The city moved beneath her, unaware of the eyes watching from above.
Haedryn stood atop the flat roof of a tavern just beyond the Street of Flour, wrapped in the silence of her Invisibility Cloak. The sun was just beginning its slow descent toward the western hills, casting long shadows across the sprawling streets of King's Landing. She hadn't stepped beyond the Isle of Faces without preparation. Her first rule in any unfamiliar realm—learn the shape of it before you touch it.
For a moon now, she had walked this city cloaked and unheard. Not as a ghost, but as a scholar observing a strange, living thing.
She'd arrived a moon after the Great Council of Harrenhal, where Prince Viserys had been named heir over the older claim of Princess Rhaenys. That single decision had not yet torn the realm apart, but Haedryn could feel the fracture forming. It was in the way people spoke, the way they hesitated. A realm that had just watched a king choose peace was now holding its breath, waiting for an old man to die.
She slipped down from the rooftop with practiced ease, her boots barely whispering against the wood. The Cloak shimmered slightly in the dimming light but held strong as she passed between two buildings and entered a crowded market street. She moved slowly, careful not to brush too close to the crowd. A woman appeared to be scolding a butcher for trimming the fat too thickly. A boy kicked a sack of barley and was cuffed by a vendor. Two gold cloaks marched through with the bored aggression of men who expected to be obeyed but rarely were.
King's Landing stank of sweat and mud and fish guts, but beneath that—Haedryn smelled fear. Not sharp and panicked, but old and settled, like a rot hiding behind stone. The city lived, but it did not trust. Not itself. Not its lords. Not its future.
She passed a sept where an old woman prayed loudly, calling for the Stranger to guide the realm wisely. In the square beyond, a group of merchants argued over tax levies and the new coinage minted in Viserys's name. No one yet called him king. Not openly. Not until the crown touched his head.
Haedryn kept walking, listening, watching. She had walked through ruined capitals before, cities still unaware they were bleeding to death from within. King's Landing wasn't there yet, but it was limping. Too large for its walls, too rich for its poor, too proud to admit how tightly it was wound.
She moved through the Gate of the Gods near twilight, heading toward the southern edge of the city. She followed no path but the feeling in her chest—a hunter's instinct, built from centuries of moving through places that didn't want her seen. She crossed a narrow bridge, paused to study the pattern of guards along the river, and then vanished down a side alley no one seemed to notice.
A group of smallfolk gathered around a hedge knight in rusted mail, listening to him speak about the Grand Council. He was saying that the king's choice was wise, that the gods had smiled on House Targaryen. He said this with the exaggerated conviction of a man paid to say it. Beside him, a red-nosed man muttered that Rhaenys should've had it—that the queen that never was might've done better than another Targaryen with a weak jaw.
Haedryn took note of the names passed between lips. Rhaenys. Viserys. Daemon. Corlys. Each held weight, and each name drew sharp opinions. It was like watching sparks drift closer to a powder keg.
She turned north again, heading uphill now, toward the looming spine of the Red Keep. It cast a long shadow over the city as dusk deepened. The gates were shut, but servants came and went through smaller doors. Haedryn stayed well back, cloaked in darkness and magic, watching how the guards shifted, how their eyes wandered. She didn't test the entrances—not yet. She wasn't ready to breach the keep itself. First she needed to learn what sort of beast it was.
Even from here, she could feel it—old magic nestled deep beneath the stone. Not active, but present. She could almost hear it breathing, dormant but aware. The Red Keep wasn't just stone and sword. It was a place of memory. Of blood. If magic still had roots in Westeros, they were buried somewhere within those walls.
She watched as a liveried messenger galloped through the smaller postern gate and was waved in with barely a word. A man with gold chain and fine cloak exited minutes later, deep in conversation with a knight whose armor gleamed even in the failing light. No one was smiling.
Haedryn's breath misted faintly. The temperature had dipped. A late summer chill had settled in early this year, though she suspected it had more to do with the weight of waiting hanging over the realm. Everyone could feel Jaehaerys's age pressing against time. The old king still ruled, but everyone looked east toward Viserys and wondered what would come next.
