Ember on a Chain
Thane — Flamebound Warrior
The summons rode against Thane's breastbone all the way back to camp, its wax still faintly warm where it brushed his skin. He tried not to think about it. He failed.
The men were quieter than usual as they broke down the perimeter. No one wanted to speak first about what they'd seen. Their glances kept skittering from the scorched earth where the Rime-Claw had fallen to the place where Ardis had stood and then not stood at all.
Khyren moved among them, barking orders with more volume than strictly necessary, as if sound alone could drive away the memory of frost-dust and violet light. When the last of the gear was packed and the wounded secured on litters, he came to stand beside Thane.
"Orders, Commander?" he asked, voice carefully neutral.
"We return to the Citadel at first light," Thane replied. His throat felt dry. "You'll take point on the march. I have… correspondence to prepare."
Khyren's gaze flicked briefly to Thane's breastplate, as if he could see the letter sitting beneath it. "Concord business?"
"Triumvirate," Thane said.
Khyren exhaled slowly. "Of course it is."
They walked back toward the heart of the camp together, frost crunching underfoot. Breath steamed around every word.
"Sir," Khyren said after a moment, quieter now, "that thing should have killed us. All of us."
"I'm aware," Thane replied.
"I'm not complaining that it didn't," Khyren added hastily, then grimaced as his ribs protested. "I just… I have a right to know if that sort of miracle is going to happen again or if I should start making my peace with the gods properly."
Thane almost smiled. It came out as a crooked line more than anything.
"If I knew how to repeat that," he said, "I'd be more afraid than you are."
Khyren glanced sideways at him. "Because of him?"
Thane didn't answer. The image rose anyway: Ardis half-wreathed in shadow, expression set with furious concentration, eyes bright as coins in dim water. Their magics meeting and snapping together like they'd been designed for it.
"Yes," he said at last. "Because of him. Because of what happened between us."
Khyren was smart enough not to press further where the men could hear. He clapped Thane's shoulder once, a solid, grounding weight, then moved away to see to the sentries.
Thane watched him go, then headed for his tent.
Inside, the air was marginally warmer. A brazier glowed low in one corner, its faint light licking along the interior walls. Thane unbuckled his armor with automatic motions, each strap and clasp freeing his lungs a little more. When he stripped down to shirt and trousers, the parchment of the summons slid loose and fell onto the small folding table.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then he reached out and laid two fingers lightly on the Concord sigil pressed into the wax. It thrummed faintly under his touch—residual magic, nothing like the living presence he'd felt when it first appeared.
Triangular Inquest: Critical Breach of Arcane Law.
He had broken plenty of things in his life—siege lines, enemy wards, his own bones more times than he could easily count—but until today, he had never thought of himself as a breach.
The shard beneath his sternum pulsed once. Harder than before.
He hissed softly and pressed the heel of his hand against his chest. "Enough," he muttered. "We're done for the day."
The fire did not agree.
Heat flared under his palm, quick and sharp. For a heartbeat, it felt as if someone had twisted the shard too far, like a knife turned in a wound. His vision blurred at the edges. A faint wash of cold lapped at the outer ring of the burn, as if something else—something not his—had decided to crawl along its surface.
When the sensation eased, he was breathing harder than he ought to be from standing still.
Thane drew his hand away.
A faint print of light lingered against his shirt for a moment, outlining his fingers from the inside. Then it faded.
He stared down at his own chest with a mixture of anger and unease.
"Pull yourself together," he told the shard. It had always answered orders, if not words. "We walk out at dawn. That's all you have to do. Burn when I say. Sleep when I don't. Like you've always done."
The shard pulsed again, off-beat.
He turned away and busied himself with writing the field report.
It was an ugly, crooked thing of a document, more gaps and equivocations than fact. He described the Rime-Claw, because that could not be hidden. He described the casualties, because those had to be accounted for. He described the Concord Seal, because no one could pretend that hadn't happened.
He did not describe the feeling of their magics weaving together.
He did not put the word resonance onto paper.
