The tax vault heist was going perfectly.

  Su had waited until 3 AM—the dead zone between guard shifts when human attention was at its lowest. She'd picked the mechanical lock in four minutes (a personal record). The magical ward had been laughably easy to bypass once she'd found the physical trigger mechanism hidden behind the glowing runes.

  Now she stood in the vault, surrounded by more money than she'd ever seen in three lifetimes. Chests of gold coins. Stacks of silver. Lockboxes full of tax receipts and promissory notes. The entire month's tax collection for Elderwood, just... sitting there.

  "Okay," Su whispered to herself. "This is it. The moment of truth. Do I throw it in the river, redistribute it, or—"

  A sound from above. Footsteps. Multiple sets. Su's heart dropped. Guards weren't supposed to change shifts for another hour.

  She looked around frantically. The vault had one entrance. No windows or other exits. She was trapped.The footsteps grew louder, accompanied by voices:

  "—absolutely certain it's tonight?"

  "The informant was very specific, my lord. The creature will strike the tax vault on the third night after the new moon."

  Su's blood ran cold. Informant?Someone knew she was coming?

  "Good. Then we'll finally catch this 'shadow bird' everyone's whispering about. And once we have it, the Chancellor will be most pleased."

  The voice was cultured, educated, and deeply smug. Su frantically looked for hiding spots. The vault was mostly empty space and neat stacks of money. Nowhere for a bird to hide unless—

  She spotted it: a large, ornate chest in the corner, its lid slightly ajar. It was already full of something (tax documents, probably), but if she could squeeze in...

  The footsteps were right outside the door now. Su dove into the chest, burrowing under layers of parchment, pulling the lid shut just as the vault door swung open.

  Through a tiny gap in the chest's decorative metalwork, she could see:

  Four guards in Chancellor's livery. One nervous-looking clerk. And a tall man in expensive robes who radiated the kind of authority that came from never being told "no" in his entire life.

  "Well?" the robed man said impatiently. "Where is it?"

  The guards searched the vault. Checked behind money stacks. Peered into corners.

  "Nothing here, Lord Chamberlain," one finally reported.

  "Impossible. The informant said—" The Chamberlain paused. "Unless it hasn't arrived yet. We may have beaten it here."

  Oh good, Su thought from inside her chest. They're going to wait for me. While I'm already here.

  "We'll wait," the Chamberlain decided. "Post guards at the entrance. I want absolute silence. When the creature arrives, we take it alive."

  The guards took positions. The vault went silent except for the sound of breathing.

  Su barely dared to breathe herself, cramped in a chest full of tax documents, listening to four guards and one incredibly self-important nobleman wait for her to arrive.

  This is the stupidest situation I've ever been in, she thought.

  Ten minutes passed. Twenty. The guards started shifting their weight, getting uncomfortable. The Chamberlain paced, his patience clearly wearing thin.

  And then—a sound from outside the vault. New footsteps. Everyone tensed.

  The footsteps approached the vault entrance and stopped.

  A voice called out and instantly recognizable: "Brother. Still jumping at shadows, I see."

  Su's void-corrupted feathers stood on end. She knew that voice.Through the gap in the chest, she watched as a figure entered the vault. It wasn't a person but a peacock.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  But not just any peacock. His plumage was charcoal and bruised violet—colors that drank light instead of reflecting it. His eyes held no stars. Vermilion Plume. The fallen Sky-Dancer. The Chancellor's pet monster from the previous loop.

  What is he doing HERE? Su's mind raced. This is too early. In the last timeline, I didn't meet him until the Aerie—

  "Vermilion," the Chamberlain's voice was tight with barely concealed disgust. "I didn't summon you."

  "No, but the Chancellor did." Vermilion stalked into the vault with predatory grace. "He's grown impatient with your 'subtle approach.' I'm here to catch the creature your informant promised. Where is it?"

  "We're waiting for—"

  "You're waiting for nothing." Vermilion's mental voice carried contempt. "Your informant lied or was mistaken or was planted to waste your time. There's no creature coming."

  The Chamberlain's face flushed. "Lord Varris was very specific—"

  "Varris?" Vermilion's laugh was a dry, rustling sound. "The same Varris currently in prison for embezzlement? You trusted information from a disgraced criminal?"

