Eleanor walked quickly down the stone corridor, her steps uneven, her body still trembling from what had happened in the chamber. The door had closed behind her but the sound of it clanging shut kept ringing in her ears, as if the chamber had not let her go completely.
She told herself she was safe, that the Nullith had disintegrated, that she had survived again. Yet her body refused to believe it. Her heart was still racing as if the shadow could tear through the walls and claim her.
She pressed her palm against her chest. The beat beneath her skin was not steady. It surged, stuttered, and surged again, like it had been altered. For a moment she thought she was still inside the Interlace, that the threads were still vibrating around her, but the corridor was only stone and silence. She closed her eyes, forced a long breath, and reminded herself that she had burned her anchor. The emergency route home had worked. She was back in her universe. She should feel safe.
But safety did not explain the shimmer on her skin.
She caught it out of the corner of her eye, a faint, silvery gleam running across her hands. At first she thought it was sweat, the residue of panic, but the light pulsed faintly as though answering something she could not see. She rubbed her hands together hard, trying to erase it. The shimmer faded but only for a moment before returning, stubborn and quiet, like a reminder. She shook her head. This was not normal.
Every crossing left something behind, her professors had said. They called it an fraymarks. A trace of the Interlace that clung to the body even after you returned. Most students treated it as a harmless nuisance. Some even joked about it, showing off the way their skin glowed faintly in dark classrooms or how they could hear the resonance in their ears before falling asleep. Eleanor had never taken it seriously until now. Even the dreams that older students always whispered about, where they would wake drenched in sweat because the threads had glowed around them again, as if pulling them back into the crossing without consent, Eleanor had thought those stories were exaggerated, shared only to frighten first-years. But after what she had just seen in the chamber, after the Nullith breaking through, she could no longer laugh at anything they had said.
Her ears were ringing again, high and thin, though there was no sound in the corridor. The hum drilled into her skull until she winced and pressed her hands over her ears, but it did not stop. The sound was inside her, not around her.
Her stomach tightened. Her professors had also warned about danger, though their warnings had always sounded like distant theory instead of practical threat. Too much echo residue could attract Nulliths even outside the Interlace. The traces acted like signals, beacons that told the shadows where to find you. But that was never proven. No Nullith had ever followed a Laceliner back to their universe.
Eleanor stopped walking. Her whole body stilled in the middle of the corridor. She wanted to dismiss it. She wanted to tell herself that she had imagined the shimmer, the hum, the lingering vibration in her chest. But she could not. They were real, and they were not going away. She looked at her hands again. The light flickered faintly across her skin.
Eleanor had hoped the house would be silent when she returned, but the glow of the kitchen lamp told her otherwise. Her mother was waiting, sitting upright at the table with that posture Eleanor had always hated because it meant she had been rehearsing disappointment.
"Where have you been? It's already late," her mother asked, her voice even, though Eleanor could hear the judgment pressed between the words.
"I was just out… thinking," Eleanor answered, too quickly, as if the excuse would close the matter.
Her mother gestured toward the plates on the table. "Go eat your dinner. We have to talk about something."
"No. I'm full," Eleanor said. She wasn't, but the thought of chewing anything made her stomach twist. "What do you want to talk about?"
Her mother's eyes did not shift, did not soften. "I talked to Mr. Croft. I told him you will be transferring school—"
The words struck harder than she expected. "What?" she blurted out, her throat tightening.
"He agreed. We will collect your things tomorrow—"
"Stop. Stop!" Eleanor's voice rose louder than she intended. She felt the heat in her cheeks, the sting in her chest. Her hands clenched at her sides because if she did not hold them still, she might slam them on the table.
She could not believe what she had just heard. After everything that happened in the chamber, after the Nullith, after the shimmer that still clung to her skin, her mother was plotting to erase her completely from this place. To exile her from the only university where the Interlace was studied, the only place where she had any chance of proving she was not just Elizabeth's failed daughter.
"This is for your own good, Eleanor."
