Chapter 1
I woke with dew on my lashes and a bell in my bones.
A surface of water lay still as glass beside me, reflecting a stranger whose beauty made my breath hitch—long pale hair with a prismatic sheen, ears tapering elegantly, lashes too dark against cool, luminous skin. A slim throat; a soft jaw; a mouth that looked permanently near-smiling. My own face, but elven—delicate, androgynous… and insanely beautiful.
Another bell chimed—this one not from the world, but somewhere just behind my eyes.
SYSTEM: You have awakened as Eirion Luminara, Lightweaver of the Dawn Choir.
A flick of instinct and the pane unfurled like a folded banner of light.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ STATUS: EIRION LUMINARA │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Race: High Elf (Luminari) Title: Dawn-Suturer │ │ Class: Divine Healer (Lightweaver) Subclass: Battle Cantor │ │ Rank: S Level: 42 │ │ Attribute: LIGHT (adv. vs DARK: +25% dmg, +15% healing) │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ HP: 12,460 / 12,460 MP: 18,300 / 18,300 │ │ STR: 121 DEX: 208 INT: 512 WIS: 540 │ │ VIT: 233 MND: 501 LUK: 147 │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ RESIST: Shadow +30% | Hex +20% | Fire +0% | Frost +0% │ │ VULN: None (mitigated by Aegis Hymn stacks) │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ WEAPON: Choirstaff of the First Bell (+15% Light scaling) │ │ RELIC: Sunshard Veil (+10% heal on hit; split-cast enabled) │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ CORE SKILLS: │ │ ▸ Dual-Cant: Smite & Mend — Simultaneous attack + heal. │ │ ▸ Aegis Hymn — Barrier stores damage, releases as healing. │ │ ▸ Lumen Thread — Suture wounds with persistent light fibers.│ │ ▸ Starlit Reprise — Overheal arcs as Light bolts to enemies.│ │ ▸ Canticle: Radiant Nova — Burst Light; purges Darkness. │ │ ▸ Oathbond: Twin Radiance — Synergy with your Twin Paladin. │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
"Eirion!"
Her voice broke the woods like dawn. I turned as a figure in resplendent silver strode up the slope—plate gilded in sun-glyphs, cloak flaring, hair a deeper gold than noon. The resemblance hit me like a hymn: same eyes as mine, only fiercer, same bones, same quiet elegance. Where I was light made soft, she was light made edge.
She swept me into an armored hug, the plates clicking softly around my ribs. "You're awake." She leaned back, searching my face. "You're here."
"Aurelia?" My own voice was bell-toned and a touch breathy. I knew her name like remembering a song I'd written in some other life. Twin Sister. Divine Paladin. Fiercely protective. The facts arrived with the certainty of sunrise.
She nodded once, relief softening the line of her mouth. "Don't scare me like that again."
"I just… woke up."
"Then try to stay that way." She turned, the big kite-shield on her back catching the pale light. "This forest is about to tear."
A wind went sideways. The world pinched into a bruise and split. A tear opened in the air over the glade, black edges smoking, and the smell of cold iron and old blood poured through.
SYSTEM: Dungeon Fissure (Minor) — Dark Attribute entities incoming.
The first things out were not things so much as hunger with fur: umbral wargs, ribs like cage-bars, eyes thin as coin-slits. They loped low, silent as knives. Behind them, a taller silhouette ducked the rip, dropping hoof to earth—an obsidian stag with a crown of crooked antlers, shadow dripping like oil from its joints.
Aurelia stepped between me and the tear. "Behind me."
"Beside you," I corrected, and felt the answer brighten her eyes even through her visor.
I lifted my staff. The silver ring at its head thrummed.
"Aegis Hymn."
Aurelia's armor caught a sheen like morning frost: thin plates of translucent radiance tessellated over her pauldrons and breast, humming. The hymn's counterpoint wove to me in the same instant, settling along my chest and throat—a second skin of gentle pressure.
The wargs lunged.
Letting out A ear piercing roar that shock the ground
Aurelia moved like a verdict.
Her shield caught the first mid-pounce. Metal sang, a flare of light like a struck sun. She twisted; the shield rim smashed the creature's muzzle askew and it tumbled end-over-end, ribs snapping. A second came low; she rolled her wrist and her greatsword folded from its scabbard with priestly calm. One cleave—clean, almost tender—and the warg parted from crown to sternum into neat halves that smoked on the grass.