  Su, hidden in her chest, suddenly understood. Varris had given them false intelligence—either for revenge or to buy favor. He'd told them she would hit the vault tonight, but he'd probably just guessed or made it up entirely.

  And she'd stumbled into their trap completely by accident.

  The Chamberlain looked murderous. "Then we've wasted the entire night—"

  "Not entirely." Vermilion's head tilted. "I smell something." His eyes swept the vault, narrowing. " Something... familiar."

  Su held absolutely still. Don't breathe. Don't move. Be a tax document.

  "There's nothing here," the Chamberlain snapped. "We've searched."

  "Have you?" Vermilion began walking slowly through the vault, his head weaving back and forth like a serpent. "Dragon-scent is difficult to mask. It lingers. And the Chancellor has been very interested in a certain bird who survived an encounter with the Crested Wyrm."

  He was getting closer to her chest.

  Su's mind raced through options:

  -Stay hidden (current plan, failing rapidly)

  -Burst out and fight (suicide)

  -Use Acoustic Terrorism to cause a distraction (might work?)

  -Pretend to be a very aggressive tax document (stupid)

  Vermilion stopped directly in front of her chest. His shadow fell across the gap she was peering through.

  "This one," he said softly. "Open it."

  Shit.

  "That's just documents," the Chamberlain protested. "We already—"

  "Open it."

  A guard moved forward, reaching for the chest's lid. The moment the lid lifted, she activated Acoustic Terrorism at full power.

  The sound that erupted from the chest was a cacophony—the sound of a thousand tax collectors all yelling "AUDIT!" at once, mixed with the screeching of rusty hinges, the howling of wind through a canyon, and, for some reason, the distinctive sound of someone vigorously shaking a bag of coins.

  The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. Everyone in the vault clapped hands over their ears. The guards stumbled backward. The Chamberlain actually screamed. Even Vermilion recoiled, his composed mask cracking.

  In the confusion, Su exploded out of the chest in a tornado of tax documents and void-energy. She didn't head for the exit—that was blocked by guards. Instead, she dove for the magical ward mechanism she'd spotted earlier.

  Using Precise Disassembly, She reversed it. The ward, designed to keep intruders out, suddenly activated with the guards inside.

  Magical energy crackled across the vault entrance. The doorway sealed with a shimmering barrier.

  "NO!" Vermilion lunged for her, shadowy energy wreathing his talons.

  Su didn't try to dodge. She grabbed Fernando's pot (which she'd stashed near the vault entrance earlier) with her beak and threw it at Vermilion's face.

  The pot shattered. Dirt exploded everywhere. Fernando tumbled through the air, his fronds flailing in what looked like either panic or the botanical equivalent of "WHEEE!"

  Vermilion got a face full of potting soil and one extremely indignant fern.

  "MY EYES!" he shrieked.

  Su didn't wait. She dove through a ventilation shaft she'd scouted earlier—too small for a human, barely big enough for a peacock.

  She could hear Vermilion screaming behind her: "FIND IT! I WANT THAT BIRD! THE CHANCELLOR WILL HAVE ITS HEAD!"

  She scrambled through the shaft, her feathers scraping stone, her heart hammering. Behind her, the sounds of chaos: guards trying to dispel the ward, the Chamberlain screaming about incompetence.

  She burst out of the ventilation shaft onto the roof, gasping.

  "Well," she panted. "That went... badly."

  A rustling sound. She looked down.

  Fernando, somehow, had landed in a decorative planter on the roof. He was covered in his own dirt, several of his fronds were bent at weird angles, and he'd lost his pot. But he was, technically, fine.

  "Don't," he said, his mental voice strained. "Say. Anything."

  "I wasn't going to—"

  "You threw me at a fallen Sky-Dancer. Like a grenade."

  "It worked, didn't it?"

  "I'M A FERN!"

  "An effective fern."

  Fernando's fronds trembled with what might have been rage or might have been trauma.

  Su looked back at the vault building. Already, she could see guards pouring out of side entrances. Alarm bells were ringing. The entire city would be on alert within minutes.

  "We need to move," she said, picking up Fernando (very carefully this time) and placing him in a borrowed clay pot from the planter.

  "Where?" Fernando asked wearily

  "Anywhere but here."

  They fled across the rooftops as the city woke to chaos behind them.