Chapter 4 – Fragments of the Fallen Sky
Part 1 – Aftermath and Council
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The storm had broken, but Duskveil still looked wounded.
Ash-crystal dust carpeted the streets; it clung to armor, rooftops, even the water in the canals, turning every reflection pale. The pylons around the city hissed where their runes had cracked, spilling thin threads of light into the fog. The air itself felt lighter—as though the world had exhaled and forgotten to breathe back in.
Inside the infirmary, the smell of herbs mixed with metal. Brann Kes sat on a cot while a medic cinched fresh bandages across his shoulder. He grumbled through clenched teeth but managed a grin when Aric passed. "Still got both arms. You owe me a drink."
Serae leaned against the window, ribs bound tight beneath her coat. "He'd owe you two if you'd kept your shield up."
Brann laughed, coughed, then laughed again. It was good to hear sound that wasn't screaming.
Eira occupied a bench near the back, surrounded by notes and instruments. The shard—Aric's shard—rested in a containment sphere beside her. It pulsed softly, as if matching the beat of a heart too slow to belong to any human.
Aric stopped beside it. "Still humming."
"More than humming," Eira said without looking up. "It resonates with the barrier field. Every time you walk near it, the amplitude spikes. It likes you."
"Or it remembers me."
"Maybe that's the same thing."
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By noon, the city's bell tower called a gathering. The upper hall of the Accord filled with officers, scribes, and representatives in the gray-gold armor of distant hubs. The marble floor was veined with runic light, and at the center of it waited Warden Malken and her guests.
The first to speak was Lord-Marshal Calren Vos, his crimson cape dragging like a banner through the dust. "We should have purged the Vale a century ago," he said, voice sharp enough to cut glass. "You let this infection breathe, and now it sings."
Malken's mechanical arm clicked as she folded it. "You'd rather burn half the continent than learn what caused it?"
"I'd rather it stop killing my hunters."
Their words rang off the walls. Aric stood near the dais, silent, the shard's containment sphere at his side. He could feel its vibration through the floorboards—steady, patient.
Eira stepped forward, adjusting her spectacles. "The resonance pattern matches a dormant lattice buried beneath Nareth. This isn't random corruption; it's a network waking up."
Vos sneered. "A scholar's fancy."
"Then explain this," Malken said, nodding to Aric.
He removed the sphere's lid. Light spilled upward—no explosion, only expansion. Threads of radiance coiled through the chamber, weaving themselves into a floating map of crystal veins. The lines pulsed across invisible continents, branching like living roots. Some glowed faintly; a few blazed bright gold.
Eira whispered, "Active sites. There are at least seven."
Silence filled the room. The glow painted every face with ghostlight.
Malken turned to Vos. "Still think fire solves it?"
He scowled but said nothing.
Aric closed the sphere again; the map folded into darkness. His ears still rang with the resonance, and behind his eyes he saw the same pattern burning. The shard had shown him where to go, even if no one else had realized it yet.
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That night, on the Hall's upper rampart, the fog had thinned enough to show a single star. Aric leaned on the parapet, the weight of his new armor—a patchwork of Seraphid crystal and leather—pressing against his shoulders. The hum inside the plates synced faintly with the shard in his pocket.
Serae joined him, carrying two tin cups of something that pretended to be wine. "They'll send you out again."
"They always do."
"You ever wonder what you'd be if you'd never picked up a blade?"
He thought of the faces lost in the peaks, of beasts whose eyes looked too human before they died. "No," he said. "There's nothing else left."
She nodded, not quite agreeing. The wind off the swamp tasted of salt, though the sea was leagues away.
Behind them, bells tolled once—warning, not alarm. The council was dispersing; orders would come by dawn. The next hunt waited somewhere under another sky.
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End of Part 1 – Aftermath and Council