The storm began with a silence so profound it unsettled the entire city.
No wind moved the banners. The usual cries of vendors closing their stalls were hushed, voices caught in their throats as if every citizen instinctively sensed that something unnatural approached. Lyra stood on the library steps, her journal tucked against her chest, and looked up.
The sky was not gray but fractured. Thin lines, like cracks in glass, spidered across the heavens. At first they shimmered faintly, as if the light of sunset had been trapped in the wrong place. Then one of the lines deepened, glowing with a sickly brilliance.
The first drop fell.
It struck the flagstone near Lyra's boots and split in two sharp fragments. Not water, but glass — transparent and perfect as a teardrop frozen midfall, now broken into cutting edges.
Gasps rippled through the square.
Then the sky opened.
Thousands of crystalline droplets cascaded downward, tinkling against roofs and cobblestones with a sound like wind chimes turned violent. Tiles shattered. Horses screamed. People ducked into doorways as shards sliced through awnings, scattering sparks where they struck lanterns.
Lyra pressed herself against the library's heavy doors, shielding her face with her sleeve. A sharp sting cut across her forearm where a fragment grazed her. Thin blood welled bright against her skin.
"Lyra!"
Rienne's voice called from across the square. She stood bareheaded in the rain of glass, her crystalline arm blazing with light. Where the shards struck near her, they vibrated instead of breaking, chiming in resonance with her limb.
Lyra's breath caught. The Codex's warnings, the whispers of thinning — this storm was not weather. It was the Veil itself fracturing.
Kael burst from a side street, his flickering armor half-formed as he held a discarded shield above his head. He plowed through the storm like a soldier across a battlefield, every step a clang of steel against falling shards. He reached Lyra and shoved the shield over her.
"Inside!" he barked.
But Lyra's eyes were fixed on Rienne. The scientist raised her glass arm high, and the shards bent subtly in their fall, curving around her as if repelled. The glow inside her limb throbbed harder, each pulse syncing with the storm.
"She's drawing it to her," Lyra whispered.
Kael followed her gaze. His mouth hardened. "Or it's answering her."
The storm intensified. Shards the size of daggers now plummeted, embedding themselves into stone steps and wooden beams. Roofs cracked. A bell tower groaned, its spire perforated until the iron bell came crashing down in a roar of dust and splinters.
The city was panicking. People screamed as glass rained like knives. Some fled blindly; others cowered, covering their children with their own bodies. The guards were useless, shields shattered in moments.
But still Rienne stood.
Her eyes were closed, her face lifted toward the cracked sky. The light in her arm blazed until it illuminated her entire body in a cold blue radiance. The storm bent more sharply around her, spiraling, funneling.
"Rienne!" Lyra cried.
The scientist opened her eyes, and for the briefest instant, Lyra swore she saw stars reflected within them — not the stars of their sky, but a broken, alien constellation.
"The Veil is tearing," Rienne shouted above the storm. "Not here — above. In the higher layers. It's collapsing downward!"
Kael shoved Lyra toward the library door. "She'll be killed if she keeps standing there."
But Lyra shook her head. "No. She's not resisting it. She's listening."
The Codex, tucked in her satchel, grew hot against her ribs. She pulled it free with shaking hands. Its pages writhed, ink surging across the parchment until words stamped themselves in bold strokes:
"Shards fall when the Sky remembers its own fracture."
Lyra mouthed the line, her heart racing. The Codex was describing the storm not as destruction but as memory — the sky itself recalling when it had once been broken.
"Kael," she said, gripping his arm. "It's not just an accident. This storm is a memory bleeding into ours."
He scowled. "Memories don't kill people."
But even he hesitated as a shard the size of a spear shattered against his flickering pauldron, sparks raining down like fireflies.
Rienne lowered her glowing hand. At once, the spiral around her collapsed inward, shards clattering harmlessly at her feet. Her breath came ragged, sweat slick on her brow. She turned toward them, face pale but resolute.
"It's true," she said. "The Veil isn't just thinning — it's cracking along its oldest wounds. This isn't rain. It's fallout from another reality, bleeding down. A storm made of memory."
Lyra's knees nearly gave. "Then this will happen again."
Rienne nodded grimly. "Unless we mend it. And soon. Because the higher layers are collapsing like glass under too much pressure. When they shatter fully…"
She didn't finish. She didn't need to. The broken bell tower was enough proof.
The storm began to subside as suddenly as it had begun. Shards dwindled, clinking onto stone with softer chimes. The cracks in the sky dimmed, folding back into faint threads of light until only clouds remained — ordinary gray, bruised with twilight.
The square was a ruin. Blood streaked cobbles. Horses lay in heaps. Citizens crawled from doorways with haunted faces, clutching wounds wrapped in torn cloth. The air smelled of dust and iron.
Kael lowered his shield. His armor flickered out entirely, leaving him bare-armed and grim. "The Council will use this. They'll say it proves we're cursed."
Lyra clutched her journal, where she had already begun to scrawl everything she saw, even the trembling of her own hand. "Let them. The truth is worse than any curse."
Rienne staggered, clutching her crystalline forearm. The glow dimmed, but faint hairline cracks spidered up her flesh where none had been before.
Kael caught her by the shoulder. "You're hurt."
She shook her head. "Not hurt. Changed. The storm answered me, Kael. I felt it resonate through this arm. And in that moment, I knew — the Veil doesn't just separate. It reflects. Like glass."
Lyra swallowed. "Which means?"
Rienne met her eyes. "Which means every fracture reflects something that was. The more it cracks, the more those lost things bleed into our sky, our streets, our lives. That's what this storm was — not water turned to glass, but memory solidified."
Lyra's breath shuddered. She looked at the shards scattered across the square, each one gleaming with cold light. They weren't melting. They weren't fading. They were proof that reality's wounds left debris.
Kael's hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. "Then we're not just fighting shadows. We're fighting the sky itself."
The Codex whispered again, new words curling onto the page as though to echo him:
"When the Sky breaks, the ground remembers."
Lyra read the phrase aloud, her voice shaking. And as she did, she knew this was only the beginning.