The night was still outside the arc of the barrier. Babylon could see no snow storm blowing, nor hear any wind whipping through the mountains. Splayed out across the clear sky were the most stars he’d ever seen, the full Milky Way visible through the darkness. Pulling the Wick from his lantern, he counted the dark spots on the hill and then made his way up, working his way to each and every dim or extinguished lamp with steady sureness. Babylon knew these streets by now - they were his, the same as the lamps and every building huddled against the mountainside.

This was his city.

He was its protector.

The Virgon quarter loomed ahead of him, its lamps blazing through the darkness, its skeletal trees casting strange shadows across the cobblestones. Babylon paid them no heed - he’d come this way before, and he knew nothing lurked in the branches. He found the two guttering lamps quickly, and lit them both, watched as the barrier above him momentarily flickered with the added light.

And in the branches of the trees, he saw color.

Babylon’s breath caught in his throat. There were leaves on the trees, and tiny buds of purple and yellow flowers. Lantern raised high, he ran from one end of the street to the other, and everywhere he looked, the ancient trees had begun to bloom once more.

Panting, the knight skidded to a stop in front of the house that had once been Virgo’s. Her aunt’s tree was covered in new growth.

“Spring comes to Babylon,” said his ancestor. Babylon cast a look over his shoulder at the old man.

“It’s been a long winter,” he remarked. Menachem nodded, sage as ever, and he strolled out of the courtyard. Babylon followed.

“You took something from my study when you were last here. A totem,” the older knight said. Babylon blanched, and self-consciously reached up to twist the pewter leopard, where it hung around his neck on a leather cord.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I felt sort of. Compelled.” Which was an odd way to put things. “Was I not supposed to take it?”

His ancestor looked sort of misty-eyed - if ancestors could look misty-eyed. “No, no, it’s fine,” he said. “It contains a very old friend.”

Babylon stopped his fingers from moving, focusing on how warm the pendant had grown in his hand. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“She was a spirit. A summons of sort,” explained Menachem, eying the pendant. “A bit of very ancient magic. My protector in battle. I called her Reut.”

Which really did not explain anything, thought Babylon, but he supposed he’d go with it. Menachem had begun to walk again, and the knight followed him to the top of a staircase. They gazed down into the valley below, where Mistral lay buried beneath the snow beyond the city’s gates. “She is yours now,” said Menachem. “Like the rest of the city. My time is done, but I am bound.”

And he was quiet for a long time, gazing upwards towards the bright band of the Milky Way, until Babylon grew so unnerved by the silence that he murmured his oath and left for home.