The Bladewraith's scythe never reached him.
A sound like breaking glass echoed through the street as something vast and impossible tore through the fabric of reality above them. The Starfall Rift, that permanent wound in the sky, suddenly blazed with colors that didn't have names. Purple-gold lightning crackled along its edges, and the air itself seemed to scream.
Every enforcer in the street staggered. Even Captain Voss dropped to one knee, his brass armor sparking as the Rift's energy washed over them in waves. The Bladewraith's beautiful, terrible face contorted in what might have been pain or ecstasy before it dissolved back into shadow and mist.
Eneji didn't wait to see what happened next. He ran.
Mira bounced against his chest as he sprinted through the twisting alleys of Duskholme, his boots splashing through puddles that reflected the Rift's chaotic light. Behind him, he could hear shouting, the clank of brass armor, the hiss of steam vents working overtime. They'd be after him soon enough.
But first, he had to get to Lira.
She was gone when he reached the bakery. Smart girl. The street where Thane had made his stand was empty too, except for scorch marks on the cobblestones and the lingering smell of ozone. They'd taken the old healer. Of course they had.
Focus, he told himself. Find Lira, get out of town, figure out the rest later.
His scar throbbed in rhythm with the Rift's pulsing, each beat sending golden light through his palm. The Starweave around him felt different now. Thicker. Like the air before a thunderstorm, charged with possibilities he didn't understand.
Mira stirred in his arms. "Where... where are we?"
"Somewhere safe," he lied. "Go back to sleep."
She did, trusting him completely. Which made him feel like absolute shit, considering he had no idea what he was doing.
The sound of Covenant horns echoed from the village center. More enforcers arriving. Time to move.
Eneji made his way through the back streets, sticking to shadows, until he reached the old mill at Duskholme's edge. It had been abandoned since before he was born, its waterwheel half-rotted and still. But the hiding spot he and Lira had used as kids was still there, a gap in the foundation stones just big enough for two people to squeeze through.
She was waiting for him.
"Thank fuck," Lira breathed as he crawled through the gap, Mira still unconscious in his arms. "I thought that thing got you."
"Bladewraith." Eneji set Mira down on a pile of moldy grain sacks and checked her pulse. Still steady. "Covenant assassin. They're not supposed to exist."
"Well, someone forgot to tell it that." Lira's hand went to the locket at her throat, and for just a moment, Eneji could swear he saw light flickering behind the tarnished silver. "What the hell happened back there? That light show you put on, stopping that crossbow bolt..."
"I don't know." Which was the truth. Sort of. "The Rift pulse, it did something to my Starweave. Made it stronger."
"Stronger." Lira stared at him. "Eneji, you dissolved a crossbow bolt. With your mind. That's not stronger, that's completely fucking impossible."
Before he could answer, another horn sounded. Closer this time. Much closer.
"We need to move," he said. "They'll search every building in town."
"Move where? The marsh? In case you've forgotten, there are worse things than Covenant enforcers out there."
She was right. The Thornmere Marsh stretched for miles in every direction around Duskholme, a soggy expanse of reeds and stagnant water where Anomalies hunted and the unwary disappeared. But staying meant capture. Or worse.
"The outpost," Eneji said suddenly. "The old Covenant watchtower, five miles north. They'll have taken Thane there."
"Are you insane? That's exactly where they'll expect us to go."
"Which is why they won't guard it as heavily." He hoped. "And if we're going to rescue Thane..."
"Rescue?" Lira laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. "With what army? You can barely heal a scraped knee on a good day."
Could barely, he thought, flexing his fingers. The Starweave still hummed in his veins, different than before. Deeper. Like he'd been drinking from a stream his whole life and suddenly discovered the ocean.
"We'll figure something out," he said.
Famous last words.
* * *
The marsh at night was a special kind of nightmare.
Eneji slogged through knee-deep water that smelled like rotting eggs and dead fish, Mira's weight making every step a struggle. The girl had woken up once, taken one look at their surroundings, and very sensibly gone back to sleep. He envied her.
