The town of Virelle was built on broken glass.
Wind slid across the crater's rim, whispering through veins of old crystal that still glowed faintly beneath the dirt. Every night, the town shimmered — as if it remembered what had fallen there long ago.
In the daylight, it was easier to forget.
Aerin Cael lived in the back room of a glassmaker's shop, where the air was warm with fire and dusted with powdered sand. Her master, Eldric Thane, was half-blind and twice as patient, and he never asked about the thin lines of pale blue crystal beneath her eyes. He only said, "Some scars catch the light. That's all."
Aerin liked that answer. She lived by it.
She was careful. She kept her sleeves long, her hood low, her words few. The Church of Wholeness rode the northern roads once a season, their banners white as bone, searching for "impurities." They never stayed long in a place like Virelle — too poor, too broken. But rumor said that lately, they'd begun looking harder.