Starlight City woke to silence.
Not the still kind. The wrong kind.
The Spire, which had pulsed a steady white light every night for as long as anyone could remember, was dark. No glow on the horizon, no hum in the air. The sigil lines that ran along the streets and buildings had gone dead, their faint light extinguished. For the first time, the city felt… unanchored.
People poured into the streets in confusion, their own threads flickering erratically without the Spire's lattice to stabilize them. Wardens tried to calm the chaos, but their sigils were useless; their tools were as dead as the Spire they served.
And high above the crowds, the Conclave's banners — glowing white just hours ago — sagged dark and inert.
The city was no longer theirs.
Far below, in the hollowed-out cavern where the nexus once breathed, Arielle opened her eyes.
The hum in her chest was steady, faint but present, like a heartbeat she could never turn off. The faint sigils etched into her skin pulsed softly, their glow synchronized with the residual threads that still lingered in the walls of the cavern. The tether wasn't beneath the city anymore.
It was in her.
Selene sat nearby, their glow little more than a whisper now. They hadn't spoken since Arielle unraveled the core, but their eyes never left her. Not in anger. Not in awe. Just… searching.
Finally, they said, voice hoarse, "You didn't save the city. You didn't doom it either. You've made it something new. A city without a Spire. Without an anchor. Just you."
Draven leaned against the cavern wall, violet constructs idly swirling between his fingers. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the dim air. "You realize what's coming, don't you? The Conclave won't treat this as rebellion. They'll treat it as an infection. You're not just a rogue Anchor to them now. You're a walking nexus. They'll erase Starlight City just to cut you out."
Arielle rose slowly, her steps light, the hum within her guiding her balance as though the ground itself shifted to meet her feet. She looked upward, through the fractured ceiling of the cavern, toward the faint glow of the skyline.
"Then they can try."
The hum in her chest deepened, and the faint glow around her wrists flared, threads whispering outward like tiny, restless comets.
"I didn't take the tether to rule this city," she said, her voice calm but resonant, as if carried by the weave itself. "But if the Conclave comes to burn it… I won't let them touch it. Or the people living in it."
She turned back to Selene and Draven, her eyes catching the faint twin reflections of their silver and violet glows.
"They'll come with their armies, their Spires, their nets. They'll call me a monster, a curse, an anomaly. Maybe they're right."
The hum flared once, briefly shaking the cavern dust from the walls.
"But this city beats with my pulse now. And I'm not letting them silence it."
Above, in the highest chamber of the darkened Spire, the Conclave gathered in shadow. White-thread sigils burned faintly in the air, barely holding their form without the nexus beneath the city to feed them.
At the head of the chamber, the First Warden spoke, their voice cold, their face obscured by a white mask.
"The rogue has severed the core. The Spire is blind. Our lattice is dead."
Another figure leaned forward, pale hands resting on the table. "Then we end her. Deploy the Iron Wardens. Burn the district if we must. A city can be rebuilt. A nexus-rogue cannot."
The First Warden nodded once. "Then it's agreed. We bring down the tether. We bring down her."
The chamber's sigils pulsed one last time before fading into darkness.
Starlight City had one heartbeat now.And the Conclave had just declared war on it.