The room Due found was on the second floor of a building three streets from the administrative district.
The kind of place that rented to travelers without asking for names.
Two narrow beds, a table, and a window that faced a wall rather than a street. A single oil lamp on the table, already lit, its light barely reaching the corners.
Alistair sat on the edge of the bed and didn't move for a while.
The day had cost more than it appeared. Not physically. The walk was manageable, and the city navigation unremarkable.
However, Therasia had done something to his thinking that he was still working through. The wanted board with his description and no name attached.
The people who had learned to be cautious without being told. Seven Characteristic signatures were distributed throughout the city, as if someone had deliberately placed them.
Caldren had been building this for years.
Due set his cloak on the table and sat across from the lamp. He didn't sleep. Alistair had already come to understand that obligations didn't pause for it.
Instead, Due worked quietly, hands flat on the table at certain points, then moving slightly, addressing the smaller threads before they compounded. The focused stillness of someone who couldn't afford to stop.
Alistair watched him for a while without saying so.
'He spent years alone underground just to reduce how often this happened,' he thought. 'Now he's walking through a city full of people, following someone who creates consequences faster than most people create thoughts.'
Due looked up once, caught Alistair watching, and said nothing. He went back to his work.
Alistair lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
He thought about Elara. The reading he'd caught had moved toward the administrative building as they passed through the district. Favor operating even at rest, bending his passive scan slightly toward its source.
He'd never encountered a Characteristic that worked atmospherically before. Every other reading in his life was a fixed point. Present or absent, identifiable or not.
'What does that mean for her?' Every room she walks into. Every person deciding whether to trust her, whether to stay near her, without knowing if the decision was entirely their own.
He pulled the scan back and kept staring at the ceiling.
The night outside was quiet. A guard rotation passed on the hour, footsteps on the stone below, the low exchange of soldiers changing posts, then silence again. The lamp made the room feel smaller.
Due worked steadily. The only sign that time was passing was the sound of him shifting in the chair.
Then he stopped. Sat back with his hands still.
"What did you leave behind?" he asked.
Alistair looked at him.
Due turned, looking at Alistair directly. "You came to Shadow of Former Glory with a goal already fully formed. You walked into the Black Mountains alone, knocked on a door that nobody knocks on, and stood in front of the most dangerous man alive without flinching."
He paused for a moment. "That's not ambition. Ambition has its cracks. Something made it personal before anything else did."
The room was quiet.
It was a strange question for a rented room in a city that was looking for him, the night before something that would either work or wouldn't.
Nobody had asked it before. People who knew him knew better, and those who didn't hadn't earned it.
Due had fallen through a ceiling and nearly died over a dropped sword. That was a different category entirely.
"A name," Alistair said. "Someone who should still be here."
Due waited.
"That's all I can say."
Due nodded once, obviously disappointed. However, he didn't push. He looked down at his hands on the table.
"I joined through obligation," he said quietly. "You know that. But I've been thinking about what you said. What Sun Harvest is supposed to become. What it would mean for the people in this region, the ones without Characteristics, without Aspects worth ranking, without any way to climb a system that wasn't built with them in mind."
He paused for a moment, thinking about his words carefully.
"Therasia governs them by removing their alternatives. I watched it happen from underground for years and told myself it wasn't my problem."
Alistair let him continue without interrupting.
"I don't know if I believe in what you're building yet… But I think I want to. That's the closest I've come to wanting something in a long time."
Due's hands were still on the table. He hadn't realized they'd stopped moving. When he noticed, he quickly adjusted his collar.
Alistair looked at him for a moment. Eventually, his lips curved, a warm expression that Due hadn't seen from him before.
"Get some sleep, Due," said Alistair.
"I don't sleep well above ground."
"I know."
"The open air creates variables I can't account for in advance. Obligations don't –"
"Due." Alistair held eye contact.
Due sighed and looked down.
"Go anyway. The Sun Harvest doesn't bend so easily."
Due's expression shifted between amusement and resignation. He turned back to the table and resumed his work, slower now, the late hour finally settling into his posture.
Alistair closed his eyes.
He didn't sleep either. But he stayed still, which was close enough. The faction meeting was in a few hours. Due had confirmed the layout, the timing, and the guard rotation.
A narrow window between the outgoing guard clearing the east corridor and the incoming one reaching position.
'Four minutes,' Alistair thought. 'Enough, if we're already inside when the meeting ends.'
His scan worked even half-asleep. The northern garrison was quiet. The Characteristic wielders he'd recorded earlier were mostly in the same places. A guard walked two streets away, footsteps already fading.
Nothing unusual.
Then he found it.
The suppressed signature. Not at the settlement's edge, not moving parallel through the streets. It was directly below the window. A lone figure standing motionless in the dark, still enough to be mistaken for shadow.
Something about the way it stood felt familiar. Alistair couldn't place why.
He opened his eyes. "Due."
Due's hands went still on the table.
"It's outside."
Neither of them moved. The lamp burned steadily. Below the window, the figure held its position, patient and controlled, waiting in the darkness.
It knew exactly where they were.