Alarshold was not a city. It was a sensation.
The moment Jonas crossed the outer boundary—a carved archway in bone-white stone—his skin broke into gooseflesh. The air tasted different. Not food. Not drink. Something deeper. Memory, distilled.
Praxis lingered here, embedded in every surface.
The walls whispered. The lamps sighed. The very ground beneath his feet pulsed with a low thrum, like the heartbeat of a creature too large to see.
Caldra watched him carefully. "Keep your mouth shut unless I ask you to speak. This city isn't for your kind."
"My kind?"
"Unbound. Wild. The Praxis here is trained. Yours is... primitive. No offense."
"Plenty taken."
But he obeyed.
They passed through market rows of spice-blind merchants, down halls where cobbled bricks hummed faintly with encoded messages—only those attuned to taste could read them.
Children laughed in a square where artists sang color into walls. Paint responded to voice. A girl coaxed a golden deer from a blank stone canvas and made it gallop.
Jonas stared.
"You smell like hay and copper," the girl said, wrinkling her nose. "Are you broken?"
Before Jonas could answer, Caldra pressed on. "Ignore them. They're Sightwrights. Spoiled little bastards."
At the heart of the city stood the Tonguehold—a cathedral grown from twisted stone, its columns like tongues reaching toward the heavens.
Inside, light burned without flame. Scribes walked barefoot across scent-infused tiles, reading stories through their feet.
They brought Jonas before the Speaker of Tastes, a high-ranking Tonguepriest with lips dyed black and silver and a voice that made Jonas's teeth ache.
The priest circled him once.
"You touched a Mindshard." It was not a question. "And it didn't kill you."
"No."
"Then we must sample you."
Caldra stepped forward. "That wasn't part of the deal—"
"Silence, knight."
The priest drew close. "Jonas Reeve. Close your eyes."
Jonas obeyed.
A tongue, dry and rough, pressed briefly against his neck. The violation hit harder than expected. Jonas jerked back—but the priest was already stepping away, eyes wide.
"You carry more than the Shard. Your senses are tainted. Blended. Cross-wired. You are a flaw in the Praxis."
Jonas opened his eyes. "That's not how it feels."
"Of course not," the priest spat. "You're not trained. You're dangerous. Get him out—"
A sharp crack echoed from the rafters.
Then silence.
The priest froze. Blood trickled from his temple. A single needle had struck him dead center.
Jonas turned.
Someone had fired from the upper gallery.
Caldra reacted first. She threw Jonas to the ground, her hand on her blade.
More needles rained down. Poisoned? No—coded. Jonas could taste the glyphs etched into them mid-flight: Silence. Purge. Break.
Praxis weapons.
Jonas rolled behind a pillar. Caldra was already moving—blade out, cutting across the gallery stairs. Screams rose. Scribes scattered.
A hooded figure leapt down, landing hard. A scent of vinegar and burnt ash hit Jonas's nose—Sightkiller powder.
"Reeve!" the assassin barked. "You don't belong in this world. We're sealing the fracture."
Jonas didn't know what that meant. But his body responded anyway.
The world slowed.
Every needle in the air sang. His tongue curled against the roof of his mouth, tasting each one. He could feel their trajectory like they were part of him.
He moved.
Duck. Pivot. One hand reached up, caught a needle mid-flight. It burned against his skin, but he flung it back—into the assassin's shoulder.
A direct hit.
The figure stumbled, dropped to one knee.
Jonas walked forward, not thinking. Just moving. The relic in his pouch hummed.
The assassin's voice was wet now. "What are you? Praxis wasn't meant to bleed between paths."
Jonas knelt beside him. "Guess I'm the exception."
The assassin died grinning.
The Speaker of Tastes would survive—but only just. The Tonguehold was locked down. Caldra argued until her throat went raw. Eventually, they were given temporary sanctuary in the lower spire.
They gave Jonas and Caldra a stone-walled chamber near the base of the spire—cold, spare, and warded by runes that hummed when touched.
That night, a fire crackled in the center of the room, the scent of burning lavender and salt-thorn curling through the air. Jonas sat cross-legged on the floor, hands open near the warmth.
Caldra leaned against the far wall, sharpening her blade by feel alone.
He broke the silence.
"How did I do that?"
She stopped. Looked at him, her expression unreadable.
"Do what?"
"Catch a Praxis needle mid-air. Throw it back like it was just... instinct." He rubbed his palm where the glyph had burned him. "I could taste its intent. Feel its weight. Almost see the path it would take before it moved."
Caldra exhaled slowly. "You shouldn't be able to do that. Not without years of training. And not across multiple senses. That's not how the Praxis works."
"Maybe it's broken in me," he said, only half-joking. "Crossed wires, remember?"
"No." Her voice was flat now. "It's not broken. It's uncut. Raw. Wild. And something like that... is dangerous."
She stepped closer, blade resting casually against her shoulder. Not a threat—but not a comfort either.
"Most people are born into one dominant sense. They're trained, bound, refined. A few learn to blend two. Maybe three, if they survive long enough." She looked at him. "But what you did today? Without any training. That shouldn't be possible."
He stared into the fire.
Maybe dying made it possible, he thought.
A long pause.
Then Caldra spoke. "The kind of power you have. It doesn't just attract enimies. It invites knives in the dark. And it always comes with a price."
Jonas didn't answer.
But deep in his chest, the relic pulsed—once.
Like a second heartbeat, waking up.