Harfang.

2356.

2nd Year of the Reign of Regent Trumpkin.

Sapphyre.

She did not tell Emerylda when the Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve arrived—when the boy with sorrow in his bones and the girl with fire behind her eyes stepped into Narnia with a marshwiggle in tow. Let her sister keep her eyes buried in tunnels and thrones; Sapphyre watched the world above.

She first saw them near the Ruined City of the Giants, speaking in hushed tones about signs. She lingered at the edge of the clearing in the shape of a bird, too swift to be noticed, too ordinary to be feared.

They were clumsy, but determined.

She followed them for days.

She was a shadow on the wind, a shape in the leaves. They spoke of a lost prince and a promise. They were too loud, too proud – but true. There was a power in the girl's voice, a steel edge in the boy's silences. They believed.

So, she tested them.

At the stone letters carved in ancient tongue, where the path to the Pale Beaches was hidden, she darted too close. Her wing brushed the girl's shoulder. Jill yelped and stumbled, falling into the loam – face first into the moss-laced words. Sapphyre circled once, smug.

There. Notice it. Follow it.

And they did.

She kept to the skies until they neared the Pale Beaches – where the mists grew thick and the bones of ancient leviathans jutted like ruins from the sands. The air reeked of magic, of old and deeper things. Underland's breath was cold on her neck.

She met them there.

They startled at her arrival, her boot-falls too soft in the silt, her presence sudden as wind. Her feathers bursting outward and then collapsing, spine lengthening, limbs reshaping, until her bare feet settled in the sand once more.

Jill gasped audibly.

Eustace muttered something under his breath.

From behind a jagged outcrop, she dragged a narrow boat. It rocked gently in the shallows, waiting.

Jill stepped closer, wide-eyed. "You're a shapeshifter," she said, a note of awe in her voice. "Have you ever turned into something… I don't know. Something really magical? Like a unicorn? Or a dragon?"

Sapphyre tilted her head. "No," she said simply. "If you try to take on the form of a magical beast, their essence consumes yours. You wouldn't be able to return. Not without immense magical assistance."

At that, Eustace snorted.

She flicked a glance at him.

Interesting reaction.

They said no more as they boarded. The boat was long and narrow, and Sapphyre took the rear, paddle in hand. The water glowed faintly beneath them, like veins of blue fire threading through ink.

As they pushed out into the channel that wound toward the caverns of Underland, Jill leaned forward to touch the water, curious.

"Don't," Sapphyre said sharply.

The girl froze.

Sapphyre's eyes never left the dark ahead. "The monsters here prefer things with cold blood. But there are other things. Things that hunger for warmth. For breath. For dreams. And if you offer them your fingers, they'll take the whole arm."

Eustace swallowed hard. "Lovely."

"No talking," Sapphyre murmured. "The water listens. It remembers names."

And so they moved on – silently, steadily – toward the tunnels of stone and black glass, where the light of the world above would not follow.

Underland. Upon the shores of the Sunless Sea.

Eustace.

He didn't trust her.

Not entirely.

The shapeshifter woman was all sharp angles and quiet stares, and though Jill seemed dazzled by her mystery, Eustace had read enough stories – and lived enough of one – to know better than to blindly follow anyone cloaked in shadow.

They had drifted across the black sea for hours. The water below didn't ripple the way normal seas did – it pulsed. Like something breathing. Or waiting.

Jill had fallen asleep with her chin on her knees. The Marshwiggle stared fixedly out at the water, muttering to himself about bad omens and dreadful fates. Eustace was too tense to sleep.

When the boat finally scraped against dark stone, he almost shouted for joy.

Solid ground.

Until he saw the figure waiting on the dock.

He was tall, wrapped in a cloak darker than pitch, face hidden beneath a steel half-helm. The way he moved – silent, controlled – sent a prickle down Eustace's spine.

The woman – Sapphyre she had called herself – stepped from the boat without a word and approached the knight.

They spoke in low voices. Not a whisper, not some foreign tongue – he knew the words. Understood them. And yet—

They meant nothing.

It was like overhearing people discussing stars by name. He could pick out sounds like "evacuation," "staging ground," "civilians moved"—but they slid off his mind like oil on water.

He pressed closer, just barely stepping off the boat, trying not to draw attention. The knight didn't look at him. Not once.

"…City's cleared," the knight said, in that same clipped rhythm. "Our line holds. The gnomes are restless, but we'll manage. She'll return soon."

Sapphyre's answer was even lower. "We hold until then. No panic. No exposure."

A pause.

Then the knight handed her something – a slip of parchment, maybe? A crystal? Eustace couldn't quite see.

He retreated to Jill's side, heart pounding.

They were planning something.

Preparing for something.

He glanced at Jill, still dozing. The Marshwiggle now quietly sharpening his fishing spear.

And he couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't just heading into danger—

They were walking straight into someone else's war.