# sword_swing — the air a blade cuts A sword swung through still air: a short whistle of the blade with a creak of leather and a shift of plate behind it. Half a second, dry, close. Generated from the game's art-direction sentence. Played by `game/sound` on the entity `Game/sound/swing_air`, a **spatial** one-shot. It fires with the blade's ring — the sound slice watches the Vigil's own swing phase (`light_active` / `heavy_active`) and arms both the swing and the hit in that order, so the cut is heard before the impact. Aldric is a knight in plate, not a duelist: the swing should sound heavy and short, and the ring under it is what tells you the blow landed.

# game.rules — ASHEN VIGIL's constants and rules The one sheet of paper every slice of ASHEN VIGIL argues from. `require("game.rules")` gives the game's constants — the title and the art-direction sentence, the palette in linear RGB, the sun, the three stats and what a level buys, the soul cost curve, the flask, every combat timing (light, heavy, roll, guard, the turn rates, poise), movement and stamina, lock-on, grace, death, the boss and the common foe, and the names of the five slice mounts the scene makes. It also carries the four pure rules the slices share rather than duplicate: `levelCost(level)`, `statsAt(levels)`, `inArc(swingYaw, hitYaw, arcDegrees)`, and the `SLICES` list. It touches no engine API and reads no scene state: it is data and arithmetic, so it can be called from a component, a scene build, a tool or a test with the same answer. A number that lives in two slices is a bug — it lives here instead. Who reads it: every slice (`game.vigil`, `game.valley`, `game.foes`, `game.screens`, `game.sound`) and `scenes/main.scene/build.luau`.

# game.vigil — the `vigil` slice The thing the player is. The Vigil's body — battered grey plate, tattered ash-grey cloak, great helm with a narrow horizontal visor slit, a straight longsword — its locomotion and stamina, and every verb of the fight: light swing, heavy swing, guard with a parry window, dodge-roll with invulnerability frames, and lock-on. It also owns the camera those verbs are played through, on the scene's `PlayerSetups/DefaultSocialPlayer/CameraRig`. Owns `/zero/source/game/vigil.module/` and `/zero/source/game/vigil/`. Hangs its components on the mount entity `Game/vigil`. References it must match: `design/references/03-the-vigil.png` and `design/references/01-in-play.png`. Read `design/spec.md` for the interface and what "done" means.

# valley_ambience — the Ashen Valley's own bed The air of the valley, heard. Low wind over dead grass and bare rock, ash falling, a distant hollow drone under it and thin rain on stone. No melody, no percussion, nothing that resolves — cold and wide and meant to be lived inside for a long time. Generated from the game's art-direction sentence. Played by `game/sound` on the entity `Game/sound/ambience`: a looping, **non-spatial** emitter that rides with the player's body, so the valley never falls silent and the bed never swings around the listener's head. It is the underlay the fight's impacts sit on top of — the mix is meant to read as a bed with hits over it, not a wall of equal loudness.

# sword_hit — a blade landing on rusted mail One sword blow landing on a hollow soldier: a short metallic ring with a dull iron thud behind it, close and dry, with no reverb tail. Half a second. Generated from the game's art-direction sentence. Played by `game/sound` on the entity `Game/sound/swing`, a **spatial** one-shot. The sound slice fires it the moment the Vigil's swing goes live — read off `game.vigil`'s own phase (`light_active` / `heavy_active`) rather than wired across slices — moving the emitter to the player's position and re-arming `autoplay` so a one-shot can retrigger. Checked against `design/references/01-in-play.png`: the fight's sound is the ring of iron, not a clean sword-film whoosh.

# warden_rise — the Ash Warden's theme The theme of the thing that has been kneeling in ash at the valley's heart for two hundred years and is now getting up: low brass and a slow struck bell, a male choir far back in the mix, no drums at first and then one that lands like a door closing. Loopable, cold, enormous. Generated from the game's art-direction sentence. Played by `game/sound` on the entity `Game/sound/warden_theme`: a looping, **non-spatial** track at low volume, which the slice brings up when the player comes within 45 m of the Ash Warden and takes away again beyond it. It is the only music in the world — the valley itself is the ambience bed, and this is the one place the score speaks, because it is the one place that matters.