Chapter 38 Lyra
Lyra
The dress is black, but not the harsh black of the stiff mourning cloth from Solvandyr. This black is soft, layered, faintly iridescent when the light from the lantern touches it, like oil on water. The fabric pools around my ankles, sleeveless and open at the throat.
My hair hangs loose down my back.
I almost never wear it this way. In the Sunspire, it was always braided tightly. Loose hair was a liability, something an opponent could grab.
I turn to Elspeth. “Will I do?”
She’d arrived at Kaelen’s door an hour earlier, the dress folded in her arms as she all but shoved me inside. Adjusting the fall of the fabric, she smooths my hair back with elegant fingers and nods once, as if she’s satisfied. “You look ready.”
When she throws her arms around me, I’m not prepared. My throat grows tight as she squeezes. “Thank you for the dress.”
She breathes in. It sounds choked. “Thank you for Sera.”
And then she’s gone, back to their rooms to be with her. My smile spreads across my face as I glance down again, hearing her called words. “You can go in now!”
My stomach knots as the door swings open. “Will I do for… whatever we’re doing?”
I know that it’s some kind of ceremony, but nobody explained more than that. Darian enters first, and my cheeks flush at his appreciative look. Kaelen and Eres follow, and I find myself biting the inside of my cheek. They make me feel… hot. Flustered, as if I don’t know where to put my hands.
I’m not entirely certain that I like the sensation.
“The moon’s nearly there,” Darian says. He’s dressed, as they all are, in a simple black shirt and dark trousers. “We should go.”
No one argues.
We walk together through the keep and out into the night, using the back door that I followed with Kaelen for mine and Eres’s Binding ceremony.
The path down to the Gloam holds small, flickering lanterns set into the ground at intervals, softening the darkness.
The air smells of damp earth, and river moss, and something sweeter.
I walk between Eres and Darian. Kaelen walks at my back, blocking out the worst of the breeze. Although I don’t feel as cold as I thought I would. Every so often, Kaelen’s hand brushes my back.
The Gloam opens up before us like a ribbon of black glass. “This is a service?”
“The Passing,” Darian murmurs. “It’s where we say our farewells to the fallen, and send their souls safely on to Erevan’s keeping.”
The hair at the back of my neck prickles.
“Do you not do something similar?” Eres asks. “In Solvandyr?”
Slowly, I shake my head. “For us, death is an ending, nothing more. We have a lot of festivals. Offerings, for wealth and health and victory, but nothing like this.”
Nothing that ever felt as real as this. “How do you think they came into being? The gods?”
“You don’t know?” Eres stops. Darian, too, both of them looking down at me.
It suddenly feels like a ridiculous omission in my education. “It’s never discussed in Solvandyr. Aedryn just… is.”
“There is an origin story,” Kaelen murmurs at my back. “We learn it in childhood. Would you like to hear it?”
To my surprise, it’s Darian that speaks.
We keep walking, our footsteps slowing as his words trickle out into the air.
“In the dawning age, when this earth was little more than stone and dirt and mortals eked out the barest scraps of survival, two brothers came to be. None knew where they came from, for it was not our place, though some believed they had been banished to this world from the sky above as a punishment.”
I let myself fall into the lilt of his voice.
He tells the story as if he knows it as well as his own.
“Aedryn was the elder. He rose from the ground first, his skin blazing with light so bright that few could bear to look at him. He cast the first shadow behind him, and from it, his brother, Erevan, emerged. They had gifts that none had ever seen, and they used it to shape the empty earth into their own preferences. Two cities rose up in their wake.”
Solvandyr. Umbraxis. Light, and dark. Enthralled, I keep my words sealed inside my mouth.
“Their bond was unbreakable. Two sides of the same coin, since one could not exist without the other. But as time moved on, mortals gravitated toward Aedryn’s warmth; they worshipped his brilliance, his fire, and he in turn basked in the devotion they offered.
Erevan, quiet and steady, withdrew to the small boundaries of Umbraxis, and devoted himself to the people who hadn’t been blinded by Aedryn’s arrogance.
The distance between them grew wider, until a chasm emerged that they could not overcome. ”
Darian’s eyes gleam in the dark. “The final rift came when Aedryn sought to gift those who followed him with their own power, with the instruction to spread it wherever they could. Erevan, concerned, warned him that a balance was needed. But the light grew, and grew, and those gifted mortals began to look to Umbraxis, at the darkness that ran alongside them, as a threat. And Aedryn, his head turned by those who praised him, began to listen.”
“In defence of the mortals he’d grown to care for, Erevan granted erevas to a chosen few—the ability to wield the shadows to defend Umbraxis, and to counter the light that crept upon them from every side.
He created a mountainous territory of seven snow-filled peaks to hide Umbraxis from the bright gaze of Solvandyr.
