The wind clawed at Kaelen Veryn's cloak, its cold fingers slipping through the wool as though it meant to drag him into the black water below. The Dagger Coast writhed in the stormlight — a thousand waves breaking themselves to pieces against the cliffs beneath Blackridge Keep.
It wasn't the sea that held him there.
The sky had torn itself open.
Just for a heartbeat, a ragged slit of pale light had flashed and vanished without sound. Yet Kaelen could still feel it — a pressure at the back of his skull, a phantom pulse in the stones under his boots. The wind had stilled when it happened. Even the waves had seemed to falter.
The Vanishing Sky.
The name slid into his mind uninvited, tasting of iron and dust. Not a term he'd heard before, not one in the histories, but it felt… old. He gripped the edge of the battlement until his knuckles ached.
Behind him, Blackridge Keep loomed in the pre-dawn gloom, its black granite towers rising like jagged teeth. Built in the Age of Iron Blood — nearly a thousand years past — the fortress had never fallen, though storms and sieges had battered it in equal measure. Its walls were said to be fused with obsidian dredged from the Halveth Sea, a substance that "remembered the heat of the world's making." In the Keep's shadow, men whispered that the walls themselves sometimes hummed when danger approached.
Tonight, Kaelen could almost believe it.
A deep vibration crawled up through the stone into his legs — faint, rhythmic. Not the crash of waves. Not the wind. Something else.
What is that?
He closed his eyes, and the pulse seemed to grow clearer. It wasn't sound. It wasn't sight. It was… something in between, an awareness that prickled against the edges of his thoughts. Later, he would know it by its true name: Resonance Sense, the first Layer of the Unified Power — but now, it was only a whisper in the bones.
The pulse faded, leaving him with the wind and the taste of rain.
"Kaelen!" The voice carried from the inner wall, sharp but unhurried. "Your father wants you in the Hall."
He turned. A guard stood in the archway, mail glinting faintly under a torch. Captain Eryndor Thayne — broad-shouldered, with eyes that missed nothing. He'd served House Veryn for thirty years, longer than Kaelen had been alive.
"I saw something," Kaelen said, pointing to the sky where the light had torn. But the storm had swallowed it, leaving only shifting black clouds.
Eryndor's brow furrowed. "Stormlight plays tricks on tired eyes. Come inside before it plays them on your bones."
Kaelen followed him through the gate tower into the Keep's inner court. Rain slicked the cobbles, and torchlight shimmered in the puddles. Servants moved quickly under hoods, carrying crates and satchels from the stables to the storerooms. The air held the taut, restless energy of a fortress preparing for something unnamed.
Inside the Great Hall, the air was warmer but no less tense. Braziers glowed along the walls, their smoke curling up into shadows that clung stubbornly to the vaulted ceiling. At the high table, Lord Darion Veryn — Kaelen's father — stood over a spread of maps. His hair was streaked with iron grey, his armor burnished but unadorned. Beside him, Lady Maeryn, Kaelen's mother, watched with the calm intensity of someone who had seen storms pass and return again. And near the corner, Serenya — Kaelen's younger sister — leaned over a ledger, her quill moving swiftly.
Darion didn't look up. "House Durnvar is moving ships north. Faster than I expected." His voice was a stone dropped in still water. "And now… this." He tapped the map, a finger landing on a mark along the southern coast. "Three fishing villages burned. No survivors."
"That's not Durnvar's way," Maeryn said softly. "Too messy. Too visible."
"Unless they want to be seen." Darion's gaze flicked to Kaelen. "You were on the battlements?"
Kaelen nodded. "I saw… I don't know how to explain it. A tear in the sky. Light on the other side. And I felt—"
Eryndor cleared his throat. "Stormlight."
"It wasn't stormlight," Kaelen said sharply. "It was—different. Wrong."
For a moment, Darion studied him in silence. Then he said, "I've heard that once before. In the war against the Eastern Realms. Men spoke of the sky tearing. Most of them died soon after."