She stayed there until the stars blinked fully into the sky, watching the heartbeat of the city slow, shift, and settle. Then she turned and vanished into the dark once more, her steps measured and silent.
She returned to her safehouse—a modest ruin of a building just outside the city's northern walls. Abandoned long ago by some minor knight or merchant, it had stood quiet and forgotten until she'd claimed it. Wards now surrounded it, carefully laid into the stone and wood. Nothing flashy. Just enough to keep it unseen.
Inside, she removed the Cloak and hung it carefully near her satchel. She moved to a small table where a few maps, stolen over the past moon, were spread. She studied them briefly, then lit a single candle and sat.
She didn't need rest, not truly. But she valued stillness. It allowed her to think.
She was not known here. That was her greatest strength. No title. No sigil. No alliances.
And no expectations. Not until she revealed herself.
For now, she was content to be unseen. To observe. To watch the game as it was set. The great houses were already shifting in reaction to the Council. The Velaryons would not forget the slight to Rhaenys. The Hightowers circled the heir. Daemon remained unpredictable.
Haedryn didn't plan to interfere.
Not yet.
But when the time came, when the balance trembled and magic began to fray again—she would act.
And she would not need to ask permission.
-------
The Red Keep rose like a crown of teeth above the city, sharp-edged and ancient, its towers biting into the sky. By day, it gleamed in the sun—red stone burning gold. By night, it seemed to sink into shadow, a predator watching from on high. Haedryn had seen fortresses before—castles, palaces, warholds older than memory—but there was something uniquely coiled about this place. Something watching back.
She made her first approach an hour past midnight.
The Cloak of Invisibility wrapped her like mist. Her breath was shallow, quiet. Her steps made no sound as she crossed from the sloping streets of the city's upper wards toward the eastern retaining wall. No patrol passed for several minutes, and even then, the guards did not look down—only outward, toward imagined threats from beyond.
Haedryn moved swiftly. She scaled the slope with practiced ease, the stone rough beneath her gloves. She had no magic active but the Cloak and a ward of silence—simple spells, stable ones. She trusted nothing more complex yet. The ley magic here flowed oddly, as if buried too deep to grab easily.
The wall was old. That was her first impression when she touched it. Not just aged, but soaked through with memory—rebuilt, repaired, scarred by centuries. She laid her palm flat to the stone and let her senses stretch. Faint traces of enchantment lingered in the mortar. Protective spells long since faded. Wards forgotten. Blood soaked into joints between the blocks.
Someone had bled here.
Many someones.
She moved left, following the curvature of the wall until she found what she was searching for—a narrow vent carved for water runoff, half-choked with moss and cracked at the edges. It was small, tight, and nearly invisible beneath the Cloak's shimmer. She crouched and slid into it silently, her movements precise, patient.
The vent fed into a rain channel behind a servant's stair. From there, she moved slowly upward, climbing in darkness, her senses sharp. The Cloak muffled her sound, but her instincts did more—centuries of training teaching her how to place each foot without weight, how to feel the creak in a beam before it bent.
Above her, the Red Keep exhaled in stone and shadow.
She emerged on the third level, in the long narrow hall that connected the eastern servants' quarters with the inner kitchens. No one was here—too late for bakers, too early for scullions. She paused behind a tapestry, catching her breath, listening.
Then she began to explore.
She kept to the servant routes—tunnels within walls, narrow stairwells, the in-between places used by the invisible hands that made the keep function. It reminded her of Hogwarts in some ways—different in structure, but similar in how it moved and breathed when no one looked. Every castle had a heart. You just had to know where to listen.
The Red Keep's heart was buried deep.
She found the old armory first—long unused, its doors sealed with iron hinges and a rusted lock. A minor ward still clung to it, brittle and half-dead. She didn't break it. She touched it lightly with her wand, felt the magic in its bones, then stepped away. There was no need to draw attention. Not yet.