Lira moved beside him, somehow managing to look graceful even while wading through swamp muck. The locket at her throat caught the Rift's light and threw it back in strange patterns. He'd never noticed that before.
"Tell me again why we couldn't take the road?" she whispered.
"Because the road has checkpoints every half mile and Covenant patrols every hour." Eneji pushed aside a curtain of hanging moss and immediately regretted it. Something with too many legs scuttled away into the darkness. "The marsh is safer."
As if to prove him wrong, a sound echoed across the water. Low and resonant, like whale song filtered through broken glass. Both of them froze.
"What was that?" Lira breathed.
Eneji was about to say he didn't know when his scar flared with sudden heat. The golden light bleeding through his palm illuminated the water around them, revealing things he really didn't want to see. Bone fragments. Tattered cloth. A skull with eye sockets that seemed to watch him.
The sound came again, closer now. And with it, a presence in his mind. Alien. Hungry. Whispers that weren't quite words, promising things he couldn't quite understand.
Come deeper, the voice said without speaking. Come where the water is dark and the truth lives.
"Eneji." Lira's voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. "Your eyes..."
He looked at her and saw his reflection in her wide pupils. His eyes were glowing. Not the warm gold of his scar, but something else. Something cold and silver, like moonlight on deep water.
The whispers grew louder. More insistent.
You know what you are, they said. You've always known. The burning star in your palm, the power that tastes like lightning and feels like drowning. Come deeper. Let us show you.
"No." He said it out loud, his voice cracking like a teenager's. "Whatever you are, stay the fuck away from me."
The water around them began to ripple. Something large was moving beneath the surface, something that made the skull fragments dance like leaves in a wind.
Then it surfaced.
The Whispercoil was beautiful in the way that venomous snakes were beautiful. Thirty feet of serpentine muscle covered in scales that shifted color with the Rift's light, blues becoming purples becoming golds that hurt to look at directly. Its head was almost human, if humans had silver eyes the size of dinner plates and mouths full of needle-sharp teeth.
It looked at him, and he felt those whispers dig deeper into his thoughts.
Starweaver, it said without moving its lips. Broken child of a broken world. Do you know what sleeps beneath the Rift? Do you know what your kind has awakened?
"I don't know what you're talking about." But he did, somehow. The knowledge was there, buried deep, like a memory of a dream he couldn't quite recall.
The Whispercoil smiled. Liar.
It struck faster than thought, massive coils cutting through the water toward them. Eneji threw himself sideways, still clutching Mira, and felt scales scrape against his back. Lira screamed.
The Starweave in his blood responded without conscious direction. Golden light erupted from his scar, spreading through the water in branching patterns like lightning frozen in amber. Where it touched the Whispercoil's scales, the creature hissed and recoiled.
Interesting, it said, circling them now with lazy grace. The star burns brighter than expected. But brightness casts shadows, little Starweaver. And in those shadows, things are stirring.
From the corner of his eye, Eneji caught movement on a small island of solid ground maybe fifty yards away. A figure in tattered robes, watching them with eyes that gleamed like chips of ice in the Rift's light. Human, maybe. Or something that had been human once.
The Fractureborn scout raised one pale hand in what might have been a greeting or a warning. Then it was gone, melting back into the marsh mist like it had never been there at all.
"Eneji!" Lira's voice snapped his attention back to the immediate problem. The Whispercoil was moving again, gathering itself for another strike.
He reached for his power, that golden river of Starweave, and found it. Weak, flickering, but there. The creature's psychic whispers washed over him again, trying to drag his thoughts into dark places, but he held on. Barely.
The Whispercoil's coils tightened around them like a living noose. Its silver eyes locked with his, and in their depths he saw reflections of things that shouldn't exist. Cities of glass and shadow. Stars that burned with cold fire. A throne carved from crystallized screams.
Soon, it whispered. Very soon now.
Then its massive head lowered, bringing those needle teeth closer to his face.
And in the distance, something else began to scream.