Eleanor wanted to scream. She wanted her voice to cut through the room and split open the silence her mother always wrapped herself in. But her throat burned. The hurt pressed down so heavily on her chest that she was not even sure if sound would come out the way she wanted. The pain was louder than her voice.
"I am not leaving Lumenrift," she forced out. The words trembled, but they were the only words she had, and she repeated them in her mind as if saying them enough could carve them into stone.
Elizabeth exhaled slowly. That sigh was not surprise. That sigh was preparation. Eleanor knew it. She had seen it all her life. Her mother always seemed to have answers lined up like chess pieces, ready to move into place the moment Eleanor pushed back. The sigh meant her mother already knew how to end this conversation.
"You failed your First Stitching. What more can you do for the University?"
The statement sliced through Eleanor. She hated how calmly her mother said it, as though the failure had already been sealed and labeled and filed away. Her hands shook against her thighs, and she pressed them into her skirt to keep them from betraying the chaos inside her. She wanted to tell her mother that she had been inside the Interlace again. She wanted to say that she had seen the threads clearer, that she had nearly anchored one, that she had faced the Nullith and survived when others would have vanished forever. She wanted her mother to see her as more than a collapsed attempt written in the records of the University.
But when she opened her mouth, the words tangled. All she managed was, "You don't know what I can do."
Her mother tilted her head slightly. Eleanor hated that look. It was the same look the professors gave her when they compared her to Elizabeth. It was the look of someone who saw her only as potential wasted, brilliance that should have been inherited but instead sputtered out.
Her voice broke loose before she could stop it. "If you had just taught me nullmasking, I would have crossed the Interlace! But you didn't. You kept it from me. You didn't want me to succeed." The words rushed out. She felt her throat tighten and her palms grow hot, but she could not stop. "You wanted me to fail. You wanted me to never step where you did."
Elizabeth's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, Eleanor thought she had struck something true. But then her mother's voice cut back, firm and steady. "You think I did not teach you because I wanted you to fail? Do you know what nullmasking does?" She leaned forward. "It does not make you stronger. It makes you dependent. Every time you conceal your resonance, the multisigil bends. Do it long enough, and the bending becomes permanent. The mark warps. The lines scar. And when it scars, it never heals. You will burn your thread before you even cross. That is why I did not teach you. Not because I wanted you small, but because I wanted you whole."
Eleanor's breath caught. She had heard from her Professor of nullmasking being dangerous, but never like this. Never with her mother's intensity. She wanted to believe her, but the rage inside her clawed too hard to let go. "You don't understand. I faced a Nullith. I was there. I almost crossed. If I had nullmasking, I could have stayed. I could have anchored."
"You think standing before a Nullith makes you ready?" Elizabeth's voice sharpened, almost snapping now. "It makes you reckless. That is the only word for it. Reckless. Nullmasking will not save you. It will consume you. It consumes everyone who believes they can bend the Interlace for long without consequence. That is why I never taught you."
Eleanor's chest heaved. She wanted to slam her fists against the table, to scream that she did not care if the lines of her sigil burned and twisted forever, so long as she could prove she belonged here. But all that came was silence.
Eleanor's chest ached. Her pulse thudded in her ears. She wanted to grab her mother by the shoulders and shake her, force her to listen, force her to see that her daughter had not given up, that she was not broken. But she stayed rooted to the spot because she knew if she moved too quickly her mother would call it desperation, and Eleanor could not bear to be dismissed again.
She swallowed hard. "I am not leaving," she said again, slower this time, like each word was a stone she had to lift and place carefully.
"This is not a matter of yes or no. My decision is final."
"You can't do this to me. I worked hard for this! I failed my First Stitching just once!" Eleanor's voice cracked. The desperation made her throat raw.