By the time he finished, the brazier had sunk to sullen embers and his hand ached. He sealed the report with his own insignia and tucked it into his satchel beside the Concord summons.
The shard flared one last time before sleep, a restless, pacing heat that made it hard to lie still. When he finally drifted off, his dreams were full of frost breaking apart into dust and a column of braided light bursting upward from a beast's chest, carrying him with it.
He woke before dawn.
Not because of the cold or the thin mattress, but because his heart was hammering hard enough to hurt, each beat staggered and strange. Heat raced through his veins in uneven bursts. His fingers curled involuntarily.
He sat up sharply, hand flying to his sternum.
"Enough," he said again, breathing hard.
The flame inside him writhed as if something unseen had taken hold of its edges and was tugging. Not pulling outward exactly—pulling away.
As if it wanted to be somewhere else.
"Ardis," he said without meaning to.
The shard spasmed.
He sucked in a sharp breath and swung his feet to the floor. The frost-damp canvas under his boots should have been bitterly cold. It felt only mildly cool.
There was no time to sit and brood. Men needed orders. Horses needed saddling. The Citadel was a hard day's ride away, and the sooner he could place this entire disaster into the hands of people whose job it was to be afraid of such things, the better.
He dressed, buckled on his armor, and stepped out into the pallid light.
The camp moved like a well-trained beast. Tents came down. Packs were strapped. Wounded were loaded carefully into the wagons. Khyren moved through it all with his usual brusque efficiency, his only concession to his injuries the occasional tightness around his eyes when he thought no one was looking.
"Morning, Commander," he greeted. "Or whatever this grey is."
"Grey is fine," Thane said. "We march in ten."
Khyren's gaze narrowed faintly, assessing him. "You look like you didn't sleep."
"I didn't," Thane said shortly.
Khyren's lips quirked. "So everything's back to normal."
Before Thane could decide whether to be annoyed or grateful for that, a sudden flicker of heat ran down his right arm. It was not strong enough to show as visible flame, but it stung the inside of his skin.
He flexed his fingers slowly.
Khyren's eyes tracked the movement. "Shard misbehaving?"
"It's been a long day," Thane said. "For both of us."
"Yesterday was a long day," Khyren corrected. "Today is an ominous continuation." He sobered. "If you need to fall back to the wagon—"
"I don't," Thane cut in. "I ride. We're not limping into the Citadel like runners from a lost battle."
Khyren nodded once. "As you say."
The march south felt longer than it should. Frost gave way to hardened earth and then to the muddy ruts of the main road, but the cold clung in a way that had nothing to do with weather. Every time Thane's thoughts drifted toward the Rime-Claw, toward Ardis, the shard flared—once in hot protest, once in something that felt disturbingly like acknowledgement.
By mid-morning, the pain had settled into a kind of constant, low simmer. Not enough to cripple him. Enough that he was always aware of it. His hands shook once when he reached for his canteen; he disguised it by pretending the strap had snagged.
"Commander?" Khyren said quietly, drawing his horse alongside Thane's. "You're pale."
"So are you," Thane said. "Yours comes with more blood."
Khyren snorted, then sobered again. "I've seen shard-sick men before. After overchanneling. After ward breaches. This isn't that."
"And since when did you become a shard-physician?" Thane asked.
"Since it became my job to make sure you don't collapse off your horse," Khyren replied. "If something is wrong, I need to know what we're riding into."
Thane hesitated.
The shard pulsed again, as if offended by being talked about.
"I don't know what's wrong," he said finally. "That's the problem."
Khyren studied him. "Is it… because he's gone?"
Thane almost denied it on reflex.
Then the thought sank deeper, and the shard responded with another sharp, twisting heat, as if the idea itself had teeth.
He looked away toward the distant outline of the Citadel's outer walls, hazy on the horizon.
"I don't know," he said again. "But it started when he left. And it's worse now than it was last night."
Khyren cursed softly under his breath. "Then let's hope whoever sits you down in front of the brazier at Command has more answers than rules."
