Chapter Seven – The One Who Was Stolen From
Part Two – What the Choir Cannot Silence
The Choir did not whisper.
It listened.
And what it heard beneath the surface of Celestis Veil was not a storm, not a scream, not even a name.
It heard a resonance.
Something unmarked by time. Unblessed by Doctrine. Unclaimed by memory.
It pulsed like a half-buried song.
In the deep sanctum beneath the Mirrorhold—far from the Lyceum, deeper still than any chamber the students knew existed—a circle of robes stood around a pool of silence. It was not water. It was not glass.
It was Threadglass.
And it hummed.
"The glyph echoed again," said the Cantor.
She wore no mask. Her mouth did not move. Her voice came through the air like breath stolen from another world.
"Near the old riverbend. Near Tareth Hollow. It is him."
Another voice answered—older, crumbled.
"He is not masking it anymore."
The Threadglass pulsed.
A ripple spread across it.
And in the ripple: a blur of blue light, spiraled, shivering with instability.
Not just lightning. Not Doctrine cast. Not Choir art.
Something older.
"The Son of Solara walks," the Cantor whispered.
A hand rose from the robes beside her. Thin. Gloved in memory-ink. Glyphs ran across the knuckles—living script.
"He must be contained."
"No," the Cantor replied. "He must be remembered."
Silence.
And then the Threadglass cracked.
A thin fracture. Barely visible.
But enough.
"It's beginning again."
They all turned.
Behind them, a second ripple rose—not from the Threadglass, but from the wall beyond it. A ripple of sound.
But no one had spoken.
Only one word formed in the hum:
"Rael."
⸻
Far above, Doctrine agents near the outer villages were already moving. The Riftborn breach had vanished. The child who survived had been found.
He spoke one thing before the soldiers arrived.
"He said her name."
The captain asked whose.
The boy only held up the scrap of crimson cloth.
The captain turned white.
Within the hour, three Doctrine riders were sent toward the Veil's inner ring. But they found nothing. No masked figure. No song. No trace of the glyph.
Only a single blade left wedged in a prayerstone.
It wasn't Solara's. It wasn't the Monarch.
It was older.
Veil-etched. Cracked. Singing faintly.