The rooftops of the city of Ashfall’s outer districts were not built for running like the ones in Ashgrave.

  Kaelen knew this the way he knew most things that were true about the world, from direct, painful experience. The tiles were old clay, fired in the old style that prioritized heat retention over structural integrity, which meant they held the day’s warmth beautifully and shed a person’s weight with approximately no resistance at all. He’d lost two tiles in the first thirty seconds and nearly lost his footing entirely twice more, and he’d been on the rooftops for less than four minutes.

  Below him, the alley network of Ashfall’s outer district moved with the particular organized chaos of a manhunt, not the frantic scatter of guards responding to an incident but the deliberate, coordinated sweep pattern of people who did this professionally and were good at it. He could see their formation from above ― a tightening grid, each team moving to cut off exits before the target reached them. Standard Spiritward Office field doctrine.

  He’d read about it once in a pamphlet that was titled Elemental Law Enforcement: Protecting the Kingdom’s Magical Heritage, which he’d stolen from a guild waiting room mostly because he was bored. He never imagined the information would become specifically relevant.

  Kaelen crossed a rooftop junction by half-running, half-sliding, caught the edge of the next roof’s lip with both hands, swung his legs up, and kept moving. Behind him, the cold followed. It always followed now, with a particular chill that trailed the bond he so reluctantly had created. Lumi’s presence sat at the back of his awareness like a second heartbeat that thrummed at a different temperature than his own.

  “The team on your left has adjusted their sweep angle,” Lumi said. The spirit’s observation arrived, not from any direction Kaelen could locate but from somewhere inside him, a quality of the bond that was still vaguely unsettling. “You have perhaps ninety seconds before their corridor closes.”

  “I can see that. I’m not a doofus,” Kaelen growled through clenched teeth.

  “I mention it because you appear to be moving directly toward it.”

  “I’m moving toward the canal district, which is left.”

  “The Spiritward team is also left.”

  “Yes, I noticed that also, thank you for―”

  The tile under his right foot gave way with a sharp crack, and for one stomach-dropping moment he was falling sideways off the edge of a three-story building. One hand scrambled to grasp the edge of the crumbling roof lip, while the other windmilled uselessly.

  And then something happened he couldn’t explain.

  A column of wind hit him from below and to the right. It wasn’t a sporadic gust of air but something directed and specific, shaped in such a way that it caught him under the shoulders and corrected his angle without throwing him further off balance. He slammed onto the rooftop with enough force to bruise his knees. He lay there for a short moment, his heart attempting to relocate from outside his chest.

  “Nice form,” said a voice from above. “Though to be fair, the landing was a little rough.”

  Kaelen cut his eyes toward the source.

  A figure crouched on the peaked roof above him, slight but not small exactly, built for efficiency rather than strength. It was a girl, and she balanced there like someone who had spent significant time on high surface development and had made peace with gravity. The wind was doing something specific around her, a barely-visible disturbance in the air that kept her hair and coat moving against the direction of the actual breeze.

  Wind mage. Unregistered, he guessed, from the absence of guild markings. Independent at minimum, rogue at significant probability.

  “You’re the one making frost on the rooftops,” she said. It wasn’t an accusation but more like someone identifying the source of an interesting odor. “You’ve got a bound spirit.”

  “Who are you?” Kaelen asked.

  “Someone who just saved your butt from a three-story splatter on cobblestones. You can call me Lyra. The prophecy says―”

  She stopped mid-sentence and tilted her head toward the alley network below, where the sweep teams were visibly adjusting their corridor. “We have about sixty seconds before they close of the bridge approach. Are you planning on moving, or do you make it a habit of lying on rooftops and enjoying the view?”

  Kaelen stood, and they ran.

  She was fast. She moved across the rooftops with ease, like she was flying more than running. Her wind magic made every jump a fraction longer than physics should have allowed, every landing lighter, every direction change sharper. Kealen kept pace because he was stubborn and because losing her in the first thirty seconds would have been a particular flavor of embarrassment that he wasn’t willing to accept.

  Lumi floated along, remaining invisible and observing without offering commentary.

  They descended from the rooftops at the edge of the canal district and moved into the alley network at street level. Lyra navigated it with the familiarity of someone who had mapped it personally. Left, right, through a courtyard that smelled of old fish, under an arch that had been someone’s grand architectural ambition approximately two hundred years ago, and then ―

  She stopped, causing him to nearly crash into her.

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  The bridge ahead was narrow, made from old stone and spanning the lava canal that ran through Ashfall’s lower district. The volcanic flow from the ancient volcano that towered from the center of the city had been channeled into a controlled river centuries ago and now ran sluggish and orange-hot twenty feet below the bridge’s span.

  On both ends of the bridge stood figures. They weren’t Spirirward Officers. Different uniforms ― civilian almost, but with a quality of attention that marked them as professionals. The way they held themselves at rest. The way their hands were positioned.

  “They aren’t from the Spiritward Office,” Kaelen said.

  “No, they’re not,” Lyra confirmed.

  “Then who are they?”

  Lyra’s eyes remained locked on the bridge. “They’re in the business of making your situation significantly more complicated. They move faster than the Office mages do, and they don’t stop when their quarry surrenders.” She paused before continuing, “Rogue hunters. Independent operators. They work for the Consortium, mages who track and capture or eliminate anyone bonded with spirits the elemental kingdoms have classified as extinct or prohibited.”

  Kaelen looked at the figures on the bridge with the specific quality of attention you give to information that has just made everything worse. “There are people who actually do that as a profession?”

  “The market for bound extinct spirits is significant enough to sustain a small industry, yes.” Lyra glanced at him sideways. “Whatever you did, you did it spectacularly. It’s been less than three days.”

