carts thickened and the path narrowed. At the edge of town, Dask stopped.

“You’ll write,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you’ll fix the hinge.”

“Yes.”

Dask reached out, catching Edrin’s sleeve.

“Don’t let the place fall apart without me.”

“I won’t.”

There was a pause, a breath. Then Dask nodded, once, and turned toward the road.

Edrin watched until the line of carts swallowed him.

Letters came quickly. Dask always wrote as he spoke. Direct. Practical. A little dry, but Edrin adored that. At first, they were about the city. Not wonder, exactly, but scale. Work that did not end when the light did. Masters that were right until proven otherwise. Tools Edrin had only ever read about.

He wrote back carefully. The hinge. The roof. The way the light came in through the window in the late afternoon.

Meanwhile, the band improved. He worked it at night, after the day’s orders were done. Filing. Shaping. Setting it aside when his hands grew unsteady.

The first had been too thin. The second attempt was wrong, worse. He had melted them down. Gold did not forgive haste. It remembered every mistake until you remade it.

Outside, the war stretched. News came in fragments. Movement along the border. Focus shifting away from Dur Khala.

All that while, Varosk held. Of course it did. If any place understood the forces at work, it would be there.

Dask’s letters changed slowly. Less about the city. More about the work.

Edrin’s changed faster.

You should come back when you can. The roads aren’t as clear as they were.

Not a demand. Not yet.

If they give you leave, take it.

The band neared completion. He could feel it this time. The weight settled correctly in his hand. The inner line ran smooth, no catch.

He began the engraving, settling on a mark they would both know. Simple, precise, and set where it would rest against the braid.

The Cataclysm came before the letter that mattered.

It was not a messenger that brought it. Not at first. It was light on the horizon, wrong in its color, followed by stories that did not agree but all ended in the same place.

Varosk was gone.

That night, Edrin stood in the doorway again, the finished band in his hand, and understood nothing.

The Empire came after.

Quietly. Thoroughly. Gold was requested, then required.

Edrin surrendered what he could. Scraps. Earlier pieces. The failed bands he had set aside.

They had not been good enough anyway.

Edrin opened his eyes. The Sunscar burned below, unchanged. He drew the cloth-wrapped bundle from his coat and unwrapped it.

The band caught the light even here, dull gold warming in his palm. Not large, but it carried weight. The inner line was perfect.

He had made it for Dask’s beard. For the braid he wore when he worked, when he traveled, when he stood in the doorway and told Edrin to write when the hinge stuck.

He had made it to ask. Properly.

Edrin turned the band once between his fingers. Below, the wound held its silence.

“I was going to do it right,” he said, not looking up, not looking away. “I just—”

He stopped.

No answer came. No correction. No dry remark about how long he’d taken.

Edrin closed his fingers around the band. They had shared rooms. Shared work. Shared the shape of a life without naming it.

He had thought the asking would make it real.

Standing where he was permitted to stand, he understood, finally, that he had been wrong about that.

Asking would only have named it.

He let out a slow breath.

“I know,” he said, quietly, to the light that did not answer. “I know.”

He stayed at the rail, the band warm in his hand, and did not move closer.