Past the armory lay the tunnels descending toward Maegor's Holdfast. Here, she moved even slower, wary. These halls were cleaner, more active. She passed two guards mid-shift change. One scratched his beard; the other yawned so wide she could see his fillings. Neither noticed the silent breath of air that moved between them.
Haedryn descended two levels further, into the older bones of the keep. The air cooled, grew heavier. The torches here were rare, and where they burned, they burned low.
She paused at a branching hallway, pressing one hand to the stone.
A faint hum answered her.
There.
She followed it.
The passage twisted—left, then right, then down into a small chamber shaped like a crescent. The floor here was uneven, the stone cracked. At its center stood a basin of black marble, empty now, but once likely used in rituals or cleansing rites. Above it, carved into the stone itself, was a single symbol—an eight-pointed star overlaid with the spiral of a dragon.
Valyrian.
Not just language—sigil. Power.
She circled the basin slowly. No one had been here in years. Decades, maybe longer. Dust lay thick on the floor, except where something faintly shimmered—an outline only visible from certain angles, like oil on water.
A magical seal.
Carefully, Haedryn pulled a bone stylus from her satchel and etched a single Peverell sigil into the dust near the shimmer. The response was subtle but real—the shimmer pulsed once, then settled. A recognition.
Peverell blood still meant something, even here.
She didn't attempt to break it. Not yet. That was not what this night was for. Tonight was for scouting. For watching. For understanding the keep's skin before probing its veins.
She retraced her steps slowly, choosing a new route upward.
On her return path, she passed near the royal quarters, though she didn't linger. Viserys still dwelled here, she was certain, though not yet king. The crown remained on Jaehaerys's head for now, but the tide had turned. The lords had spoken, and the realm had shifted its weight.
She listened outside the small council chamber for a few minutes. Heard nothing. That in itself was telling. No voices this late. No meetings. The machine of rule had slowed, waiting for the moment of transition.
At last, she withdrew, climbing again toward the outer levels.
She exited near the rookery—quiet at this hour save for one restless raven, clacking its beak against the perch. She passed it silently, pausing only to scan the stars.
The city spread below, restless and wide. She looked down over its thousands of roofs and thousands more secrets. She did not fear it. Not anymore.
Returning to the lower city was faster. She took the rooftops this time, testing her agility, refreshing old muscle memory. Her balance was perfect. Her grip sure. She moved like wind and shadow, the Cloak an extension of her skin.
Back in her hideaway, she didn't light a candle. She sat in darkness and laid out a rough sketch of the passageways she'd traced. Not everything. Just enough.
----
King's Landing never slept. It muttered.
Even in the hours before dawn, when mist hung low over the gutters and the last embers of hearth-fires turned to ash, the city whispered. Haedryn moved through it cloaked and unnoticed, her boots soft on wet stone, her senses sharp. She wasn't hunting—not yet. But she was listening.
She passed the outer gates of the Street of Silk and turned down a crooked alley, letting herself be guided by voices. Music drifted from an open tavern door ahead—poorly tuned strings, half-sung lyrics, laughter that had too much edge. Inside, the air was thick with heat, smoke, and the sour breath of drink. She slipped in without opening the door, a whisper of silk under her Cloak, and found a place near the fire where the light could not touch her.
A hedge knight was holding court in the corner, mail dented, sword rusted. He leaned heavily on his elbows, a cup in one hand and a string of opinions in the other.
"I'm tellin' you, it's all about the fleet," he said. "The Sea Snake—he's the one we should've picked. Not that soft-souled prince."
"Viserys has the blood of Balerion," another man argued. "He rode the Black Dread. That counts for something."
"Barely," the knight snorted. "He mounted a dying dragon and flew it once. That's not the same as ruling. Rhaenys had the sense, and her husband's got the ships. You wait—Velaryon doesn't forget slights."
Haedryn listened without blinking. It wasn't just idle drink-speech. There was a current under their words—resentment, doubt. The Council's choice hadn't sealed peace; it had opened cracks. The people knew it, even if they didn't say it outright.
