Chapter 6 #3
“Yes.”
My skin prickled.
Edenlo stories had always made Shadow sound less like magic and more like a sin. “They’re allowed to just…travel?”
Coren turned his head slowly. I realized how stupid the question sounded. “They’re people, Lyra.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
I looked away.
Near another roadside well, a woman pressed her hand to the stone rim and water climbed from below in a narrow stream, curling cleanly into the bucket she held.
I stared again. “Water.”
“Earth.”
I frowned. “That wasn’t earth.”
“It’s classified beneath Earth.”
“She moved water.”
“Yes.”
“Then why isn’t she a Water wielder?”
“Because those are not the same thing.”
I waited for more.
Naturally, none came. “What’s the difference?”
“History.”
“That tells me absolutely nothing.”
“It is not my job to teach you. You will have plenty of time to ask the Sanctum your questions.”
I looked back at the woman until distance swallowed the well.
We camped one final night east of the Veil. I slept even less than before. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw those impossible strands crossing darkness. I tried to convince myself it had been the Veil playing tricks with my mind. Exhaustion. Grief. Magic I didn’t understand.
But I remembered one going dark.
By morning, the rune beneath my ribs was quiet again.
The road grew busier as we traveled. Wagons.
Riders. People wearing clothing unlike anything in Edenlo.
Some bore visible runes along wrists, throats, shoulders, hands.
Others carried no marks I could see. No one hid them.
No one lowered sleeves when strangers approached. Magic existed here without apology.
I hated how much that hurt.
Late afternoon found us climbing through a broad valley between mountains.
The road beneath the horses changed from packed earth to pale fitted stone, worn smooth by generations of travel.
Structures began appearing along the surrounding ridges.
Watch posts. Bridges. Old towers built directly into the cliffs.
Then the road curved.
Coren stopped.
I almost asked why.
Then I looked ahead.
The Arcane Sanctum rose from the valley.
For several seconds, I forgot how to breathe.
It wasn’t a castle. Castles belonged to stories, neat things with walls and towers and banners identifying exactly who ruled them. The Sanctum looked like several centuries had tried to build on the same piece of earth and none had agreed what belonged there.
Dark towers rose beside pale ones. Enormous archways disappeared into the mountain itself.
Bridges connected structures at heights that made my stomach turn, some carved from stone, others narrow enough that I couldn’t imagine crossing them willingly.
Farther up, windows burned gold against the coming dusk.
Courtyards opened between wings large enough to contain half of Edenlo.
And magic was everywhere.
A burst of orange flame rose briefly from one distant courtyard before disappearing.
Pale light flashed across a tower.
Far below it, stone shifted beneath a group of moving figures. Along the western side of the complex, darkness collected beneath an archway despite the remaining daylight.
My eyes caught on it.
The shadow moved. Not with the sun. Toward me. I blinked. It was normal again. My rune warmed beneath my ribs. I pressed my hand against it.
Coren looked over. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re terrible at lying.”
“So are you.”
He faced the Sanctum again. “We’re nearly there.”
Nearly.
The word sank into my stomach.
We descended into the basin as evening swallowed the mountains. The closer we came, the larger the Sanctum became until I could no longer see all of it at once. People moved across bridges overhead. Bells sounded somewhere inside the stone. Voices drifted from courtyards I couldn’t see.
No one knew me.
That should have been comforting.
Instead, I felt more exposed than I had in Edenlo’s square.
The road ended before an enormous stretch of dark stone built between two cliff faces. There was no gate that I could see. No opening. Only carved symbols running across the surface in circles and intersecting lines.
Coren dismounted.
I followed. My legs nearly failed when my boots touched the ground after so many hours in the saddle. He walked toward the wall.
The rune beneath my ribs burned.
I stopped.
Lines appeared across the stone. One after another, faint at first, then brighter. Gold. Red. Green. Black.
Then silver-blue.
Coren went still.
The silver-blue line spread farther than the others. It climbed across one carved circle. Then another. Higher. The entire wall gave a low, resonant hum. My stomach dropped. “Is it supposed to do that?”
Coren didn’t answer.
“Coren.” His jaw tightened. “Is it supposed to do that?”
“No.”
Cold spread through me. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the first time I had heard him say those words. The silver-blue light reached the highest carving and stopped. For one breath, nothing happened.
Then the wall split down the center.
Stone moved without grinding or breaking, two enormous sections drawing apart until darkness appeared between them. Warm light spilled through the opening.
Beyond it waited another world.
Candidates crossed a vast courtyard beneath floating spheres of Light. Fire burned in iron basins without wood. Vines crawled slowly over one distant wall. Shadows moved beneath another colonnade, folding around people dressed in black before settling at their feet.
Hundreds.
There had to be hundreds.
Wielders.
People who could do what I had done.
People who had known their entire lives that one day they would.
I stood at the threshold wearing a dead woman’s cloak.
Ash still lived beneath the edges of my nails despite how many times I had washed my hands. Irelia’s sun rested over my heart. Ferin’s wooden star pressed against my palm.
Four days ago, I had been helping hang ribbons in Edenlo’s square.Now Edenlo was burying its dead without me.
Coren stepped through the opening. I didn’t. He turned. “Lyra.”
I stared past him. Movement caught my eye at the far end of the courtyard.
Shadow.
Not the ordinary darkness beneath stone. This was thicker. Alive in the way my Light had felt alive when it tore through Edenlo. It slid along the base of a distant arch before disappearing around the corner.
My rune pulled. Not burned. Pulled.
I sucked in a breath and pressed my palm harder against my ribs.
For one strange second, every instinct I had told me I had just been noticed from somewhere inside those walls.
The sensation disappeared. “What’s inside there?” I asked.
Coren followed my gaze toward the courtyard.
“The Arcane Sanctum.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I looked at him. He gave me nothing. I turned back toward the gates.
Maia had found me at the edge of a forest nineteen years ago beneath the starriest sky she had ever seen. Wrapped in plain cloth. No letter. No crest. No explanation.
Only my name.
She had spent the rest of her life believing I belonged somewhere beyond the Veil.
I wondered whether this was what she had imagined.
I wondered whether she would have been afraid for me.
I wondered whether whoever had left me beneath those trees had known I would eventually stand here.
The questions crowded so tightly inside my chest that breathing hurt. Behind me, the road stretched west. Beyond mountains. Beyond the Veil. Back toward thirty-two graves beneath Edenlo’s trees.
There was nothing waiting for me there except people who had watched me save their lives and wished I hadn’t survived long enough to frighten them.
Ferin had been right.
I didn’t owe them my ashes.
I stepped forward.
The moment I crossed between the gates, silver-blue light raced through the carvings behind me.
The sound rolled through the Sanctum like distant thunder. Several students stopped. Heads turned. Conversation faltered across the courtyard. I froze.
Coren didn’t. “Keep walking.”
Every eye I could see seemed to find me. Wonderful. I tightened Maia’s cloak around myself and followed him. Behind us, the gates began to close. I felt the wards pass over my skin as they sealed, cold and searching, lingering over the rune beneath my ribs before withdrawing.
Then the stone met with a sound deep enough to feel beneath my feet.
The road home disappeared. I kept walking.
High above the courtyard, behind windows I couldn’t see into, darkness stirred.
Not Light.
My rune warmed.
And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, every shadow along the western wall leaned toward me.