By the time the Fortress Citadel came fully into view, the shard felt like a stone lodged under his sternum. Every breath scraped past it. Heat leaked outward in slow, irregular pulses, warming the metal of his breastplate from the inside.
The Citadel loomed against the afternoon sky—high walls of pale stone streaked with old soot, banners bearing the Flamebound sigil snapping in the wind. The great central chimney of the heart-forge exhaled a steady column of smoke, darker than the low clouds.
The sight had always steadied Thane. Today, it made something in him tighten.
They passed through the outer gates under the eyes of sentries in crimson cloaks. Salutes were automatic, tired, respectful. Someone took the reins of Thane's horse. Someone else rushed forward to help with the wounded. The noise and motion of the courtyard closed around them, familiar and overwhelming.
"Commander Vaelor," called a voice from the steps of the main keep. "Report."
Thane looked up.
High Marshal Soren waited at the top of the stair, hands clasped behind his back. The years since Thane's cadet days had etched more lines into the man's face, but the eyes were the same—sharp, dark, assessing. The kind that weighed everything they saw and decided its fate.
Thane climbed the steps, boots thudding against worn stone. By the time he reached the top, his chest was burning.
"High Marshal," he said, dropping into a short bow. "Perimeter breach along the northern Marches. Wards triggered. We engaged and destroyed a Rime-Claw."
The courtyard noise dimmed slightly, as if the very word drew the air in.
Soren's expression didn't change. "Destroyed," he repeated. "You're certain."
"Yes."
"With how many casualties?"
"Three dead," Thane said. "Five injured. Khyren Eln is walking wounded. The rest will live."
Soren's gaze moved over his face, down to his posture, then flicked briefly to the men below. "A Rime-Claw takes twenty Flamebound and a week of planning in the old histories," he said. "You did it with a half-strength scouting unit."
"We had help," Thane said.
The shard flared at the memory.
Soren went very still. "From whom?"
Thane swallowed. "A Shadow Mage."
Silence fell with an almost physical weight.
For a heartbeat, Soren's composure cracked. It was a small thing—a twitch at the corner of his mouth, a flare of heat behind his eyes—but Thane knew him too well to miss it.
"And you fought beside him," Soren said. It wasn't a question, his expression weary.
"Yes."
"Willingly?"
"Strategically," Thane said. "If he hadn't anchored the beast, we all would have died. If I hadn't burned the core while he held it—"
He cut himself off before the rest of that sentence could spill out. Before he could mention the column of braided light, the way the world had seemed to buck under them like a startled horse.
Soren watched him.
"You received a Concord Seal," he said. Again, not a question.
Thane nodded. "A Triangular Inquest. Summons to the Central Magisterium within three days."
Soren exhaled slowly through his nose. "Show me."
Thane reached into his breastplate, fingers brushing against parchment that now felt hotter than the metal around it, and held out the letter.
Soren took it, broke the seal, and read. The faint glow of the Concord script painted his lined face in soft gold for a moment.
When he finished, he folded the letter carefully and returned it.
"This is not ideal," he said.
"That's one word for it," Thane replied.
The shard twisted under his ribs again. His jaw clenched against the surge.
Soren's eyes shifted slightly, tracking the tension. "When did it start?" he asked.
Thane hesitated. "When did what start?"
"Don't waste my time, Vaelor," Soren said, voice low. "You're standing as if someone has nailed a brand into your chest and is turning it by degrees."
Thane let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"After the fight," he said. "After he left. It was… manageable in camp. Worse on the road. It feels as if the shard is being pulled in two directions."
Soren's expression didn't change, but his hand tightened slightly on the rail. "Do you remember the courier," he asked quietly, "when you were nine?"
The memory rose with unwelcome clarity: the burned cloak, the staggering steps, the way the man's eyes had fixed on him and something impossible had crashed through his chest.
"Yes," Thane said.
"I told you you felt nothing that day," Soren said. "I lied."
Thane blinked. "What?"
"You were a child," Soren continued. "A frightened one. The Council was already looking for patterns they didn't like. If I had let you say the word out loud, someone from Concord would have heard it and dragged you down into their archives before you finished your training."