Not once, she thought bitterly. Twice. The second time had been worse than the first, because she had no excuse. She had gone into the Chamber alone and failed again. The weight of that failure pressed against her ribs, but she shoved it down. It did not matter. Failure was not her identity. It should not erase the hours she spent hunched over texts, memorizing every theory about resonance, every calculation about thread stability, every lecture on the compass. It should not erase the sleepless nights she spent forcing herself to believe she could carry the legacy of her mother's name. If her mother refused to see that, then Eleanor would make her see it.
"And it took only once to prove you are not ready," Elizabeth said, her tone flat, her sigh carrying the weight of disappointment, as if she had already exhausted herself repeating the same truth. "You're a smart girl, Eleanor. But Lacelining is not for you—"
"How can you say that?" Eleanor stepped forward, her hands trembling though she clenched them tight. "I've devoted my whole life to reach this! I can train! I will train every day if that's what you want! Mom, this is my life. This is what I want—"
"This is not your life, Eleanor. It should never be. This was mine. And I am done with this life, and so are you." Elizabeth's voice did not rise. It did not need to. Calm finality hurt more than shouting. "Do you know how dangerous Lacelining has become? You can't even reach another universe! You will put yourself at risk in the Interlace if you continue this."
"You're just saying that because you don't want me to embarrass you."
For the first time, Elizabeth did not respond. Her face was still, unreadable, though the lamplight revealed the sharpness of her features. Eleanor saw her own reflection in them—the same dark brows, the same curve of the jaw, the same mouth that always tightened at the corners when forced to stay quiet. They were mirrors of each other, though her mother's presence was heavier, sharpened by a history Eleanor could never touch.
Her eyes flicked upward, and she saw it again—the mark that had defined Elizabeth's legacy. Her multisigil scar, etched across the skin of her forehead like a sigil burned into flesh by the Interlace itself. Every Laceliner bore their multisigil, but Elizabeth's was different. It was deeper, darker, carved as if the Interlace had branded her in acknowledgment of what she had conquered. Students at Lumenrift still whispered about it, still pointed to it as proof of why Elizabeth Kostova was the most brilliant Laceliner to ever live.
And standing across the table, Eleanor felt smaller than she had ever felt. That scar was proof that her mother had survived countless crossings. Eleanor's own multisigil pulsed faintly on her collarbone, delicate and untested, like a shadow pretending to be fire. She could not compete with a legacy engraved on skin and memory.
"You're afraid I will fail over and over again, and it will affect your reputation in the University," Eleanor said, her voice shaking but steady enough to continue. "It must have been really hard for you to have a daughter who couldn't be as good as you are."
The words burned her throat as she said them, but she could not stop. Every syllable felt like dragging glass out of her chest.
She thought of the stares during her First Stitching, the pity hidden behind polite silence. She thought of the professors who smiled too tightly when she raised her hand, as if answering correctly was the least she should be capable of. She thought of every moment she had been measured against a standard she had never chosen but was forced to bear.
And now her own mother was telling her to surrender.
The anger rose so high it drowned her fear. If she broke, then she would break loudly. If she failed, then at least it would not be in silence.
Elizabeth did not move. Her face remained unreadable, and that silence was worse than any response. It was not denial. It was not defense. It was simply absence, as if her mother had already decided that nothing Eleanor said could matter.
Eleanor's chest ached. The heat behind her eyes blurred the edges of the room, but she refused to let the tears fall in front of her mother. She would not let her weakness be another tally in the long list of disappointments Elizabeth had collected.
"You won't even answer me," Eleanor whispered, though her voice cracked. "You won't admit that you're ashamed of me. That's what this is really about. You can tell yourself it's for my safety, or for my future, but it's not. You just don't want anyone to see how much less I am compared to you."
Elizabeth drew in a slow breath, but her expression did not change. She sat like stone, hands folded neatly on the table, the lamplight glinting against her scar.
Eleanor could not take it anymore. The weight of the silence pressed too hard against her ribs, suffocating her. Her body moved before her thoughts caught up. She pushed back from the table, the chair scraping harshly against the floor.
