Theme: grief — Status: simmering
Bo Halversen found a fresh offering at the Walled Drift in handwriting that belonged to his brother Aren, who has been dead nineteen years and was never seen leaving the lower tunnel. He has not slept properly since, and Hanne Vasil — who leaves her own obsidian there on the longest night and has her own reasons — has begun watching him at the commons with a directness that frightens him. Mira Osanyé knows something is wrong from their silent tea on seventh-days but will not ask, because asking would unseal a thing she has spent two decades helping him keep closed. Somewhere in the colony, someone is either cruel enough or grieving enough to forge a dead man's hand, and Bo is not sure which would be worse to discover.