"I need to ask you something," Kael said, once the fragment-text lay closed again between them, "and I need you to answer honestly, even if the honest answer is that you shouldn't tell me."
Careful, novice, Starlight said, quiet and watchful. You are close to a line you cannot uncross once you've crossed it. I trust your judgment. I only ask that you be certain of it first.
Meredine studied him a long moment, something patient and unhurried in her sharp eyes — the look, Kael thought, of a woman who had spent decades learning to recognize when a question mattered more than its asker was willing to admit.
"Ask it," she said simply.
"Do you know the full prophecy," Kael said. "The Pods, the King, and the Boy. Not the part everyone half-remembers. The rest of it."
Something shifted in Meredine's face — not shock, which surprised him, but a kind of weary recognition, as though she'd been waiting for someone to ask her this exact question for a very long time and had long since stopped expecting it to arrive.
"The Staff of Medi, his strength," she said quietly, "and the Priestess of Winter, the Anchor." She watched Kael's expression carefully as she said it, and whatever she saw there made her exhale, slow and heavy. "Bones. You already knew that part. You didn't come here to learn the rest of the prophecy from me, Kael Ashford. You came here already carrying it."
Kael didn't answer, which was, in its own way, an answer complete enough.
"I won't ask you to confirm it aloud," Meredine said, after a long moment. "Some truths are safer left unspoken between two people who both already understand them. But I'll tell you what I know, because I think you've earned it, and because I think the alternative — you walking this path with less information than the people already hunting you — serves no one well at all."
"Witches talk," she said, settling back into her chair with the particular unhurried cadence of someone about to explain something she'd carried alone for a long time. "Not the way Guilds or Houses talk, through formal letters and sealed reports. Older than that. There's a network, Kael — has been since before the first witch who ever spoke that prophecy died, four hundred and fifty years ago. Not every witch belongs to it. But enough do, scattered across all five regions, trading fragments of old texts, comparing notes on omens, keeping half-remembered pieces of the old world's knowledge alive in ways the Guilds and Houses never bothered to preserve properly." She tapped the fragment-text's cracked cover. "This came to me through that network, three witches removed from whoever first copied it down. I'd wager Sister Yura, back in your own village, is connected to it too, however loosely — most rural witches are, even if they never say so plainly."
This explains a great deal, Starlight murmured. Yura's reluctance to fully report your Awakening. She may not have known the complete prophecy herself, but she understood enough of the network's whispers to recognize that reporting too much, too soon, could be dangerous for you.
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"There's a faction within that network," Meredine continued, her voice dropping lower, more careful. "Calls itself the Order of the Dawnking. Started, as best anyone can trace it, about thirty years ago — witches and a handful of devoted wielders who came to believe the old prophecy wasn't simply a warning to prepare for, but a promise to actively pursue. They believe the boy, when he's found, should be raised up publicly. Crowned, in their language, though they're careful never to use that word where a House or Baron might overhear it and take offense. They've been quietly searching every region for fifteen years, chasing every rumor of an unusual Awakening, every whisper of a wielder whose gift doesn't fit the tier system properly."
Kael's stomach dropped. "They're looking for me."
"They're looking for someone," Meredine corrected, gently. "Whether they've connected any of their rumors specifically to you, I genuinely don't know — my own place in the network is modest, and the Order keeps its true findings close even from witches who aren't members. But I'd be lying if I told you a boy who tore apart a beast-pack leader at the Wormwood Narrows, whose sensing reaches two miles, whose discipline matches no known tier-path, hasn't already generated exactly the kind of rumor the Order spends its considerable resources chasing down." She met his eyes, steady and grave. "And I want to be honest with you about something else, Kael, because I think you deserve honesty more than comfort right now: the Order's devotion isn't the safe kind. They don't simply want to help you. Some of them want to use you — a properly crowned prophecy-boy is a considerably more useful banner to rally frightened cities around than an unclassified novice quietly training in a Guild yard. Their faith is genuine. That doesn't make their intentions simple, or safe, or entirely about what's actually best for the boy they're hoping to find."
Sub-major complication, Starlight said, grim. We suspected something of this shape was coming, novice, from the moment you understood how rare your power truly was. Now we have a name for it, and a rough sense of its methods. That is worth more than the discomfort of hearing it plainly.
"What do I do," Kael asked, quiet, once the weight of it had settled properly.
"Same thing you've apparently been doing since you walked into this city," Meredine said, with the faint ghost of something almost like approval. "Stay careful. Stay unclassified, on paper and in practice, for as long as you possibly can. If the Order ever does find you — and I won't pretend that's not a real possibility, given how loudly the Narrows and the Hollow have both already spoken for you — meet them the same way you'd meet anyone else circling you for their own reasons. Politely. Carefully. And without ever handing them the confirmation they're hunting for, unless and until you've decided, on your own terms, that confirming it serves you rather than them."
She rose, crossing to her locked cabinet once more, and withdrew a small folded slip of paper, pressing it into Kael's hand with the same careful weight she'd shown handling the fragment-text.
"A name," she said. "Sister Aveline, keeps a shrine in Mournhall, one of the few witches in the network I'd trust completely with something this sensitive. If your road ever carries you that direction — and given everything else circling you, I suspect it will, sooner rather than later — she may know more about the Priestess of Winter's actual location than any fragment-text I've inherited. The network's whispers about the frozen north are older and thinner than anything I have on the caches. But they exist, and Aveline's heard more of them than I have."
Kael closed his hand around the paper, feeling the day's accumulated weight — the alley confrontation, the caches, the Order, now a name pointing toward the very thing the whole prophecy hinged on — settle into something that felt, for the first time in weeks, less like scattered fragments and more like an actual path forward.
"Thank you," he said, and meant it more than the words could properly carry.
Meredine studied him a moment longer, something gentler than her earlier careful neutrality finally surfacing.
"Don't thank me yet," she said. "You're fifteen — sixteen, maybe, by the time any of this actually resolves itself — carrying a weight most Gold-tier wielders three times your age would buckle under. Thank me properly once you've survived long enough to have earned the right to look back on today and call it a good decision rather than a reckless one." She walked him to the door, Ash Row's ordinary evening noise spilling in as she opened it. "Go carefully, Kael Ashford. And come back if the Order, or Corrigan, or anyone else circling you ever gets close enough that careful stops being enough on its own."