The storm had passed hours ago, yet the streets of Tareth still smelled of iron and wet stone. Lanterns sputtered in their glass cages, casting amber pools across rain-slick cobblestones. Lyra walked between Kael and Rienne in silence, the three of them trailing back from the harbor where the last of the shadow-beasts had been burned. The city should have felt victorious. Instead, it felt hollowed out — a silence hung in the air, the silence of people who sensed that their world had grown smaller again.
Kael's armor shimmered faintly in the lamplight, fragments flickering between steel and nothing. He carried his shoulders stiffly, as though the oath he had sworn weighed heavier than any chain. Lyra noticed how the guards who passed them averted their eyes, giving him wide berth. He was a hero now, but a dangerous one — a man from nowhere.
Rienne walked with her crystalline prosthetic arm covered by a dark shawl, yet the faint blue glow leaked through like cracks in ice. She held it close to her chest, her face unreadable, eyes fixed on the cobbles as though each stone carried a judgment.
Lyra had grown used to silence among them — the kind of silence that collected after shared battles, when words could only cheapen what had been seen. But tonight the silence was different. Heavy. Fractured.
When they reached the old library steps, Lyra lingered. The gargoyles loomed against the moonlight, their faces eroded by centuries of rain. She turned to Rienne.
"You've been keeping something," Lyra said softly.
Kael, leaning against the balustrade, turned his head sharply, his scarred features taut.
Rienne froze. Her shawl slipped slightly, and the glass of her arm caught the moonlight. The glow pulsed once, faintly, like a heartbeat.
"I should have told you sooner," she murmured. "But I was afraid."
Lyra felt the Codex stir in her satchel, its pages shifting though she hadn't touched it. As though it wanted to listen.
"Afraid of what?" Kael's voice was low, the kind of tone that belonged to a battlefield.
Rienne lifted her gaze to the gargoyles, her breath fogging in the chill night. "Afraid that I caused this."
The words lingered in the air like smoke.
Lyra felt her stomach tighten. "Caused what?"
"The thinning of the Veil." Rienne's voice cracked, and her hand — flesh and blood, not glass — tightened around her shawl. "Years ago, before the Council exiled me, before my arm… I built something. A Resonator."
Kael straightened, the flicker of his armor sparking faintly. "What kind of weapon is that?"
"It wasn't meant to be a weapon." Rienne shook her head fiercely. "It was a device — a way to measure dimensional harmonics. To… listen to the edges of reality. I believed there were patterns, vibrations that could be charted, studied, understood."
Lyra's throat went dry. The Codex had spoken of echoes, of fractures, of veils. And here stood Rienne, speaking as though she had reached for them with her bare hands.
"What happened?" Lyra whispered.
Rienne's glass arm flared once, unbidden, as though recalling its own birth. Her voice grew quieter. "The night I activated it, half the city reported missing a day. They woke to find meals uneaten, clocks wrong, letters written in their own hand they had no memory of. Entire streets whispered of a festival that never happened. I told myself it was coincidence — but I knew."
Lyra's heart pounded. She remembered her own "vanished day," the entry she had recorded in her journal when neighbors insisted on a celebration that had never been. That had been years ago.
"Rienne…" Lyra said slowly, "that was you?"
The scientist's lips trembled. "Yes. I tore the first thread."
Kael's gauntleted fist slammed against the stone balustrade, the crack echoing down the steps. "You meddled with the fabric of the world, and now it unravels. My kingdom erased, shadows spilling through — all because you wanted to measure the unknowable?"
Rienne flinched, but her gaze did not waver. "I know what I've done. I live with it every hour. My arm—" she raised the crystalline limb, the facets shimmering faintly "—this was the price. The Resonator's core imploded, and I was caught in the backlash. It fused glass and blood into one. The Council called it heresy. They destroyed what they could find. But the damage… it was already loose."
Lyra clutched the Codex tighter. The ink on its cover pulsed faintly, shifting into shapes that almost resembled words, then dissolving before her eyes.
"You think this Resonator," Lyra said, "is why the Veil thins?"
Rienne nodded. "Not only. But it was the first crack. The first invitation for everything that should have stayed apart to seep through."
The silence stretched. A lantern hissed nearby, its flame guttering in the damp air.
Lyra felt an ache of betrayal. She had trusted Rienne's knowledge, her calm, her certainty. To learn that the woman had helped cause the very unraveling they now fought — it stung like cold iron. Yet when she looked into Rienne's face, she saw not malice but ruin. A woman who had gambled with truth and lost more than she could bear.
Kael paced like a caged animal, armor flickering with every turn. "If you built this Resonator once, you could build it again. Use it to mend what you broke."
Rienne's mouth twisted. "I've thought of that every day. But the Veil isn't glass to be soldered. It's a living boundary, delicate as breath. If I try again, I could finish the unraveling entirely."
Lyra's thoughts swirled. Memories of vanishing streets, shifting journals, towers erased overnight. The bells that had ceased to exist. Could it all trace back to this one device? Or had the Resonator merely woken something older, something that had always waited?
The Codex stirred again, its pages whispering. Lyra drew it out. Across the parchment, ink bled into new lines:
"The shadow of the maker follows the wound."
The letters glowed faintly, then faded.
Rienne stared at the words, her breath catching. "It knows."
Kael's jaw tightened. "Then it knows you bear guilt."
Rienne's eyes glistened. "Yes. And it knows I may bear the answer, too."
Lyra closed the Codex gently, her fingers trembling. The rain had stopped, but the night felt heavier than ever, as though the city itself leaned closer to listen.
"Then we must decide," Lyra said quietly. "Do we trust the one who opened the wound to help close it?"
Rienne bowed her head, her crystalline arm pulsing once more. "Or do you cast me aside — and hope the Veil mends itself?"
The three of them stood on the library steps, shadows long against the stones, the weight of choice pressing down like the still air before another storm.
And though Lyra's heart screamed with doubt, she knew this was only the beginning of Rienne's shadow.