The brazier's flame hissed as rain spattered down the chimney. A servant entered quietly, carrying a sealed letter on a black tray. "For Lord Veryn. Delivered… without a messenger."
Maeryn frowned. "Without?"
"Yes, my lady. It was simply… there. At the gate. No footprints in the mud."
Darion broke the seal. The parchment inside was heavy, smelling faintly of salt and copper. His eyes scanned the page once, twice, and something in his jaw tightened.
"What is it?" Maeryn asked.
He turned the letter so Kaelen could see.
The script was sharp, almost carved into the page:
Anchorfall is waking. The shadows cross the sky again. You have three nights to reach it — or the coast will drown.
Beneath the words was a sigil — a circle of twelve jagged lines. Kaelen had never seen it before, but his bones seemed to recognize it.
Kaelen's eyes lingered on the sigil. The twelve jagged lines seemed to shift under the torchlight, as if they were not ink at all, but scars on the surface of the parchment.
"What is Anchorfall?" he asked.
Darion didn't answer at once. His gaze moved over Kaelen, assessing him the way a commander measures the strength of a blade before deciding whether to draw it.
Finally, he said, "A place I hoped you'd never have to hear about. It lies beyond the Shattered Straits, in the Crescent Sea. Older than Blackridge, older than our maps. Some say it is where the world's foundation cracked, and the ocean never healed."
Maeryn's voice was tight. "The old texts say Anchorfall was sealed. That no one can reach it."
"That seal," Darion said, "was never meant to last forever."
A low rumble rolled through the Keep — not thunder, but something deeper, more deliberate, like a massive door sliding shut somewhere beneath the earth.
Kaelen felt that pulse again in his bones. This time, it did not fade. It throbbed faintly with each heartbeat, a quiet rhythm no one else in the room seemed to notice.
"Father…" Kaelen began, but Darion raised a hand.
"You will ride at first light," Darion said. "Eryndor will take a dozen men. And—" his eyes flicked to the far shadowed corner of the hall "—you will take Lyra Thaloren."
The name drew Kaelen's attention instantly. From the shadows, a figure stepped forward, her boots silent on the stone. She wore a dark traveler's coat bound at the waist, a slender sword at her hip. Her hair, the color of midnight steel, was tied back with a leather cord, and her eyes — pale as winter frost — seemed to study Kaelen as though she were reading an unfamiliar script.
Lyra bowed slightly. "Lord Veryn."
Kaelen hadn't seen her in three years — not since the skirmishes along the northern border, when she'd left with a detachment of scouts and never returned to Blackridge. Rumors had placed her in half a dozen realms since then: the Glass Dunes, the floating markets of Nethra, even the Whispering Tunnels of Yyr.
"I thought you were—" Kaelen began.
"Dead?" she said, one eyebrow lifting. "Many do. It helps."
Eryndor's mouth twitched, as if to hide a smile.
Darion's tone was iron. "Lyra knows the Crescent Sea and the passages that lead to Anchorfall. More than that, she understands what may be waking there."
Lyra's eyes stayed on Kaelen. "And you, apparently, can feel it."
Kaelen stiffened. "You know what this is?"
"Not yet," she said. "But I've seen the signs before — on the edge of the Black Void in the Western Reach. The tearing sky, the hum in your bones. That's the First Tremor. It means something's moving between the layers."
"The layers?" Kaelen repeated.
Lyra's gaze sharpened. "Your father hasn't told you? The Unified Power is not a single force — it's built in strata, like the bones of the world. Resonance Sense is the first. Once you awaken it, the rest can follow. If you survive long enough to climb."
Her tone made Kaelen's skin prickle.
Darion said, "This is not the time for teaching lore. Go prepare."
Kaelen hesitated. "And if we reach Anchorfall? What then?"
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Darion said quietly, "Pray you never find out."
