The following days settled into a strange new rhythm for Kaelen. The incident on the wall had changed things. The soldiers he passed in the halls no longer looked at him with plain curiosity or vague distrust. Now, their glances held a flicker of recognition. He was the Umbral initiate who had helped bring down a Venom Maw. He had earned a sliver of their world-weary respect.
Valeria's training intensified. His punishment had become his education. She drilled him for hours in the training chamber, pushing his control over his E-Rank power to its limits.
"Again!" her voice would snap through the air. "The shield is not a wall. It is a second skin. Feel the energy. Move it!"
He learned to shape his darkness into more than simple shards and discs. He could now form a protective film over his skin, a barrier that could deflect a training blade or absorb the light impact of a practice projectile. It was exhausting, a constant drain on his focus, but each success made the energy feel more like his own and less like a wild animal trapped in his chest.
He saw less of Isolde, though he felt her presence like a watchful spider in the corners of the Citadel. A better quality of food would appear on his tray. A new set of dark, well-made training clothes was left in his room. No notes. Just reminders. She was letting him stew, allowing the debt between them to settle and mature.
Elara, he sought out. He found her most often in the gardens or her small workshop, her hands always busy with clay or plants. She spoke little of power or politics. Instead, she pointed out the properties of a healing herb, the way a particular crystal could hold a charge of energy, or the simple peace found in shaping something with your hands. Her lessons were quiet, teaching him to find calm, to center himself. The small, dark stone she had given him was always in his pocket, a smooth, comforting weight.
He was beginning to find a balance, a fragile understanding of the three forces guiding his life.
The invitation arrived not on paper, but through a messenger. A young woman in the elegant robes of the Arcanum approached him as he left the training grounds. She bowed her head slightly.
"Initiate Kaelen," she said, her voice soft and formal. "High Arcanist Lyra requests your presence in the Astral Observatory at your earliest convenience."
Kaelen froze. High Arcanist Lyra. The fourth Matriarch. The keeper of knowledge, who Valeria had said saw him as a "specimen." His heart beat a little faster. This was not an invitation he could refuse.
The Astral Observatory was at the very peak of the Citadel's central spire. The journey up in the floating platform felt longer than any other. When the doors opened, he stepped into a vast, circular room.
The ceiling was a dome of clear, reinforced crystal, offering a breathtaking and terrifying view of the Slumbering Veil churning like a silent, gray ocean beneath a starless sky. The room was filled with strange, humming instruments—brass devices with spinning gears, crystals that pulsed with inner light, and holographic star charts that flickered in the air.
And in the center of it all stood High Arcanist Lyra.
She was older than the other Matriarchs, perhaps in her late sixties, but she stood straight and tall. Her silver hair was a wild corona around a sharp, intelligent face. She wore simple gray robes, but her eyes… her eyes were the most intense he had ever seen. They were a piercing, vivid blue, and they seemed to look right through him, not at his body, but at the energy that coursed within it.
She did not greet him. She simply stared, her head tilted as if listening to a faint sound.
"Fascinating," she whispered, her voice dry and papery, yet full of immense energy. "The readings did not do it justice. It is not merely Umbral. It is… a null resonance. A perfect void."
She moved closer, circling him slowly. Kaelen felt like a rare insect being pinned to a board. She didn't seem to see him at all. She saw his power.
"Commander Valeria sees a weapon," Lyra mused, more to herself than to him. "Isolde de Lys sees a key to political locks. The wild one in the woods sees a balance to be struck." She stopped in front of him. "But they are all looking at the lock. I am interested in the key itself."
She finally focused on his face. "Your energy signature is unique in all my records. You should not exist. The Umbral aspect is one of corruption and consumption. Yet yours is… pure. A blank slate. Tell me, boy, when you call the darkness, what does it feel like?"
The question was so direct, so clinical, it caught him off guard. "It feels… cold," he said, his voice hesitant. "Like drawing water from a deep, dark well."
"A well," she repeated, her eyes lighting up with academic fervor. "Yes. A source. But is it your source? Or are you simply a conduit?" She turned and gestured to one of the larger instruments, a complex device of crystal and wire. "I would like to run a series of tests. Non-invasive. Simply to measure the fluctuations of your energy output. It would be invaluable for my research."
This was it. This was what Valeria had warned him about. To be a subject. A thing to be studied.
But something in Lyra's passion, her pure, undiluted obsession with knowledge, felt less dangerous than Isolde's schemes or Valeria's harsh demands. It was honest, in its own way.
"What kind of tests?" he asked cautiously.
"Nothing that will harm you," she assured him, though her tone suggested that 'harm' was a relative term compared to the value of the data. "Basic scans. Perhaps a minor resonance challenge to see how your unique nature reacts to other Aspects."
She wanted to poke and prod the one thing that made him valuable, the thing that also made him a target.
He had a choice. Align with the seeker of knowledge. Grant her access. It would be another debt, another connection. But knowledge was also power. Understanding his own curse might be the only way to ever truly control it.
The fourth Matriarch had extended her hand. He had to decide if he would take it.