The stag charged. Its hooves pounded shadow into the earth; each strike left a black print that festered like a wound.
I breathed once and split my voice in two.
"Dual-Cant: Smite & Mend."
The staff rang, and twin spirals of notation unfurled in the air like written music made visible—one stave of light curving toward Aurelia, one toward the stag. The healing cant wrapped my sister in soft pearlescence, knitting hairline fissures in her shield arm, flooding weary muscle with new morning. The attack cant lanced out in the same heartbeat, a narrow beam that sheared through air and punched cleanly through the stag's shoulder, blowing a coin of shadow out its back. Light sizzled; darkness recoiled.
LIGHT advantage: +25% damage applied.Sunshard Veil: +10% heal on hit triggers.Starlit Reprise primed.
Aurelia didn't waste the opening; her sword clipped under the stag's jaw, tore a crescent of shadow loose. It reared, black blood vapor spraying in strings. The nearest warg lunged for her unguarded flank.
"Eirion!"
"I have you."
I flung Lumen Thread. Fine lines of light snapped from my fingers and laced her side like a seamstress in a storm; they burrowed through plate, anchored to the bruised muscles beneath, and began a smooth, rapid pull, closing micro-tears while she moved. Another hand flick and I re-cast Smite & Mend, wedging a clean spear of daylight straight through the warg's eyes as the heal warmed Aurelia's lungs.
The battle sank into a rhythm—her steel conducting, my light scoring the piece. Each time her blade bit, my overheal leapt from her like little swallows, Starlit Reprise arcing to peck and sizzle at the shadows crowding us. Each time the beasts clawed, the Aegis Hymn hummed and drank the pain, banking it as energy I could spend with a word.
Aegis Hymn storage: 14% → 22% → 34%…
I took a hoof to the ribs from a warg that slid past her guard, saw a flash of stars and a little of the sky; the ground shoved up. The bruise bloomed cold and then went warm as my own hymn caught it. I rolled, staff between us and rasped, "Radiant Nova."
Caster (Healer):
"Arhael solénne, velys aërion;Serin thalán, vyr sárae;Novára rhaelíon—Elië!Dawn-keep, open: Radiant Nova!"
Twin (Paladin) — antiphon (call-and-response):
"Osthár an rhael, kyrn valára!Shields align— our oath is one!"
The ring at my staff's head sang like a struck bowl.
Light exploded in a white flower.
Wargs flattened as if a giant thumb pressed down. Shadow peeled off their bodies in steaming strips; the stag's antlers cracked in three places, leaking black that smoked in the clean air. In the center of that brief daybreak Aurelia shone like a figure in stained glass. She surged forward, boots carving neat divots, and her sword came down like an altar's edge. The stag's foreleg cut away; it shrieked, a high, tearing sound like paper ripping for miles.
"Status," I whispered, re-centering as I slid to a knee.
┌─────────── QUICK CHECK ───────────┐
│ HP: 10,904 / 12,460 (-1,556) │ │ MP: 15,772 / 18,300 │ │ Aegis Hymn: 48% banked │ │ Overheal Charge: 3 stacks (Reprise) │ │ Buffs: Sunshard Veil, Aurelia's Vow │ └───────────────────────────────────┘
The tear darkened. Something behind it scraped its way toward the world.
Aurelia's stance changed—rooted, shield forward, the sigils along its rim igniting like dawn through shutters. "Eirion—"
"I know." I rose, planting the ferrule of my staff.
The thing that stepped through was wider than the tear should allow: a knight's shape in armor made of night itself, edges smearing like wet ink, a sword like a long absence of light.
SYSTEM:Dusk-Bound Seneschal (Elite) — Attribute DARK.Aura: Despair (minor). Adds stacking Bleakness to wounds.
Its helm turned toward Aurelia, then me. I felt its gaze like cold water over wrists.
"Behind me," my sister said, quieter now.
"Beside you," I answered again—and this time she smiled, even in the face of it.
The seneschal moved with a patient, awful grace. One step carved frost out of summer; one swing unstitched a birch at the waist. It didn't howl. It didn't posture. It simply came.