---
The rain had thinned to a cold mist by the time Kaelen stepped into the Keep's courtyard. The night smelled of wet stone and sea salt. He moved toward the stables, his boots splashing in shallow puddles, each step keeping rhythm with that pulse in his bones.
Lyra was already there, tightening the straps on a lean black mare. "You ride Stormfire?" she asked without looking up.
"I do," Kaelen said, nodding toward his own stallion — a tall grey with silver dapples and a stubborn streak nearly as strong as Kaelen's own.
"You'll need more than speed," Lyra said. "Anchorfall's paths are… unpredictable. Sometimes a road will run straight one day and vanish into the sea the next. Sometimes it leads you to places you shouldn't see."
"Places?"
Lyra glanced at him, her frost-pale eyes unreadable. "Realms. This world isn't the only one. Some realms lie close enough to touch, separated by a skin of air so thin you can breathe the other side if you know how."
Kaelen frowned. "And Anchorfall?"
"It's where those realms knot together. And where something is trying to untie them."
He wanted to press for more, but her tone made it clear she wouldn't answer. Instead, she handed him a folded scrap of parchment. On it, she'd drawn a rough diagram: a circle divided into six ascending tiers. Each tier was marked with a symbol — a ripple for Resonance Sense, a jagged arrow for Forceflow, a spiral for Echo Wield, and three more symbols Kaelen didn't recognize.
"What's this?" he asked.
"The Layers," she said. "The Unified Power. Each Layer changes how you see, move, and fight. You've touched the first without training — that's rare. But untrained senses can lead you into places you're not ready for."
Her gaze lingered on him a moment longer than necessary. Not unkind. Just measuring.
"You'll learn as we travel," she added. "If we have time."
---
By dawn, the company was ready. Twelve riders under Eryndor, Kaelen and Lyra at the front. The Keep's gates yawned open with a groan of iron. Beyond lay the winding coast road, slick with mist and lined by the black, wind-bent pines of the Dagger Coast.
Maeryn and Serenya stood by the gate. Maeryn's eyes were calm but hard; Serenya's lip trembled, though she held it still.
"Three nights," Darion had said. "No longer."
The gates closed behind them, the sound echoing down the misty road like the sealing of a tomb.
---
They rode hard the first day, the sea always on their left, the cliffs rising and falling in sheer walls. The mist thinned toward noon, revealing the vast dark water below — and, far on the horizon, a line of jagged shapes like teeth biting the sky.
"The Shattered Straits," Lyra said. "Once a bridge of stone. Now nothing but broken spires and current strong enough to drag a ship under in minutes."
Kaelen studied the distant shapes. "And beyond them?"
"The Crescent Sea. And Anchorfall."
---
That night they camped in a sheltered cove, the cliffs forming a black crescent above them. The others slept quickly, but Kaelen found himself staring into the dark sea, listening to the quiet hiss of waves.
The pulse in his bones grew stronger. And then… something else. A second beat, fainter, coming from the sea. It wasn't the tide. It wasn't the wind.
Kaelen stood and stepped closer to the water. The surface shifted. For an instant, he thought he saw something beneath it — not a fish, not a shadow, but the glint of structures, towers and arches, as if an entire city lay drowned just out of reach.
He blinked — and the vision was gone.
"You feel it again, don't you?" Lyra's voice came from behind him.
He turned. "Yes."
She stepped up beside him, her gaze on the water. "That's the pull of the Second Layer. Forceflow. It lets you move with the rhythm of things — currents, winds, even the heartbeat of the earth. But it also means the currents can move you."
She looked at him then, and for the first time, her voice softened. "Kaelen… once you start climbing the Layers, there's no turning back. Each one changes you. Not always in ways you'll like."
Kaelen didn't answer. The sea's whisper was louder now, and somewhere deep in his chest, a part of him — the part that had always reached for the next ridge, the next horizon — wanted to follow it.
He didn't know yet that the sea was listening back.