CHAPTER 407: WE WILL BE THERE

"Let him try," Lilith said. The words were cold and calm, both. "He will put it down where we tell him to."

Elowen’s tone matched her in its own way. "Roots remember who steps where."

"Good." The Ancestress’s smile was brief and clean. "Keep it that way. When he tests the exam, and he will test it, do not let him choose the room."

"We will not," Lilith said.

"We will be there," Elowen said.

The Matron’s tail made another thoughtful circle. "We keep speaking of him. He will not come alone.

The knife likes to play with its food. The knife will send blades before it sends itself. You will see disciples who cut souls first and bodies later. Do not let them sing in your halls."

"They won’t find a chorus," Lilith said.

"They will find thorns," Elowen said.

A soft crack ran along a far mirror and sealed again, like a joint stretching and falling back into place. The seal’s hum stayed low, comfortable.

"Tell us everything you learned tonight," the Ancestress said. "Not from your hands. From the fight. What did you see of each other that the world forgets?"

Lilith’s smirk tilted, but it carried respect. "She is heavier now," she said. "And when she chooses to be held by a place, that place grows a spine to hold her.

If I break ten horizons, she will make one floor and stand on it."

Elowen’s small smile echoed the same weight. "And she is clearer now," she said. "If I split a forest into a thousand paths, she can choose one as if the others never tempted her."

The Matron clapped once, very softly. "Good. Names are faster after a duel."

The Ancestress’s gaze gentled. "And you both stopped when asked."

They did not answer. They didn’t need to. It was in the way their shoulders had eased without relaxing.

The Matron tipped her head toward the frozen dust of illusions drifting above them. "Shall we call this a room and speak like hosts?" she asked.

"I brought nothing to pour, but my company is good and my questions are not terrible."

"Ask," Lilith said.

"Ask," Elowen said.

"Fine," the Matron said. "First, the exam. It uses a captured fragment and calls itself safe.

How would each of you ruin that safety if you were a god who wanted to pretend you hadn’t touched it?"

Lilith didn’t wait. "I would lace a lie into the measuring script so the realm miscounts friend and foe," she said.

"Only once. Only where it matters. Then I would make the gates return everyone to the wrong corners of the city after the bell."

Elowen followed. "I would stir the old beasts’ memory so they hunt a scent they should not recognize.

Not to kill. To drive. Drive them into the places where the realm is folded thin. Then wait for a student to push too hard there."

"Both are ugly," the Matron said, approving anyway. "Now, what would you do if you were the realm and you wanted to stay kind?"

Lilith’s eyes thinned with thought. "Listen for a breath that did not start here," she said. "When you hear it, blow the dust off the old rules and make them new for one night."

Elowen added, "Ask the root that anchors you to lend you its patience for an hour. It will say yes if you promise to be gentle when you put it back."

"Good," the Ancestress said again. Her praise always sounded like a small bell rung once and allowed to fade.

"We will not give the Dean more advice than he asked for. He already has too much pride to eat all his vegetables."

The Matron smiled at that. "He eats dessert first," she said. "He always has."

A quiet fell, not heavy, only thoughtful. The broken mirrors drifted in their slow arcs. The roots rested like sleeping animals that might rise if someone coughed wrong.

The rivers stacked their curves in neat lines and kept to them.

"It annoys me," the Matron said after a moment, not hiding it.

"A god sleeps for a century and wakes to a world that made itself better while he snored, and his first act is to poke its ribs and smirk when it flinches."

"It is how cowards test if a door is locked," Lilith said.

"It is how weeds test if the hoe is dull," Elowen said.

"Then sharpen the hoe," the Ancestress told them, the softness back. "Quietly. In your own kitchens. Do not show the blade at the window."

"We will," Lilith said.

"We already started," Elowen said.

The Matron’s eyes went distant for a heartbeat, as if she were seeing an old board and all the pieces on it at once.

"One god stirring is bad enough," she said. "If others follow his scent, you will not get one war. You will get echoes."

Elowen’s hands opened and closed once, as if feeling the weight of twine. "Then we cut echoes at the door," she said.

Lilith’s voice turned light again, but the iron under it stayed. "And if they insist," she said, "we remind them that some theaters are not theirs to play."

The Ancestress breathed in, as if she could taste quiet. "Irritation is not fear," she said. "Keep it that way. Let the cults learn they are only loud until someone speaks plainly over them.

Let the gods learn that this is not the same floor they danced on last time."

The Matron pushed off her shard and drifted one pace nearer, not to loom, only to make the air between them feel like a table. "Two more things," she said. "Small and large."

Lilith lifted a brow that said small things tend to be knives.

"Small," the Matron said. "When the exam opens, if you see a thread you cannot touch without tearing the cloth, call us. Do not play polite with our pride."

Elowen inclined her head. "We will call."

"Large," the Matron said. Her smile left for a breath and came back thinner. "If the quiet god steps onto the board and you do not like how it sets its hand, do not try to move it.

Sit very still and count to a thousand and wait for me to finish counting first."