  “I’m aware of the timeline.”

  “I’m just saying they’re faster than expected. That means whoever is funding this particular search has deep resources and motivation beyond standard contract rates.” She paused. “Do you know what you bound to?

  Before Kaelen could answer, Lumi spoke. “She is perceptive for a wind mage.”

  Lyra’s eyes widened, and she slowly turned to look at the spirit that had materialized behind Kaelen’s left shoulder. For a moment, Lyra’s expression was frozen with open shock that comes from encountering an entity that shouldn’t exist. Then she closed it down and forced a return to a professional calm with a long, slow exhale.

  “That’s an ice spirit,” she said to Kaelen without moving her eyes from Lumi.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s an actual ice spirit.”

  “That’s what I am. Name’s Lumi. And you are a wind mage operating without guild registration in a fire kingdom city, which suggests your own relationship with elemental law is not uncomplicated.”

  Lyra’s eyes moved between Lumi and Kaelen with rapid recalculation. Then, from the direction of the bridge, one of the figures shifted, and the shift triggered the others to make a coordinated movement that meant they’d been spotted.

  “Move,” Lyra said. The wind was already building around her hands.

  What followed was the most chaotic four minutes Kaelen had spent in a week.

  Lyra’s wind magic operated in precise, shaped bursts, a focused column that picked up a stack of market crates and flung them across the bridge mouth. It produced a flat shockwave angled to push two hunters back without sending them into the lava canal below, buying them half a minute.

  Kaelen tried to summon fire twice. Both times, Lumi’s cold reacted with a subtle disruption that made his flame stutter, shift, and behave in ways he couldn’t direct. The first attempt produced a fire burst that went twenty degrees off his intended target, hitting a bridge railing instead of the space in front of the hunter he was aiming for.

  The second produced a brief, spectacular interaction as his fire met Lumi’s cold and created a dense billow of superheated steam directly in the bridge’s center. It proved useful, providing them cover, but it was entirely by accident.

  “Stop reaching for fire,” Lumi said through a sharp, interior voice. “Each time you push, I respond. You have not yet established a framework that allows us to operate simultaneously.”

  Kaelen replied stressfully through the mental connection, “I’m in a combat situation!”

  “I’m aware of that. I’m not a… what did you call it… a doofus. I’m merely attempting to explain why combat fire is currently not an option. If you insist on reaching for it, I will insist on responding to it, and the results will continue to be aesthetically interesting and tactically questionable.”

  Kaelen stopped reaching for fire. He ran instead, following Lyra’s lead, using the steam cover he’d inadvertently provided. They exited the bridge on the far side through a gap between hunters that Lyra’s wind shockwave had briefly opened and moved into the cramped streets of the lower canal district as fast as they could.

  Three streets in, they came within ten feet of a hunter who appeared from an adjacent alley. Lyra reacted instantaneously, releasing a burst of wind that flung him into a cart of river reeds. They lost the remainder of the hunters by ducking into a passage that they clearly didn’t know existed but Lyra did. They moved through it before hunkering down and listening to the sounds of the organized pursuit disappear in the distance.

  Kaelen looked around and realized they were in the deep shadow of a building that backed directly against the canal, the orange glow of the lava flow pulsing through the underground barrier.

  “Ancient prophecy,” Kaelen breathed after a moment.

  Lyra gave him a curious look.

  Kaelen met her eyes. “You started to say something on the rooftops. About my binding and a prophecy.”

  She was quiet long enough that he thought she might decline to answer. Then, “There are records, old ones, pre-war, that describe a convergence event. Fire and ice, coexisting in a single bond, at a time when the elemental balance is heavily stressed. The records aren’t specific about what if means. Whether it’s a warning or a promise.”

  She turned her attention to Lumi, who had materialized against one wall with its usual quality of patient watchfulness. Bringing her attention back to Kaelen, she continued, “The elemental kingdoms suppressed most of the documentation after the war. But rogue historians kept copies. And the hunters…” she glanced back the way they’d come. “Some of them are funded by people who’ve read those copies and have a specific idea about what the convergence should or shouldn’t be allowed to become.”

  Kaelen stood in heavy thought. The canal heat was warm against one side of his face. The cold of Lumi’s presence was against the other. He was, literally and continuously, caught between opposing temperatures.

  “What do you want out of this?” Kaelen asked. “You didn’t save me on the rooftops because you were just passing by.”

  She almost smiled. “I’ve been watching the Spiritward sweep patterns for three days, looking for something that was worth finding.” Her eyes moved to Lumi again. “I found it.”

  “I’m not an it,” Lumi said.

  “No,” Lyra agreed, and the smile that nearly formed grew. “No, I don’t think you are.”

  Kaelen was about to say something when the cold at the back of his awareness sharpened suddenly. Lumi went still in the specific way that Kaelen was beginning to recognize as attention, not rest. He looked where the spirit was looking.

  Above them, in an upper level concealed by shadows, stood the vague outline of a figure. Watching. Still enough to suggest professional training. Gone before he could resolve any detail beyond its presence.

  “Did you see―” he started.

  “I saw it,” Lyra said.

  “Spiritward?”

  “No. They operate in teams.” She remained extremely controlled. “That’s a single observer.”

  “Hunter?”

  Lyra shook her head slowly. “No. A hunter would have attacked.”

  Lumi said, “You’re being hunted by at least two forces now, and you haven’t even begun to understand why.”

  They looked between themselves, unsure of what to expect.

  The shadows, for their part, held their silence and offered nothing in return.

  End of Episode 3

  Episode 4: “The Silent Ice” coming soon!