The forge's warmth still clung to Hatim's skin, seared into his bones like the echo of something far larger than fire. The conduit's hum pulsed beneath his ribs—a phantom heartbeat, out of rhythm with the world.
The courtyard stood silent. The usual clang of hammers had vanished. Even the Veins beneath the cobblestones seemed to hold their breath, their glow dimming to thin threads of violet and gold.
Lady Aethel stepped forward, trailing shadowthread and memory-silk, her robe woven with glyphs that refused to settle. They rotated—folding, fracturing, reknitting—each moment a new equation, a shifting intent.
Her voice cut the air like silk drawn across steel.
"You are required."
Not a request. Not a command. A claim. Inevitable as gravity.
The Whispercloaks moved. Six of them. Their mirrored masks reflected no faces, only warped fragments of the world—Hatim's trembling hands, the fading glow of the conduit, his desperate breath—all bent, broken, reduced to symbols.
They advanced not with speed, but certainty. The kind of certainty written into the marrow of reality.
Then—
"Stand. Down."
The words cracked like lightning splitting stone.
Kander.
His figure strode through the far archway, breath ragged, boots dragging dust behind him. The sigils of a Warden still burned faintly on his shoulder—half-erased, but not erased enough. Not yet.
He planted himself between Hatim and the Cloaks, cloak snapping like a battered banner in rising tension.
"The boy is under my charge," he growled. "You will not take him."
Aethel's gaze didn't falter. Her smile was a scalpel. "The exile returns. Always late. Always misplaced. You stand in the domain of House Valerian, Kander. You have no standing here."
The Veins underfoot pulsed—slow, warning.
The Whispercloaks did not wait.
A ripple shimmered across their ranks. Glyph lines unfolded from their palms—not drawn, not summoned, but extracted from the very air, the lattice of the world itself. Reality fractured in impossible geometries. Spirals bent inward until vanishing. Edges that shouldn't exist, yet did.
"Vel'Askar," one murmured. Not heard. Felt. A subtraction of sound.
The air collapsed.
Glyph-lines spiraled into lattices beneath Kander's boots—folded triangles within mirrored hexagons, nested endlessly. He staggered as if the ground rebelled against his existence.
A field snapped into place.
Kander's fists lashed out—not at the Cloak, but at the glyphwork forming at his feet.
Too late.
His punch connected with folded air—transformed force into absence. His fist hit… nothing.
The Whispercloak's palm flicked sideways.
A lattice exploded outward like a net woven from glass threads and hollow light. Kander dove, rolling, glyph-knives spinning from his fingers—sigils of Dispel, Fracture, Null.
The Cloaks answered with a glyph so refined it didn't shimmer—it bent light away. A prism of absence.
His null-sigils collapsed mid-formation, symbols breaking into gibberish as they touched the field.
Kander roared. Hands slammed into the ground—glyphwork scorched into stone.
"Sen'Var—"
A crack. Not of stone. Not of bone.
Of concept.
A Whispercloak twisted a mirrored wrist, and Kander's glyph unwound. Symbols stretched like threads pulled from fraying cloth. His knees buckled as connection to the Veins vanished—not severed, but as if never there.
A glyph-string whipped from the Cloak's fingertips—barbs of folded script—slashing Kander across the chest. It didn't cut flesh. It cut alignment. His Node spasmed, breath seized, and a high-pitched, bone-deep hum invaded his skull.
His fist rose again.
A mirrored mask tilted.
A second glyph snapped into being—lines of spiraling tetrahedrons stitched into an inverted sigil of closure.
"Locus Sever."
A shockwave of null-force struck him center mass. His body flung backward—not through air, but space itself—folded out of conflict, reality deforming like warped glass.
Kander hit the far wall. Cratered. Slumped.
Not unconscious.
But unmade. Just enough.
Aethel turned to Hatim, voice silk-wrapped iron.
"No more interruptions."
The Whispercloaks shifted—glyphs cascading into hands like liquid metal shaped into meaning. Their presence fractured courtyard geometry. Cobblestones stretched where flatness should be. Angles refused to add.
Hatim's breath turned raw. His Node spasmed. That violet thread inside flared, writhing—not defiance, but warning.
His fingers trembled. He dragged a glyph midair—spiral left, arc right. Veshan. A shield against force.
The glyph ignited.
A Whispercloak's palm sliced a line in air—an inverted arc. The sigil wasn't defense. Not attack.
Redaction.
Hatim's shield didn't break.
It ceased to have ever been.
The glyph faded mid-formation—its light swallowed by the Cloak's suppression field. Lines fractured into meaningless scatter.
The Cloaks stepped forward.
Hatim's body rebelled. His Node thrashed. He forced Akar upward—a coil of gold laced with stubborn, chaotic violet.
He carved a desperate sigil:
Sen'nari.
A glyph to unravel momentum. Force into water.
It formed—halfway.
A mirrored mask tilted.
"Mirror Breach."
His glyph reversed.
Momentum doubled back. His own unraveling force snapped knees sideways, sending him sprawling, coughing blood.
A second Cloak stepped in. Glyph-threads snapped outward—four lines of burning white geometry lashing wrists and ankles. They lifted him, body half-suspended, cruciform.
Hatim screamed. Veins glowed too bright—Akar surging where it shouldn't, unrefined, unstable.
The Cloak's third palm turned toward ribs.
A glyph stitched into place—an ouroboros spiral folded around an eye-shaped core.
"Null Spiral."
The hum of the Veins—gone.
The pulse of Akar—gone.
The world dimmed to nothing but breath. Bone. Skin. No power. No resonance. No thread.
Hatim sagged.
Aethel approached. Her voice was a scalpel run gently along skin.
"Convergent, indeed. Far too dangerous to be left feral."
Her hand hovered, not touching, but the glyph floating between fingertips tightened like a noose.
"Bind him. Fully. The Crowns will decide his use… or disposal."
The Whispercloaks closed the lattice.
Hatim's last sight before the black mesh of null-space closed over him was Kander's shattered frame, slumped against the wall—trying. Failing.
But eyes open.
Still watching.
Still burning.