"I won't let you decide my life," she said. Her fists trembled at her sides, but her steps were steady. "I don't care if you think I'm a failure. I don't care if you're embarrassed. I'm not leaving Lumenrift. And I'm not leaving Lacelining."
Her mother's eyes followed her but Elizabeth still did not speak.
Eleanor turned away before the silence could crush her again. She strode out of the kitchen, her pulse hammering in her throat, every step fueled by rage and grief so tangled she could no longer separate them. The walls of the house seemed to close in as she moved down the hallway, and when she reached the door, she pulled it open with more force than she intended. The night air rushed in cold and sharp.
She walked out without looking back, her chest burning, her skin still humming faintly with the echo of the Interlace. She did not know where she was going, only that she could not remain in that house another second.
She thought the cool air would calm her, but it did not. Her body felt too hot inside her clothes, her skin still tingling with the faint shimmer she had carried from the chamber. Every step was a release and a punishment at once. She wanted distance. She wanted to keep walking until the sound of her mother's voice could no longer reach her.
Then the sound of sirens broke the quiet.
At first she froze, confused by the sudden wail tearing across the night. The pitch rose and fell in waves, echoing off the empty streets. Eleanor stopped at the corner, her head turning toward the noise before her body could decide what to do. Sirens at this hour meant fire or worse, and she could not ignore them.
She started moving, her legs quickening into a near run as the sound drew closer. The streetlamps blurred past her as she followed the noise. The air shifted, the faint smell of smoke reaching her nose before she could see it. Her stomach clenched hard. She pushed forward, the weight in her chest tightening with every step.
Then she saw the dark plume rising into the sky. It was not far. Smoke curled upward in heavy spirals, orange light flickering underneath. Her eyes followed the glow. For a moment she thought of her house, of the kitchen lamp still burning when she left. The direction felt almost right, almost too close.
But when she cleared the next street and the view opened, she saw where the smoke truly came from.
It was not her house.
It was the University.
Her legs nearly buckled. She caught herself against the wall of a nearby shop, her palm slamming against the rough brick as she gasped. Her heart hammered so violently it hurt. The University—the one place she had fought to stay in, the one place her mother had just threatened to take from her—was burning before her eyes.
The glow of the fire was unmistakable now. She could hear shouts under the sirens, the distant thundering of people rushing to contain it. She could not move for several breaths. Her mind raced, every thought colliding with another, unable to settle on one clear answer.
And then it came—a sound so sharp and terrible it made her ears ring. It rose like a wail and shook the ground beneath her feet, so powerful that the glass in the streetlamps shattered one after another. Shards rained down like pieces of cold light, scattering across the pavement. Eleanor flinched, covering her head instinctively, her body recoiling from the sheer force of it. Her pulse jumped violently as she recognized the resonance, not the volume, but the very quality of it. She knew that sound. She hated that she knew it.
Panic surged through her chest, suffocating her. Could it be? Could the Nullith have found a way here? The thought hit her so hard she staggered back a step. She saw it disintegrate. She had seen it flicker like an unfinished image before vanishing into nothing, its form collapsing in on itself. The wardlace inside the chamber had stopped it—or at least she thought it had. But now the evidence screamed against her certainty. If this wail belonged to that monster, then she had not escaped it at all. She had lured it in. Into her universe. Into her city. And into her school.
Her knees felt weak. Her throat tightened with guilt so sudden and fierce she could not swallow. The University was burning, and if this was the Nullith's doing, then every life inside those walls was at risk because of her. Because she had failed again.
She was ready to run, though she had no idea where her body meant to take her, when she heard her name cut through the chaos. It was sharp and urgent, unlike the calm, deliberate tone her mother usually carried. Eleanor turned quickly, her heart leaping to her throat, and saw Elizabeth running toward her.