"Oathbond: Twin Radiance." I set my palm to Aurelia's back, just under her right pauldron.
Light bridged us—thin at first, then thickening until it was a band of braided gold. The world sharpened. I felt the exact weight of her shield on my own forearm as if our muscles had learned each other's song; my heartbeat found her cadence.
Aurelia lowered her stance. "Vow of Parity," she intoned, and her aura answered—half my wounds to me, half mine to her. Dangerous alone. Devastating together.
The seneschal's sword fell like midnight.
Aurelia met it, shield inside the arc. Metal boomed, a sun trapped in a bell. The force shunted through her arm into mine along the bond, and I sang. Not out loud—my bones vibrated; the staff took it; the Aegis Hymn drank it. The shock tried to blow us apart; our Oathbond braided the strain.
"Dual-Cant," I breathed, and split my voice again. One stave pitched low, cushioning the micro-fractures spidering through her shield. One pitched high, a slim blade that darted past the seneschal's guard to rake a bright line along the gap below its gorget.
Darkness hissed like water on iron.
It counter-cut. The edge clipped Aurelia's hip; the Vow of Parity tugged the pain into me, half and half, like pulling a nail with gloved hands. Aegis Hymn took that, too—now humming fat and sweet in my chest.
Aegis Hymn storage: 81% (Surge Threshold)
"Now," Aurelia said.
I nodded and opened my hands. The stored pain burst its bank like a dam.
"Aegis Hymn—Release: White Mercy!"
Healer (sustain verse):
"Aegis thalán, hyménne arhael;Serin valín, sirae velyn;Lirë solánne, aërion keep."
Twin Paladin (antiphon):
"Osthár an rhael, kyrn valára—Our oath is one."
Release call (trigger):
"Virá sirae— White Mercy!"
For a moment, the light didn't shine out; it shone through—every leaf, every blade of grass made lantern-thin. The released energy surged back along our bond, drowned our shared wound in warm flood, and then, because the hymn never wastes, it leapt outward as a corona. The seneschal recoiled; the shadow between its plates crumpled like old velvet left in rain. The wargs around us simply came apart into soot and wind.
Overheal rolled like waves over a shoal. Every excess drop of health that couldn't fit in our vessels cracked into clean bolts—Starlit Reprise—and peppered the seneschal's helm and sword, pitting blackness with little ringing hits of daylight.
It steadied. Resilient thing. It lifted its blade and pointed it at my heart.
"Again," Aurelia said, voice calm. She stepped—and I stepped with her, the bond guiding, the world narrowing to our two tracks as if we walked a groove in a record we'd made ourselves.
She feinted high; the seneschal raised to meet her; I cast low, Lumen Thread on its ankle, bright sutures binding negative space as if it were torn skin. It faltered a hair. That was enough. Aurelia's sword descended in a ruler-straight vertical—Sunlit Verdict—and bit deep into the hollow under its helm.
"Radiant Nova—pulse cast."
I flicked my staff and let the nova go not as a bloom but as a heartbeat. Boom. Boom. Boom. Each pulse peeled shadow from plate like charred paint.
The seneschal staggered, then sank to one knee. It raised its sword again on sheer will—no, on sheer habit—and I almost felt sorry for the relic. I caught Aurelia's eye. She nodded once.
"Finish?" she asked.
"Together."
We moved—shield and staff, blade and hymn, our twin silhouettes crossing in clean geometry. Her sword kissed its neck; my smite filled the same line with white fire. Light cleaved absence. The helm rolled once, twice, charcoal flaking from its edge like snow.
Silence found the glade. The tear in the air shrank, edges guttering, then snapped shut with a sensation like a swallowed sob.
I let the bond soften but not break. Aurelia turned at once, gauntleted hands on my shoulders, eyes hunting my face for any hairline crack.
"I'm fine," I said—then winced as the adrenaline's scaffolding slid away, and ribs that had been an academic problem became a rumor of pain.
She exhaled as if the breath had weights tied to it. "I hate how you say that."
"I know." I smiled. "I love how you hate it."
A beat. Her mouth decided to be a smile too, unwillingly.
"Status," she said.