A woman in a red dress laughed darkly and sipped her wine. "And what of Daemon?" she asked. "He's got teeth, that one. City watches him. No love for rules."
"That's the problem," the knight replied. "He's got no leash."
Another voice, older, raspier: "He's a dragon, same as the rest. And dragons don't wear collars."
They laughed at that, but the laughter didn't last long. A silence settled in, and someone muttered something about the gods watching.
Haedryn left them to it. She'd heard enough.
By midday, the city was brighter but no less loud. She walked the outer market in plain clothing, no glamour needed—just dust on her boots and a borrowed accent. People here didn't care who you were, only whether you paid and moved on. The stalls stretched across the square in crooked lines, offering bread, root vegetables, fish just beginning to turn. The voices were louder here, more practical.
"Coin's thinned since the Council," one vendor grumbled.
"King's not dead yet," another answered. "They're waiting, like crows on a roof."
A septon stood near the center of the square, calling out blessings. Haedryn paused behind a group of tradeswomen to listen.
"Pray for the Crown, for Prince Viserys, and for the wisdom of King Jaehaerys!" he cried. "Pray that the Stranger does not walk too near! And pray that no foul sorcery comes creeping into the hearts of men!"
There it was—clear, sharp, and familiar. The fear of magic.
The Faith of the Seven hated what they could not control. She saw it in the way the septon tightened his hand around the seven-pointed star hanging from his neck. She'd seen that same gesture in other times, from priests and inquisitors who wanted fire and silence more than truth.
She watched the gathered crowd. Most ignored him. But some nodded. Some crossed their chests. Some whispered prayers to drive away unseen forces.
She moved on, through the crowd and toward the edge of the market, where a girl in rags sat with a bundle of herbs and bones. She looked too thin to be a threat, too young to be selling anything that worked. But Haedryn saw past the glamour immediately.
"A street witch?" she asked quietly, letting just enough magic thread her words to bypass the illusion.
The girl blinked once. Then smiled slowly, revealing too-sharp teeth.
"You see clearly," she whispered.
"What do people here think of magic?"
"They think we steal babes in the night. That we whisper to the wind and poison the wells."
"Do they believe it?"
"They do when the crops fail. When their sons vanish on the road. Then they find a girl like me and light the pyre."
Haedryn nodded once. "The Faith rules hard here."
"Like a hammer. They broke the old ways with fire and gold. Now they call them sins."
"But you still work?"
"I whisper where no ears listen. I charm rats out of larders. Sometimes I find things others lose. That's enough to eat."
Haedryn flicked a silver stag into the girl's bowl, "Find out how many others with magic there are in kingslanding. I will return in a week and we will talk again"
The sun dipped low again by the time she reached the docks. The wind smelled of salt and brine, stronger than the smoke of the city behind her. Ships creaked in their moorings, sails flapping. She watched the sailors load crates, shout names, trade coin. She saw men from Braavos and Myr, from Pentos and Oldtown. The city's blood was its trade, not its throne.
She leaned against a piling and listened.
The Faith feared magic. The nobles feared change. The merchants feared taxes. And the smallfolk feared hunger and fire.
Not one of them spoke of preserving the old powers. Not one of them seemed to notice that magic was thinning, not dying. It was here—she felt it in the stones, in the tide, in the trees clinging to the edge of the Blackwater. But it was quiet. Dormant. Unnourished.
It would die if left unattended. Not by flame. By neglect.
That was the danger.
That was what Death had meant.
Back at her hideaway, Haedryn lit no lamp. She sat on the floor and unrolled her map of the city, marking places with a charmed ink that only her eyes could see.
Taverns. Markets. Sept corners. Places where the world talked.
"The people don't want magic," she said aloud. "They don't even remember how."
-----
The room was still.
Haedryn sat cross-legged on the bare floor of her safehouse, the shutters drawn tight against the night, her wand resting across her knees. A faint ring of powdered salt and ash circled her, not as a barrier but as a focusing measure—ritual instinct, something ingrained over long centuries of use. Around her, small bowls held vials, crushed herbs, bits of polished bone. Her satchel lay open at her side, one of the Peverell grimoires opened across her lap, its aged ink glimmering faintly in candlelight.