Her mother's hair had fallen loose from its pins, strands whipping against her face as she pushed herself forward. Her dress was creased and uneven, the hem dirtied by the street, her shawl half slipped from one shoulder. Her arms were tense, and her face was marked by something Eleanor had rarely seen before—unfiltered fear. The lines around her eyes deepened, her lips pressed into a firm line even as her breath came ragged. For a moment Eleanor hardly recognized her. This was not the composed Elizabeth Kostova who carried her reputation like armor. This was someone stripped down to raw panic.
"Go back to the house, and don't get out until I tell you so!" Elizabeth shouted, grabbing Eleanor's shoulders as soon as she reached her.
"Why? What's happening? Where are you going?" Eleanor's voice cracked, her mind spinning faster than her words could keep up.
"Don't be stubborn, Eleanor! Go back to the house—"
The second wail came before Elizabeth could finish. It was louder, closer, tearing through the night with an almost physical weight. Another explosion followed, rattling the street beneath them. Sparks burst in the distance, and the crowd around them broke apart. People screamed as they scrambled in every direction, fleeing from the glow of the fire.
Eleanor could hardly think. Her ears rang, her vision blurred from the sudden burst of light and dust, but her body stayed locked in place. Her mother's grip was the only thing grounding her in the chaos.
"Run, Eleanor!" Elizabeth's voice rose above the storm of sound. She pushed Eleanor back with both hands, firm and desperate, before turning sharply toward the University.
Eleanor stumbled, catching herself on her palms as her mother's figure darted away from her and into the smoke. Her chest tightened with an ache so fierce it stole her breath. Every part of her wanted to scream, to follow, but her mother's final command still rang in her ears.
Eleanor was indeed stubborn, and her mother had always known it. The more she was told to stop, the more her legs carried her forward. Even with people rushing past her, their faces drained with fear, their voices tangled in screams, Eleanor pressed against the current and ran in the opposite direction. Her chest ached as she called out for her mother, her throat raw from shouting, but she did not care. She could not let their last words to each other remain an argument about her future, spoken in anger rather than love. If something happened to Elizabeth now, and Eleanor had allowed her pride to close that door, she would never forgive herself.
This was her fault. The thought carved into her with every pounding step. The wail, the smoke, the terror—it all felt like the aftermath of her mistake inside the chamber. She could not stop thinking that the University was under attack because she had failed, because she had let something escape with her. The guilt was so heavy she could hardly breathe, yet she forced her body forward, her legs burning with the effort, her heart beating so fast it felt like it would tear out of her chest.
When she reached the University gates, she stopped so suddenly that her whole body jolted forward, her breath choking her. She was stunned by what she saw. The great institution, once untouchable in her eyes, stood swallowed by fire and smoke. Towers that had gleamed white in the daylight were fractured, their stones collapsing into heaps of ruin. Flames licked through the windows of the lecture halls where she had spent her days with books and ink-stained fingers. Ash fell like snow on her shoulders, and the air was thick with the smell of burning wood, oil, and something she could not name but knew would cling to her memory forever.
She had grown up believing the University was indestructible, that its walls and spires were more than buildings. They had represented history, power, knowledge—everything she wanted to claim for herself. And now it looked fragile, broken down to rubble and smoke, no more permanent than a house of cards in a storm. Eleanor's chest tightened with disbelief, and tears gathered in her eyes before she could stop them.
She stepped forward, her legs trembling, unable to tear her gaze from the destruction. The sight hollowed her out. She wanted to scream but could not find her voice. She wanted to run inside, but her body shook with terror of what she might find.
Then she heard it again. The wail. It was sharper this time, no longer stretched across the distance, but close—so close her ears rang and her knees nearly buckled beneath the force of it. The sound pressed into her skull like blades, rattling her teeth, sinking into her bones until her entire body vibrated with its resonance. Her heart thrashed against her chest, desperate to flee, but her feet stayed locked to the ground as if the cobblestones had swallowed her whole. She did not want to turn around. Every muscle in her body told her not to, that whatever loomed behind her was far beyond anything she could understand, yet the shadow falling over her shoulders gave her no choice.
Her breath faltered as she forced herself to look. And when she did, she wished she had not.