"Status," I echoed, and the panel obliged.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STATUS: EIRION LUMINARA │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Race: High Elf (Luminari) Title: Dawn-Suturer │
│ Class: Divine Healer (Lightweaver) Subclass: Battle Cantor │
│ Rank: S Level: 42 │
│ Attribute: LIGHT (adv. vs DARK: +25% dmg, +15% healing) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ HP: 12,460 / 12,460 MP: 18,300 / 18,300 │
│ STR: 121 DEX: 208 INT: 512 WIS: 540 │
│ VIT: 233 MND: 501 LUK: 147 │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ RESIST: Shadow +30% | Hex +20% | Fire +0% | Frost +0% │
│ VULN: None (mitigated by Aegis Hymn stacks) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ WEAPON: Choirstaff of the First Bell (+15% Light scaling) │
│ RELIC: Sunshard Veil (+10% heal on hit; split-cast enabled) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ CORE SKILLS: │
│ ▸ Dual-Cant: Smite & Mend — Simultaneous attack + heal. │
│ ▸ Aegis Hymn — Barrier stores damage, releases as healing. │
│ ▸ Lumen Thread — Suture wounds with persistent light fibers.│
│ ▸ Starlit Reprise — Overheal arcs as Light bolts to enemies.│
│ ▸ Canticle: Radiant Nova — Burst Light; purges Darkness. │
│ ▸ Oathbond: Twin Radiance — Synergy with your Twin Paladin. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Aurelia rolled her shoulder back, testing the joint. "Any breaks?"
"Hairline before, closed now." I tapped my ribs. "The Hymn behaved."
Her hand rose—hesitated—then settled, very carefully, at the side of my face. Metal was cold; the intention was warm. "Stay behind me next time," she said reflexively.
I laughed once, soft. "Beside you."
She huffed, which for my sister meant surrender. "Then we train until 'beside me' doesn't cost you so much MP."
"Deal."
We stood awhile in the clear hush left after a storm, listening to the woods re-thread their song around a hole that was no longer there. When I lowered my staff, threads of Lumen still floated from the ring in slow spirals and vanished into the air, a quiet confession of how the light loved to be useful.
Aurelia looked toward the eastern ridge. "The fissures are worsening. Villages will need warding. You'll be pulled in ten directions."
"I can sing more than one line," I said, twirling the staff once, the ring chiming a small, happy note. "That's what the Dual-Cant is for."
"And that's why I'm here," she said simply. "To make sure you live through your own brilliance."
I could have said a lot of things to that. Instead, I stepped close and touched my forehead to the cool plane of her visor for a breath, a simple acknowledgement of the bond that had been written in us long before statistics, long before skills.
"Come on," she said, clearing her throat, reclaiming her command like a cloak. "Town first. Then the Abbey. Then whatever hole the world tears next."
"Light willing," I agreed.
"The light," Aurelia said, glancing at me sidelong, "is particularly willing when you ask."
We walked from the glade, our shadows long and perfectly parallel across the grass. And when the bell rang again, somewhere behind my eyes, I didn't flinch. I only listened.
SYSTEM: Quest Chain unlocked — Twin Radiance: Keepers of the Dawn.Objective 1/?: Ward the village of Bride's Fen.Bonus: Maintain Oathbond above 50% harmony in combat.
I smiled, and for a heartbeat the whole world smiled back. The light didn't wait for permission; it found every place we would hurt and warmed it in advance. And somewhere beyond the hills, something dark felt that warmth approaching and began to fear the morning.
Objective 1/?: Ward the village of Bride's FenBonus: Maintain Oathbond above 50% harmony in combat.
Mist lay low and bright over the marsh, as if dawn had folded itself into a shawl and set it across the reeds. Bride's Fen rose from that silver as a scatter of stilt-houses linked by plankways, peat-lanterns burning the color of old honey. Children with cattail crowns watched us arrive from a bridge where minnows made little commas in the water. Farther off, a shrine of river-stone and knotted willow leaned—votive coins gilded its throat; a cracked bell hung in it like a sleeping eye.
An elder met us by the quay, his palms brown with reed-dye. "Light bless," he said, looking from Aurelia's armor to my ringed staff. "The fen frays. Something bites our edges at night. We sleep in bunches now."
"Wards first," Aurelia said, already assessing lines of sight. "Then we cull whatever still dares the boundary."
