The Glass Labyrinth didn't just test a man's spatial awareness; it tested his humility.
Kaelen stood at the entrance, his breathing shallow and rhythmic. He knew the Wardens were listening for the telltale hitch in a lung that signaled panic. To his eyes, the obsidian walls were beautiful—dark, translucent monoliths that sliced the torchlight into jagged amber shards. He could see the smudge of a previous pilgrim's palm on a panel to his left, and a hairline fracture in the glass three paces ahead.
He could have run through it in seconds. Instead, he forced himself to wait.
He stepped forward, dragging his heel just enough to create the "Seeker's Scuff." He reached out a hand, his fingers splayed, and deliberately let his palm graze the cold surface of a wall he had already identified. He didn't move with the fluid grace he used when he was alone in the canyons; he moved with a calculated, stuttering caution.
Left. Four paces. Pivot.
He felt the High Warden's sightless gaze from the dais. Silas wasn't looking for a successful navigation; he was looking for certainty. Certainty was the mark of the Seer.
Kaelen feigned a stumble near the center of the maze, his knee clipping the obsidian. He let out a low, convincing grunt of frustration. It was a masterpiece of acting. He felt the tension in the amphitheater ease. To the thousands of veiled citizens, he was just another blind boy struggling against the silence.
When he finally emerged from the far side, his hand found the copper Exit-Rail with a desperate, trembling grasp that was entirely theatrical.
"Kaelen of the Weaver's House," Silas announced, his voice echoing off the stone. "He has navigated the Void. He remains in the Grace of the Dark."
Kaelen bowed his head, his long lashes obscuring the sharp, observant amber of his eyes. Grace of the Dark, he thought bitterly. More like the safety of a cage. He slipped back into the crowd, his heart beating fast—not from the trial, but from the suffocating weight of the lie.
The Summit of the Sightless Peaks
Five hundred miles to the North lay Aethelgard, the City of Iron Ribs.
If Oakhaven was a damp cellar, Aethelgard was a cathedral of industry. It was built atop the highest plateau in the world, a place where the air was thin and the wind screamed like a dying god. It was the only human city that dared to rival the Celestial Void in height, its spires piercing the very clouds where the Echoes resided.
Inside the Hall of the Sundered Crown, a summit was convening.
The room was vast, designed with acoustic perfection so that a whisper at the far end sounded like a shout at the center. At the head of a massive stone table sat King Valerius, the Iron King. He was a mountain of a man, draped in furs and heavy plate armor. Legend whispered that the blood of the War-God Tyr ran through his veins—the same Tyr who had been blinded and broken during the Great War five centuries ago.
Valerius did not wear a veil. His eyes were milky white, scarred by the same ancestral curse as his people, but he sat with a terrifying, motionless dignity.
The air in the room suddenly curdled. The temperature plummeted, and a low, subsonic vibration began to rattle the heavy silver chalices on the table.
The Echoes had arrived.
They did not take physical form. They were shimmering distortions in the air—eddies of cold wind and the smell of ozone.
"Valerius," a voice vibrated, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was Malphas, the God of Weight. "The pact of the Great Blinding is fraying. We felt a ripple. A disturbance in the fabric of the Quiet."
Valerius didn't flinch. He traced the edge of his scarred throne with a calloused thumb. "My scouts report nothing, Malphas. My people are as blind and obedient as the day you took the sun from us. If there is a ripple, perhaps it is your own fading divinity crying out in the dark."
"Watch your tongue, half-blood," hissed a second voice—Cora, the Weaver. Her presence felt like invisible needles pricking the skin. "The Prophecy of the Lens is not a myth. It is a biological inevitability. Somewhere, the blood of the old world is stirring. A child has been born who can see the cracks in your kingdom. And if he sees the cracks, he will see how to break them."
Valerius stood, his armor clanking with a sound like a funeral knell. "You fear a ghost. You took our eyes to ensure we could never rise against you again. You turned the world into a tomb and called it peace. If a Seer truly exists, he is not a threat to me. He is a threat to the lie you've told us for five hundred years."
"If he is found," Malphas growled, the floorboards groaning under the God's invisible pressure, "you will deliver him to the Void. Or we shall bring the heavens down upon Aethelgard and flatten your iron spires into the dust."
"I am a descendant of Tyr," Valerius said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low rumble. "We do not deliver our own to monsters. But rest assured, Great Echo... if there is a boy who can see, he will find no sanctuary in a world that has learned to love its blindness."
The Gods vanished with a sharp crack of imploding air, leaving Valerius alone in the freezing hall.
The King reached out, his hand finding the hilt of a broken sword mounted on the wall—the relic of his ancestor. He squeezed it until his knuckles turned white.
"Find him," Valerius whispered to the shadows of the room, where his elite Shadow-Cloaks waited. "Find the boy before the Gods do. I want to know if the sun is as beautiful as the songs say... or if it's just another thing to burn."