It towered above her, so tall it seemed to scrape the smoke-thickened sky. A Nullith, but not like the one she had faced in the Interlace. This one was something greater, a monstrous form crowned with jagged spines that arched backward like the broken peaks of a shattered crown. Its body was a distortion, a rip in the order of reality itself, its edges bent and warped as though physics struggled to hold it in place. Segments of its form shifted in and out of focus, as if her eyes could not decide whether it was solid flesh or pure shadow. Every step it took twisted the air around it, bending light and sound, pulling gravity into its command. The cobblestones beneath its weight cracked and floated before shattering into dust.
Eleanor's stomach lurched, and her throat went dry. She could hardly breathe. Her mind screamed at her to run, yet her body was trapped between terror and awe. She could not tell if this was the same Nullith that had followed her from the Interlace or if it was something worse entirely, something that had been waiting for the right moment to tear itself free from its prison. Its presence made her feel small in a way she had never felt before, not even under the weight of her mother's judgment. This was not failure. This was annihilation.
She wanted to deny it, to insist it could not be real, but the tremor beneath her feet, the sting of its resonance clawing against her skin, and the crown of jagged spines marked it undeniably real.
Eleanor's multisigil stirred without her command. She did not summon it. She did not even think of it. The mark beneath her collarbone burned hot enough to sear through skin, and she clawed at her chest in desperation, wishing she could tear it off, rip it free, silence it before the Nullith before her noticed.
But the monster did notice. Its jagged crown tilted, its faceless shadow leaned closer, and its steps cracked the ground until it was near enough she could smell the static rot clinging to its breath. She knew it was about to devour her, gnaw through her body and drag her to pieces, when a light tore open the air. White, so white she had to shut her eyes. She stumbled back, shielding her face with both hands, but the burning in her chest grew hotter, unbearable, as though fire had lodged itself in her ribs. She screamed and pressed her palm into the multisigil, begging it to stop, but it only surged harder, and the world gave way beneath her.
The ground folded into itself. The streets, the smoke, the ruined gates of the University—all bent, compressed, and dissolved into nothing, until she was weightless. The air was gone. The earth was gone. She was floating in a darkness so vast it crushed the breath from her lungs. But it was not empty.
They were everywhere. Nulliths. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, swarming in every direction, faceless bodies shifting like smoke and shadow, eyes that were not eyes glimmering faintly in the void. They did not rush her at once. They hovered, circling, like predators savoring the moment before a feast. She was the feast. A Laceliner, exposed, stripped of her instruments, her compass, her anchor rings. She had nothing. Not even a way home.
Her chest heaved. Her arms shook. She knew this place. She had crossed into it before. The Interlace. But how? She had not opened a compass. She had not prepared a thread. She had not burned her token. Yet here she was, cast into the endless dark, threads arching above her like bridges of living glass. They glimmered, calling her name with their hum, their resonance swelling in her ears until it was deafening. She clutched at her head, wishing she could quiet the sound, but there was no time.
She had to act. Even if it was impossible. Even if her hands were bare and her body already quaking from the burn of her multisigil. She flung her arm upward, stretching toward the nearest strand. Its light was dazzling, painfully bright, almost close enough to hold. She reached, fingers outstretched, praying, demanding, bargaining with the universe that this one time it would not let her fail.
And then it happened.
A Nullith lunged. Its grip coiled around her arm, black and endless, colder than death, and she felt fire consume her from the inside out. Her veins burned. Her bones rattled. Her vision fractured into shards of light. She tried to scream but nothing came. Her throat was locked, her body frozen, her soul tearing in half. The thread she had nearly caught trembled. For a moment she thought it would hold her, save her, anchor her to some other world. But the strain was too much. The sound of it snapping rang louder than any scream she could ever make.
And then she felt.
She did not know if the Interlace swallowed her or if the Nullith dragged her under. All she knew was the pull, the crushing pull, dragging her into a void deeper than void, until even the light of the threads disappeared.