I touched the shrine's bell; it hummed a note like the lowest thread of morning. The System unscrolled a pale schematic in the air—glyphs and circles hanging like soap-bubbles over the mud.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ QUEST SCHEMATICS: FEN-CROWN LATTICE │ ├──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Anchor Points: 4 (N/E/S/W) │ │ Keystone: River-Shrine (Bride's Eye) │ │ Medium: Reedline + Silver Thread │ │ Warding Phrase: "No crossing without dawn." │ │ Light Requirement: 3,000 MP (distributed)│ │ Skill Sync Bonus: Oathbond >50% grants │ │ +15% ward stability during combat.
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
SYSTEM:New Technique unlocked via Quest:Wardweave: Fen-Crown LatticeCast to lace a perimeter between prepared anchors. Converts overheal into lattice reinforcement.
Aurelia mapped the anchors with brisk, soldier's gestures: "North by the pitcher-plant beds. East where the plankway forks. South at the peat-stack. West by the dead cypress."
"And the keystone is the Bride's Eye," I said. "We'll sing through the bell."
The elder nodded, hesitant hope loosening his jaw. "I can have lads set posts."
"Save their backs," Aurelia said, planting her shield. "We'll set them."
We moved.
Setting the Crown
North anchor: I pressed my palm to a carved post while Lumen Thread flowed from my fingertips, not to flesh this time but to wood—fine lines seaming grain, embedding the Warding Phrase in a script too small for anything but light to read. Aurelia stood with her shield raised, eyes on the reeds, presence flat and steady as the stones under the marsh. When I lifted my hand, the post breathed a faint dawn.
East anchor: A gull wheeled. The air tasted like wet iron—a warning. I wrapped the post; Aurelia's gauntlet settled warm at the back of my neck for a heartbeat—Oathbond humming, a silent check-in. We continued.
South anchor: A boy with cattail hair watched us, chin on the railing. "Are wards like fences?"
"More like promises," I said. "Spoken so clearly even darkness hears."
West anchor: The dead cypress leaned into a mirror of its own bones. I bent, etching the last of the phrase around the post. The water beside us puckered like skin in a cold wind.
Aurelia's sword whispered from its scabbard. "We have company."
From beneath the plankway bubbled a clutch of gloam-leech fiends—flat as old coins until they surged up in sheets, each a frill of hooked mouths, the whole swarm articulating like a throat. The water went black around them.
SYSTEM:Gloam-Leech Clutch (Swarm) — Attribute DARK.Trait: Siphon. Damage transfers as Bleakness if not healed quickly.
Aurelia stepped forward without a breath's wasted time. "Back." She didn't mean behind. She meant give me space to break the first hit.
"Aegis Hymn."
Light tessellated over her in translucent tiles. She slammed her shield down on the first upsurge of leeches; the impact cracked like breaking frost, and shadow flattened under the rim. The second surge poured toward her greave like a black scarf.
"Dual-Cant: Smite & Mend."
I split my voice—one stave knifing forward into clean daylight that stitched leeches to the planks with heat; the other stave melting along Aurelia's calf, undoing the Bleakness before it could set like tar. Overheal snapped free as three precise swallows—Starlit Reprise—pecking holes through the swarm.
┌───────────── COMBAT OVERLAY ─────────────┐
│ Oathbond Harmony: 62% (Synchronized) │ │ Aegis Hymn Storage: 19% │ │ Bleakness on Aurelia: 0 (purged) │ │ Wardweave Charge: 0/100 (requires keystone) │ └───────────────────────────────────────────┘
The leeches rewove themselves with an obscene grace, mouths setting tiny rings of teeth along the edge of her shield like pearls going bad. Aurelia stamped, shaking them free, and cut in a vertical line. Where the blade kissed water, it left a bright seam that steamed.
"Don't let them to the villagers," she said.
"I won't."
I flared Radiant Nova in pulse-cast—short, heartbeat pops that shoved the swarm back each time it tried to flow around us. The Aegis Hymn drank their attempts at drag, banked the ache in my bicep where a hook had grazed skin. I kept the cant low and tight to conserve MP; east anchor throbbed gently behind me, wanting the weave.
"Keystone," Aurelia said, eyes flicking toward the shrine-bell across the water.