She had waited a moon to begin this properly. Long enough to understand that the land was different. Its ley lines pulsed more deeply, like arteries buried beneath stone. Magic was present in Westeros, yes—but silent. Not gone, simply quiet, as if watching. Now it was time to speak to it. Not force it. Not bend it. Just speak.
She inhaled through her nose, slow and even, then exhaled through her mouth. Focus first. Emotion dulled the edge of the spell. Magic here didn't like being shouted at—it wanted rhythm.
"Lumos," she whispered.
The wand sparked. A flicker of light jumped at the tip—bright for half a second, then sputtered out like wet flint.
She blinked once. Not surprised.
She tried again, this time with a grounding gesture beneath the word. "Lumos."
A pulse, a glow, and then black.
It was like trying to light a candle in windless water.
She tried Leviosa next, directing it at a loose scrap of parchment nearby. The sheet quivered at the edge but did not lift. When she tried again—firmer, more focused—the parchment fluttered up for a moment before settling back down, heavier than it should have been.
Haedryn sighed through her nose, made a mental note, then stood. She took five paces across the warded floor and faced a tall clay vase she'd positioned for this test.
"Expelliarmus," she said clearly.
The wand trembled in her hand. The air popped—soft, weak—but the vase didn't move. She could feel the spell surge, but not release. It was like trying to cast with a splintered wand or an unraveled focus rune.
She lowered her wand. Battle magic was... dulled. Something in the atmosphere here, in the weave of the land, resisted quickfire spells. Not rejection—resistance. The power was there. The flow was not.
Fine.
She crouched and drew out a heavier scroll—Black family theory, dated back six hundred years. She unrolled it across the floor, revealing a hand-inked diagram of foundational blood magic.
With a ritual blade, she pricked the tip of her finger, letting three small drops fall into a bowl of ground moonstone and crushed beetle shell. Then she drew the triangle of containment with chalk, encircling it with glyphs—Earthborn, shaped through centuries of Peverell work. No Valyrian nonsense, no guesswork. Just old, refined craft.
She set the bowl in the center of the ring, murmured a centering chant in Parseltongue—low, melodic, more rhythm than tongue.
The blood responded.
The mixture pulsed once, then glowed from within. The glyphs around it shimmered faintly. The air inside the circle thickened—not dangerously, but noticeably.
Ritual magic worked. Not just worked—it settled. Deep, slow, steady. The land accepted it. She could feel that clearly.
She dispelled it with a soft phrase and watched the glow recede. No violent reaction. No magical whiplash. Just stillness.
Encouraged, she moved to warding. She traced a misdirection sigil over the doorframe, speaking the sequence carefully—three words, a minor offering of dried flame lily, and a controlled tap of her wand.
The magic slid into place.
Not flashy, but firm. The ward clung to the wood like frost to stone. It felt right.
She repeated the process over the window, varying the pattern slightly to test redundancy. Again, success.
She stepped back, nodding once.
Then she turned to the last test.
She retrieved a mouse corpse—curled and stiff, found in the rafters earlier that week. She placed it on a flat stone and focused.
"Obliviate."
The spell passed through the wand slowly, like honey through a sieve. It reached the withered thing, touched what few traces of instinct still clung to its broken form... and settled. No visible result, but she felt it land. Magic that altered memory, suggestion, mind—it held.
Wandless compulsion came next. She whispered a phrase without speaking it aloud, tracing a path with her finger through the dust on the floor. Not a command. A test.
The dust line straightened.
Subtle, but real.
She stood for a while in silence, thinking.
The magic here did not reject her. It resisted certain forms—force, speed, violence—but not meaning. Not blood. Not will. It understood power when it was grounded.
Magic here wanted rules. Not rigid ones, but shape. Memory. Weight.
She didn't resent it.
Earth had taught her to burn. To fight. To survive.
This land would teach her how to plant.
She moved through the room slowly, brushing each warded corner, checking the lines she'd laid. Each spell held. Each defense settled.