"What word?" Thane asked, though he already knew.
Soren's mouth twisted. "Resonance."
The shard pulsed at the sound like a muscle flinching under a prod.
"Stop," Thane said, sharper than intended. "Don't—"
"Say it?" Soren finished. "They don't like it named. They like the thing even less."
He glanced toward the banners snapping in the wind, as if making certain none of them had suddenly sprouted ears.
"You will go to the Magisterium," he said. "You will answer when spoken to. You will not volunteer more than they ask. And you will not use that word. Do you understand me?"
Thane's hands curled at his sides. "And when they ask how a half strength unit brought down a Rime-Claw?" he asked. "When they ask me to walk them through what happened, breath by breath?"
"Then you tell them you coordinated with an Umbramancer under field necessity," Soren said. "You emphasize the threat. You emphasize survival. You let them draw their own conclusions about anomalies."
He stepped closer, voice dropping.
"And under no circumstances," he said, "do you tell them how it felt."
Thane swallowed. "That may be difficult to avoid."
"Then make it less difficult," Soren replied. "You're Flamebound, Vaelor, not a scribe with ink-spots for a backbone. Learn to leave things unsaid."
The shard flared again, a sharp, protesting heat. Thane winced despite himself.
Soren's gaze dropped to Thane's sternum.
"How bad?" he asked.
"Manageable," Thane lied.
Soren looked unimpressed. "You'll take a healer before you ride. If this is distance-strain, it will only worsen the farther you get from the Marches."
"Distance-strain," Thane repeated softly. "Is that the official term now?"
"It's the one that doesn't get you chained in a Concord cell," Soren said. "They've been tracking cases for years without admitting they're tracking them. No one's shard burns like that for nothing."
"How many?" Thane asked.
Soren's jaw tightened. "Enough."
"And how many came back?" Thane pressed.
Soren didn't answer.
That, more than anything, made Thane's stomach go cold.
"Your escort leaves at dawn tomorrow," Soren said. "You'll take a small detail only—too many soldiers makes the Triumvirate nervous. Khyren will remain here to hold your command."
Khyren would hate that, Thane thought, but he was also the only one Thane trusted to keep the border from tearing itself apart in his absence.
"Yes, sir," he said aloud.
Soren studied him for one long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he reached out and gripped Thane's shoulder.
"You are not the first to stand where you are," he said. "They will try to make you feel as if you are. Don't let them."
Thane met his gaze. "Were you one of them?"
Soren's mouth quirked humorlessly. "I was almost one of them. It was enough."
He dropped his hand. "Go. See the healers. Then rest. You will need a clear head."
Thane bowed again and turned away before the shard could betray another flare on his face.
The healer's chamber smelled of sage and hot iron. A Radiant Adept in pale robes ran his hands a few inches over Thane's chest, eyes narrowed in concentration. Patterns of faint light flickered over his fingers as his magic brushed against the shard.
After a moment, he frowned.
"Your binding is stable," he said. "No cracking. No signs of physical damage."
"It doesn't feel stable," Thane said tightly.
The healer's hand passed lower, then higher, tracing the edges of something only he could see. "There is… interference," he said slowly. "Something pressing at the field from outside. Not Void. Not rot. Like another signature trying to occupy the same place and failing."
"Is that dangerous?" Thane asked.
The healer made a helpless little gesture. "Only if you survive long enough to let the Magisterium decide it is."
Thane stared at him. "That's reassuring."
The man gave him a thin, apologetic smile. "Bedrest and meditation are my usual prescriptions for shard agitation. You have neither time nor patience for them, and distance will likely worsen matters. So I suggest you do the only thing left."
"And what is that?"
"Pretend you feel fine," the healer said. "Until you do not."
It was poor advice, it was also the only advice anyone seemed able to give.
By the time Thane stood on the inner courtyard the following dawn, a small escort ready behind him, the shard felt like a coal someone kept jostling with a poker. Every time he shifted in the saddle, heat flared along his ribs, then faded too quickly, leaving a hollow ache in its wake.