"Go," I answered, already stepping into her rhythm. She advanced; I matched her, Oathbond tightening like a woven strap between our braces. When she cut right, I smote left. When she lifted her shield, I laced Lumen Thread under it to catch any leech that dared the seam.
Light advantage: Damage +25%, healing +15%.Harmony bonus: Ward stability +15% (pre-enabled).
We reached the shrine on that metronome and I set my staff's ring under the cracked bell.
"Bride," I said to the stone, "lend us your eye."
The bell woke with a note so soft the fen held its breath to hear it. Threads of light lifted from the anchor posts one by one—north, east, south, west—arching toward the bell's mouth like loosed kite strings.
"Wardweave: Fen-Crown Lattice."
The lines braided. The System flashed a thin gold tick in my vision as power leapt the distance between anchors and keystone, clasping into a faint dome that mirrored the sky. But a ward is a song, and marsh songs always attract something that wants to hum a discord into them.
The water stood up thirty paces off. Not like a person—like a habit. It arranged itself in the shape of a reedy, antlered thing whose face was all ripple and whose hands held ropes of weed.
SYSTEM:Mire Reeve (Mini-Boss) — Attribute DARK.Ability: Unmake. Cancels one line of a ward on contact.Adds Sodden (movement -20%) with each strike.
It strode, the rope-weed whips snapping—crack—and where they kissed the forming lattice, a whole line of light unstitched with a sound like thread breaking.
Aurelia's feet were already moving. "Keep the weave. I'll hold its hands."
"Understood."
She reached the thing in three swift steps, armor singing, shield up. The first whip met the rim; the impact jellied my teeth through the Oathbond and the Aegis Hymn drank hard—32% in a heartbeat—our shared hurt pooling as fuel. Aurelia's riposte was simple and perfect: a cut to the joint where the reeve's arm met its lake-wide shoulder. The whip went slack; the arm splashed back as harmless water.
The second rope hissed for her helm. I met it.
"Dual-Cant."
Attack stave, needle-thin, darted under the whip's curve and lanced the reeve's throat; heal stave swaddled Aurelia's neck, suffusing the bruise under her chin-strap before it could even finish darkening. Overheal sprang to arcs—Reprise—chattering along the whip's length and dulling it into eel-like spasms.
Aurelia's boot found purchase on the slick plank. She shoved. The reeve slid back a pace, the marsh itself trying to decide whether to be neck or water.
"Eirion—harmony," she called, low.
I saw it: our timing had drifted by half a step. I matched her breathing—out when she cut, in when I mended—and the Oathbond re-braided, tightening our shared beat.
┌───────────── COMBAT OVERLAY ─────────────┐
│ Oathbond Harmony: 78% (Latticed) │ │ Aegis Hymn Storage: 61% (surge ready) │ │ Wardweave Progress: 62/100 │ │ Debuffs: Sodden 0 | Bleakness 0 │ └───────────────────────────────────────────┘
The reeve plunged both hands into the fen and lifted the water into a wall. It fell toward us, a slow, heavy curtain threaded with lamp-black fish bones.
"Brace," Aurelia said.
"White Mercy—partial."
Release call (soft cut):
"Virá lenë sirae— White Mercy, partial."
Optional antiphon (Paladin):
"Osthár an rhael— valára."("Stand for the light— hearts together.")
Panic tap (weaker, instant): "Lenë—White Mercy!" (−20% potency, −1 Grace)
I opened the Hymn's bank not as an explosion but as a push—a dome of soft pressure from the inside out. The water struck and blurred around us, forced to curve. The Fen-Crown lattice shivered and caught at 73% formed. I held the push, teeth clenched, while Aurelia lowered her shoulder and walked into the falling wall as if carrying a church door against a storm.
When the wave spent itself, the reeve's outline faltered—just water, after all, asked to pretend too long. I cut the last line of the lattice in with a careful loop, breath steady, voice cool.
"Almost there," I murmured to the ward.
The reeve screamed without a mouth and threw itself at the bell.
"Not your eye," Aurelia said, and met it—shield first, sword kissing up and through in a sun-lit diagonal that spiked the reeve's face to the shrine's lintel. It hammered; she held; my Lumen Threads shuttled between the bell's crack and the forming lattice, suturing bell-metal and light as if both were muscle.
"Radiant Nova—single bloom!"
