The darkness of the Forbidden Tunnels pressed in, thick and suffocating, as Alicia held the silver needle she had recovered from the King's tattered belt. Clevatess's breathing was a ragged hiss of steam, his chest rising and falling in a violent rhythm that threatened to shatter the stone slab beneath him. The molten gold light beneath his skin pulsed with a mind of its own, trying to tear through the remaining fibers of his soul.
Alicia didn't have the King's effortless grace, but she had a warrior's steady hand. She began to weave the silver thread through the air just above his scorched skin, trying to create a stabilizing lattice—a "spirit-seam" to hold the Absolute Zero together. Every time the needle dipped near the solar heat, a spark of white fire jumped to her fingers, charring her skin, but she did not flinch.
You have to stay with us, she whispered, her voice a low growl against the encroaching dark. The family is waiting. The north is waiting. Don't you dare let a piece of glass finish what an army couldn't.
As the silver thread bit into the radiant energy, Clevatess's eyes snapped open. They weren't violet, and they weren't gold—they were a swirling, chaotic silver, reflecting the collision of two worlds. He reached out, his hand catching Alicia's wrist with a grip that turned her skin blue with cold.
The shadow... he gasped, his voice sounding like grinding glaciers. The shadow is calling, Alicia. It isn't just the Queen. Something in the dark... wants the light I carry.
Before she could ask what he meant, the vibration from the surface stopped. The silence that followed was worse than the thrumming of the engines. From the mouth of the tunnel they had just fled, a new sound emerged: the soft, rhythmic tapping of a cane against wet stone.
A figure stepped into the dim blue glow of Alicia's aura. It wasn't a soldier or a knight. It was a man in a pristine, white suit that seemed to repel the very shadows of the cave. He held a cane topped with a sun-glass orb, and his face was hidden behind a mask of polished gold.
The King looks a bit unraveled, the man said, his voice smooth and terrifyingly polite. I believe he has something that belongs to my employer.
Alicia stood, her blade glowing with a desperate intensity. Who are you?
The man tipped his gold-masked head. I am the Weaver of Noon. And I've come to collect the thread.