Khyren walked beside his horse as far as the gate.
"You get to go to the grand halls and argue with three Councils at once," Khyren said. "I get to babysit a border and fill out your paperwork. I'm starting to suspect the gods like you less."
"They haven't seen you write reports," Thane said. "They don''t know what they're getting into."
Khyren's mouth twitched. The humor faded as they reached the gate.
"Be careful," he said quietly. "Out there, I can drag you back from a bad decision."
Thane tightened his grip on the reins to keep from clenching his hand over his chest again. "I'll be back."
"If you're not," Khyren said, "I'll assume you died calling someone important an idiot."
"That seems likely," Thane conceded.
They held each other's gaze for one last moment. Then Thane nudged his horse forward.
The gates swung open.
The road to the Central Magisterium cut through the heartlands like a scar. Villages thinned, replaced by rolling, frost-dusted fields and the occasional waystation. The escort rode in disciplined silence, the jingle of tack and the muffled thud of hooves the only constant sounds.
With every mile they put between themselves and the Marches, the shard grew more restless.
At first, it was just a deeper ache. Then the rhythm of the pulses began to slip, beats jumping or doubling without warning. A few hours past midday, a flare of heat shot down his left arm so sharply that his fingers spasmed on the reins. His horse tossed its head in protest.
"Commander?" the sergeant riding behind him called. "Are you—"
"I'm fine," Thane said through his teeth.
The shard disagreed. Another wave of heat followed, chased almost immediately by a wash of biting cold that left gooseflesh along his ribs. It felt as though something in his chest were being stretched—pulled along a line he could not see.
For one dizzy, disorienting moment, he had the absurd sensation of standing in two places at once.
Horse beneath him.
Frost underboots.
Smoke in his mouth.
Pine in his lungs.
He blinked hard.
The impression snapped, leaving him breathless.
He dragged in a lungful of cold air. It tasted like open fields and distant chimneys, not northern forest.
"Keep riding," he told the escort. "We don't stop until the wayhouse at dusk."
They obeyed.
He held on.
By the time the sun slid behind the low hills, the pain had settled into a fierce, grinding pressure, like two opposing currents pushing against the same narrow channel. Every now and then, it spiked—sharp heat followed by sharp cold—as if whatever sat at the other end of that unseen line had stumbled or changed direction.
He thought, unwillingly, of Ardis.
Of shadows trying to behave while their source was dragged somewhere he didn't want to go.
He pushed the thought away, but the shard pulsed in rough sympathy.
At the wayhouse, he dismounted carefully, aware that his legs did not feel entirely steady. The sergeant opened his mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it.
Inside, the common room's fire snapped merrily in the hearth. Thane stood too close to it without meaning to, letting the external heat confuse the sensation of his own.
He stared into the flames.
For years, fire had been simple. Tool, weapon, companion. It obeyed. It burned. It warmed. It killed.
Today, it felt like a question.
"Commander?" the sergeant said cautiously from the doorway. "Do you require anything?"
"Sleep," Thane said. "And for once, a quiet mind."
The sergeant hesitated. "Can we provide either?"
Thane almost smiled. "No. But you can make sure no one wakes me unless the roof is caving in."
"Yes, sir."
He slept badly.
When he dreamed, it was not of Rime-Claws or Councils. It was of walking down a long corridor lined with torches, each flame tipping sideways as he passed, straining toward some unseen center point. At the far end of the hall, a door stood half-open. Light poured through the crack—not red, not gold, but that same impossible interwoven color he had seen in the clearing.
Someone stood beyond it, just out of sight.
He woke with his heart hammering and the taste of frost on his tongue.
The shard burned hotter than ever.
"We're not even halfway," he said into the dark.
The heat in his chest pulsed once, as if in agreement—or in protest. He couldn't tell which.
He lay back, staring up at the shadowed rafters, and realized with a cold, weary certainty that whatever waited for him at the Central Magisterium would not simply be three Councils and a line of questions.
It would be Ardis.
It would be the end of this pulling.
Or the start of something much worse.