This land didn't hate magic. It feared it. Or perhaps it had simply forgotten how to trust it.
Fine.
She would remind it.
She drew the Cloak of Invisibility around her shoulders—not to vanish, but for its familiarity, the way it pulled her mind tight like a swordbelt.
Then, in the quiet of the safehouse, with salt underfoot and silence overhead, she whispered:
"We begin again."
And the silence remained. Accepting. Whole.
---
The city slept uneasily beneath her.
Haedryn stood on the edge of a tiled rooftop overlooking the Hook, high above the eastern wall of King's Landing. The moon was thin tonight, a silver cut across the cloudless sky, and the stars glimmered coldly overhead. She pulled the Invisibility Cloak tighter about her shoulders—not for concealment now, but warmth—and let the wind brush softly across her face.
She had spent more than a moon walking these streets. Listening to dockworkers, septons, knights. Watching shadows shift inside the Red Keep. Testing spells in silence. Learning.
And now she simply stood, the city spread beneath her like a broken circle, and she watched.
It was not a realm at war. Not yet. But the balance here was brittle. It tilted on blood and inheritance, on the word of an old king whose strength was failing more by the day. The people wore uncertainty like a second skin. The nobles sharpened their smiles behind closed doors. The Faith spoke softly of virtue and loudly of punishment. The poor whispered of hunger and vanished children. And the castle—always, always—the Red Keep loomed, coiled and waiting.
She turned her eyes toward it now.
The Keep glowed faintly in torchlight, a quiet thing under the night, but Haedryn knew what it was. It was not just a place of stone—it was a vessel for memory. For ambition. For rot. Magic did not live there. Power did. And the two were not the same.
Jaehaerys still ruled. His hand weighed heavily on the realm, though his fingers trembled. Viserys had been named heir—chosen, not crowned. The court waited, smiling as they prepared their knives. Some smiled for duty. Others for opportunity. None for peace.
Daemon Targaryen lingered somewhere below, close to the court but outside its walls. Otto Hightower moved like a spider. Corlys Velaryon, humiliated by the Council, had gone to sea. Rhaenys did not speak in public. And Rhaenyra—just a child—walked the halls unaware of the thunder that waited over her head.
Haedryn knew thunder. She had walked in it before. Had become it when needed.
And now, again, she felt the weight of storms building beneath her feet.
She turned slowly, stepping off the roof and onto the balcony of an abandoned bell tower. Her footsteps made no sound. Below, the capital stretched wide and silent. She knelt, placed her palm on the stone, and felt the city hum.
Magic was present here. Not like in her own world—no pulsing leylines, no singing threads waiting to be plucked—but deep currents, buried and choked under years of concrete, fire, and fear. It was not dead.
But it was starving.
And the people would not feed it. Not these ones. Not with the Faith preaching against it, nor the maesters strangling knowledge, nor the lords vying for swords instead of sense.
She would not choose between them. That much was clear now.
Haedryn of House Peverell owed nothing to Viserys. She would not be Otto Hightower's tool. She would not sail under Velaryon banners. She would not entertain the prayers of the Faith to eradicate anything they don't understand.
The only loyalty she bore was to the thread of magic itself—preserving it, protecting it, rekindling it if needed. If Westeros would not accept that... then she would do it from the shadows.
And the shadows were wide.
She drew her hood back and walked from the bell tower into the outer street. This part of the city, near Rhaenys's Hill, was quiet this time of night. She passed beggars asleep on stairwells, torchlight sputtering in iron sconces. A patrol passed—a pair of Goldcloaks laughing softly about a merchant's wife. Neither noticed her.
She didn't use the Cloak now. She tested something subtler: a slight distortion, a charm of forgetfulness. Not invisibility, but disinterest. A face blurred in memory. A presence dulled.
No one looked twice at her. Even as she passed a pair of cloaked men speaking of royal letters, even as she crossed the path of a Septa who muttered prayers against darkness.
She was a shadow now. And she moved through them as one of their own.