Healer (full line):
"Arhael solénne; serin aërion.Novára—Elië!"
Twin Paladin (antiphon, optional):
"Osthár an rhael— valára!"
One clean flower of brightness. The reeve's shape opened like a badly tied knot. Where it unmade, I rewove—line to line, anchor to keystone, until the Fen-Crown sang around us like a high glass rim.
SYSTEM:Wardweave complete — Fen-Crown Lattice (Bride's Fen)Integrity: Stable (112%). Bonus stability applied via Oathbond.
The reeve, suddenly outside, struck the new skin and came apart into rain. The leeches that had skulked along the edges sizzled and went still. Water returned to being only water. The lanterns brightened without being touched.
Silence, and then a cheer rose from the planks—not wild, but deep, the kind of cheer that comes from lungs used to the damp and a long patience.
Aurelia eased her shield down. The Oathbond loosened to a warm ribbon; she looked at me with a gaze that checked bones and breath and the little tremor in my fingers where I clutched the staff too tight.
I exhaled, slow. "Status."
┌──────── POST-ENGAGEMENT ─────────┐
│ HP: 11,992 / 12,460 │ │ MP: 8,443 / 18,300 │ │ Aegis Hymn: 9% residual │ │ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 81% │ │ Ward: Fen-Crown Lattice (112% int.) │ │ Threats inside: 0 │ │ Loot: Mire Reeve's Knot (rare), │ │ Fen-Bell Scale (craft) │ └──────────────────────────────────┘
The elder came forward with hands that wanted to make themselves useful. "You've tied it," he breathed, staring at the faint dome you could only see if you didn't look directly at it. "It sings."
"It will need tending," I said. "Every dusk for a week. Then weekly during waning moons."
"We'll learn," he said. "Teach us the note."
I showed him the pitch with the bell, one soft strike and a drift of Lumen Thread to guide finger and ear. The children mimicked, adorably off at first, then closer, until the ward shivered in polite acknowledgement.
Aurelia stood at the dome's edge, watching the marsh beyond with the look she usually saved for maps and knives. "Fissures won't stop here. But this line holds."
"Today," I said. The staff's ring cooled at last under my palm, satisfaction purring along its metal.
"Today," she agreed. Then, as if it were the most casual thing, "You held the surge well. Didn't over-spend."
I rolled my shoulder. "Trying that new thing—partial White Mercy instead of blowing the whole hymn."
Her mouth softened—approval, small and warm. "Good."
The System chimed like a brass coin tapped on stone.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ QUEST UPDATE │
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│ Twin Radiance: Keepers of the Dawn│ │ Objective 1/?: Ward Bride's Fen │ │ Status: COMPLETE │ │ Bonus: Oathbond >50% in combat │ │ Result: ACHIEVED (Peak 81%) │ ├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Rewards: │ │ ▸ EXP +18,500 │ │ ▸ Skill Mastery: Wardweave +1 │ │ ▸ Recipe: Lantern of Ten Safe Hours│ │ ▸ Reputation: Bride's Fen (Beloved)│ └───────────────────────────────────┘
Children pressed closer. One held up a little jar where a marshlight koi fingerling flickered like a living ember. "For luck," he said, solemn as a priest. "Mama says you should carry a light when you leave."
I accepted the jar as if it were a crown. The fish pulsed once, a tiny heartbeat in my hands. "I'll carry yours with mine."
Aurelia, pretending not to be charmed, cleared her throat. "Next fissure?"
The elder pointed north, to where the fen thinned toward black alders. "There's a place the fog doesn't sit right. The old ferry-ground. At night, the water forgets to reflect."
Aurelia's eyes met mine, all command-light. "We eat first. Then we go."
"Dawn's work," I said.
"Dawn's work," she echoed, and for a brief, private second the word meant ours.
We crossed the plankway under the new ward's quiet shimmer, listening to a village breathe without flinching, to marsh birds rehearsing the idea of morning at noon. I tucked the koi's little lantern in the crook of my elbow, and the light ticked against my ribs with each step—steady, living, willing.
Somewhere in the alder-shadow, something that hated the dawn pricked up its ears at the new fence and began to pace. We would meet it. We would keep meeting them until the fen remembered the habit of sunrise.
And when night fell, there would be a line in it that sang our names.