But the light continued to spread, and over time, the darkness grew smaller. ”
“When Erevan finally withdrew from this world, called back to the sky above and believing his twin to be lost, Aedryn realized his mistake and grieved deeply. He followed his brother back to the place they came from, and abandoned his followers. Incensed, Aedryn’s lightbringers turned their anger to eradicating Erevan’s darkwielders, and a war grew from their confusion and their grief.
Though Aedryn does not look, not wishing to be reminded of his hubris, Erevan still watches in the shadows.
The Lightbringers may not remember, but the Darkwielders do not forget. ”
His voice trails off.
I’ve stopped moving.
Nobody knows how the war began.
But they do. They remember.
Darian curls his fingers around mine. “We should go.”
The Gloam is as I remember, slow-moving and impossibly dark, showing the moon in a bright silver reflection. The banks slope gently down, stones slick with moisture. On the far side, only empty space stretches out.
Others are already here.
They stand in small clusters along the bank, dressed in similar clothing to us. Some hold baskets, others empty-handed.
The air is heavy. Peaceful.
Kaelen shifts, taking the space beside me as Darian walks directly ahead, and into the river. My breath catches. “What’s he doing?”
“A Dreamwalker always leads the ceremony,” Kaelen is watching him too, his eyes soft. “We couldn’t do this without him.”
The water reaches his calves, then his knees. He stops there, standing perfectly still, dark hair loose and his pale skin stark against the black current. The moonlight catches him, outlining his form in silver.
He closes his eyes, and as if a silent signal has been reached, the first person steps forward.
An older man, stooped but steady, carries a small woven basket. He stops at the water’s edge, bare feet sinking slightly into the mud, and looks at Darian.
“My sister,” he called. His voice does not break. “Maelin. She was fierce, and bright, and she laughed as easily as she cried.”
Darian inclines his head and holds out his hand. “Show me?”
The man takes it. And Darian’s eyes turn to voids, darkness sweeping through them as my breath catches. “He’s reading him?”
“Watch,” Eres breathes beside me. “You’ll see.”
The shadow unfurls from their joined hands like a slow release of breath. A woman, made of shadow and moonlight, with soft, wavering edges. She stands above the water as if it’s solid ground, her form reflected faintly in the current below.
The man exhales. There are tears on his face.
He steps forward and places his basket gently into the river. It floats, drifting toward the woman crafted of shadow.
“Things that represent the person passing on,” Eres whispers. “The basket is payment for Erevan, to pay for safe passage through the dark.”
“For Erevan,” the man murmurs. “Guide her safely.”
The shadow turns and begins to walk downriver, steps rippling the surface without disturbing it. The basket follows, carried by the current. And When the shadow fades into darkness, the river goes still again.
The man steps back. Another person comes forward.
A young woman this time, hands shaking slightly. “My sister,” she says. “Carmen. She was afraid of the dark, but she loved it too. She liked to make up stories in her head and share them around the campfire on patrol.”
One by one, they come.
Darian doesn’t judge, or comment. He only guides, helping those who need it and creating space for those that don’t.
“And he thinks he’s not needed?” My heart feels as though it might shatter. “We have nothing like this.”
What a loss for those in Solvandyr, to never see this. When I pass on, this is what I want. My name called at the river, and Darian sending me on. “Where do you believe they go? The spirits?”
Eres is smiling. “It’s not for us to say. But we see them on their way, and that’s enough,”
Eventually, the line thins, and the river grows quiet. “For those unnamed,” Darian says softly, his voice carrying across the water. “For those without witnesses.”
No one steps forward this time. Darian closes his eyes once more, and this time the shadow that rises isn’t one, single shape, but many.
Faint silhouettes that linger only a moment before dissolving into the night.
I wonder if Beckett is among them, since Kaelen had changed the subject when I mentioned it.
I suspect he is.
The final basket is placed into the river by Eldritch. Simple, filled with bread and herbs and a small vial of oil.
“For Erevan,” Darian says. “Guide them safely.”
When the basket has long since vanished from sight, the moonlight moving on, Darian wades back toward the shore.
The water releases him reluctantly, rippling around his legs as if loath to let go.
His movements are slower now, fatigue etched into the lines of his face.
Beside me, Kaelen twitches, but he doesn’t move.
Eventually, people begin to drift away in twos and threes, quiet murmurs resuming only once they’re well beyond the riverbank.
“This is how you remember,” I say softly when he reaches me. “It’s beautiful, Darian.”
Darian looks at me. “Nobody passes on alone.”
I nod. My throat is tight. We stand together at the edge of the river, the four of us beneath a full moon as we watch the last ripples fade away from the water. “What now?”
Eres grins. It feels… mischievous. “We celebrate.”