When she reached her safehouse, she entered quietly and bolted the door behind her. The wards recognized her step, and the silence inside welcomed her like an old friend. No candle burned. She didn't need it. She knew every inch of this space now.
She stepped to the central table where four items lay:
The Elder Wand, still strong and sharp with stored precision.
The Resurrection Stone, quiet, cool, untouched.
The Cloak, folded with care beside a freshly cleaned satchel.
And the Sword of Gryffindor, its pommel gleaming faintly in the moonlight through the shutter cracks.
She rested her hand on the sword for a long moment.
She was not a queen. Not a chosen one. Not anyone's banner to raise.
She was a guardian of things most had forgotten.
And she had decided.
King's Landing was not her place. Not the South. Not the Reach, nor the Stormlands, nor the gilded holds of Oldtown. They all had eyes, all had chains, all had mouths that would call her witch if they learned even a fragment of what she could do.
But there was a place where no one watched.
A place of mountains and wind, of bloodline and snow. Of old legends and old magic.
Skagos.
The North called it savage. The South called it cursed. The Faith ignored it. The Crown had long since learned to leave it alone.
Which made it perfect.
Close to the Wall. Closer still to the wilds where giants were rumoured to still mov and skinchangers whispered to wolves. And far from maesters, thrones, and septons.
She could build something there.
She could begin again—her way.
Haedryn pulled the Cloak over her shoulders once more and stepped into the night.
The city behind her still slept.
But she did not.
Perfect — now that's clear. Here's your revised, in-character dialogue scene: a week has passed, the witch has found the others, and Haedryn returns to give instructions before departing on her mission to Skagos. Tone is calm, serious, and quiet with purpose.
---
The alley hadn't changed. Same damp stones. Same flicker of lantern light across a rusted hinge. But the witch was waiting now.
She stood with her hood down, illusion stripped away, eyes sharp and gold in the dark. There were new lines on her face—not age, but awareness. She'd seen things in the last seven days.
"I found them," she said before Haedryn spoke. "Eighteen. Maybe five more hiding deeper in the river wards. Not counting the hedge-priest in the catacombs."
Haedryn nodded once. "Good."
"They're scared," the witch added. "They've seen what the Faith does. They'd rather forget they ever lit a candle than risk a noose."
"They won't have to risk anything. Not yet," Haedryn said. "At the end of the moon, I'll be gone. North. Far north. It'll take time—at least a year before anything's ready."
The witch tilted her head. "Ready for what?"
"A place," Haedryn said quietly. "A real one. Not a bolthole or a rat-run. A stronghold. A sanctuary. Somewhere magic can live protected, safe and happy.
That made the witch pause. She stared at Haedryn for a long moment, then asked, more softly, "You really think that's possible here?"
Haedryn didn't flinch. "I don't care if it's possible. I'm going to make it real."
Another silence passed, broken only by the creak of wood and wind down the alley mouth.
"You'll need more than faith," the witch muttered.
"I have more than faith," Haedryn said. "I have time. And I have tools."
She reached into her satchel and drew out a sealed piece of parchment. "There's a manor near the northern wall. Stone, two floors, looks ruined from the outside. Wards will keep out anyone who isn't meant to see past that."
"You're giving us a house?" the witch said, eyebrows raised.
"A shelter," Haedryn replied. "Somewhere to gather. To wait. Keep finding others. Don't advertise. Don't spread names. Just keep them safe. I've left provisions, protections. No one will look twice."
"And when you're ready?"
"I'll send someone. Might be a bird. Might be a person. You'll know when they come. You'll know it's me."
The witch looked down at the parchment in her hands, then back up. "They'll wait."
"Good."
"Not all of them believe in what you're doing," she added. "Some think you're just another mask. That you'll vanish like the rest."
"I don't need belief," Haedryn said calmly. "Just patience."
The witch smiled faintly. "That, I can manage."
Haedryn pulled the Cloak about her shoulders. "Keep them quiet. Keep them alive. I'll do the rest."
Then she stepped back into the shadowed street and was gone.
---