LYRA'S POV
(THE NEXT MORNING)
Reed and Willow sat across from me in the training room, both looking like they'd rather be anywhere else.
"Before we start," I said, "I need to understand why you've been hiding. Why you fade into the background."
"Our corruptions are... uncomfortable," Reed said quietly. He was maybe thirteen, thin and pale, with runes that looked like bone fragments. "People don't like being reminded of death."
"And people definitely don't like plants that grow from corpses," Willow added. She was younger—eleven—with green runes that pulsed like vines. "Our corruptions work together. That makes us even more disturbing."
"Work together how?"
They exchanged glances. Then Reed stood, moving to a practice dummy. He touched it, and his bone corruption activated.
The dummy's wooden structure cracked, bones forming within it. Not real bones—corrupted manifestations. The structure of death imposed on something that had never lived.
