Chapter 1
ROWAN
The dream always ends there.
The broken lock. Ma’s voice. Sola’s hand grabbing for me.
Wake up.
For eight years, that’s how it comes apart. Never the whole thing, just fragments. A bell somewhere too far away. The blare of horns. The feeling that something has already been taken before I understand what I’m looking at.
Sometimes I even wonder if it happened the way I remember it, or if my mind has changed it over time.
Even now, standing in the rain, staring at the glowing holoscreen on my wrist, I feel half caught there, like I woke up wrong and never fully made it back.
When I look up, the city blurs for a second, lights smearing in the mist like a bad signal. Then everything snaps back into focus—the street in front of me, the bar across from me, wet pavement gleaming beneath the lane lights, and people hurrying through the rain.
Sero rises ahead of me in glass, stone, and impossible scale.
One of the largest worlds in the Reach, it feels less like a planet and more like a city that never found its edges.
Hover traffic moves overhead in thin lanes of white, red, and cold blue, silent from this distance except for the low electric hum rolling between the buildings.
I remember staring at the sky as a kid and wondering what life would be like on other planets. Never, in a million years, would I have thought it could be like this.
Just looking up makes my head spin. Everything here is too fast, too high, too polished.
And somehow, standing across from the bar I’d come to find—Black Chapel—with rain dripping off my jacket, I still can’t decide whether coming here was the smartest thing I’ve ever done or the stupidest.
“Don’t go chasing ghosts,” Ma used to say. Back then, she meant dreams. Impossible futures. All the things people like us weren’t supposed to reach for. But then Sola disappeared, and ghosts were all I had left.
Right now, I should be at registration with Damaris. Instead I’m here, staring at the grainy photo on my holoscreen until my eyes hurt, my pulse still running too high from a memory that never knows when to let me go.
Sola has been gone too long. For years I’ve chased scraps and rumors—anything that might tell me where she went—and every trail dissolved the moment I reached for it.
Then, just when I’d stopped letting myself hope, two things arrived at once: a place on the Noctis program at Caervast Academy, one of the most prestigious conservatories in the Reach, and a grainy photo of my sister standing beneath a ring of gold light in a bar called Black Chapel.
Is that coincidence? Or fate? Sometimes I tell myself it’s her doing, that she’s been looking after me while I’ve been looking for her.
Then I remember the way she used to press her forehead to mine when I couldn’t breathe, counting under her breath until the world came back, and I think I might just be losing it like I always am.
It isn’t much to go on. But it’s the first lead that hasn’t vanished on me in years, and it was enough to bring me here before I’d even set foot inside Caervast.
Now I’m here, leaving Damaris to handle intake while I chase another ghost. He knew Sola too, but if this turns out to be nothing, another dead end I’ve convinced myself is different, I don’t want to give it a name.
I guess hope is a bad advisor.
The bar sits straight ahead of me and looks like it belongs to another world entirely. People move in and out through the front doors, but not many. Nobody lingers. Most arrive in groups and disappear inside as though they already know where they’re going.
For some reason, that bothers me more than the building itself.
Even online, nobody seemed willing to talk about the place for long. Every thread ended the same way, with missing posts, vague warnings, or somebody suddenly deciding they didn’t want to answer questions anymore.
Most places have stories. This one has silence, and the silence is worse. It means someone made sure there was nothing left to find. If Sola walked in there and the trail simply stopped, then silence is exactly what I should expect—and exactly why I can’t make myself walk away.
The bar is built from dark brick and black windows that don’t exactly scream welcome, its name picked out in narrow gold lettering above the door. Even from outside, I can hear music pulsing through the walls, deep enough to feel beneath my ribs.
A bouncer in black stands beneath the awning, glaring at me like he already knows he’s about to tell me no. Which, technically, is true. I’m twenty, and the minimum age for a place like this is twenty-two.
A few people linger beneath the awning, smoking and talking in low voices as I cross the street with my pulse hammering in my throat.
The bouncer looks me over, then says, “ID.”
I light my holoscreen with cold fingers and pull up my student file. He glances at it, then at me.
“I—” I stammer, then stop, because what am I supposed to say? Can I please come in for two minutes to see if my missing sister is here?
Before I can figure it out, he gives me a flat look, then steps aside. “Don’t cause problems.”
“Thank you.” I wince at my own voice and step inside, already nervous as hell.
A long bar runs down one side, bottles lined up behind it in gold and glass. Booths sit deeper in the room, half-hidden, full of people leaning close over their drinks like they don’t want to be overheard. Somewhere deeper inside, voices drift up from behind heavy velvet curtains.
The bartender looks up as I step in close. He’s handsome in the effortless way people on Sero seem to be, with dark hair falling past his collar, black ink disappearing beneath rolled sleeves, and a practiced smile. “Hi there, gorgeous. What can I get you?”
My mouth goes dry. This is my chance. “I actually wanted to ask if the floor show is tonight.”
His gaze drifts over me. “It is. Why?”
Fumbling for my holoscreen, I glance down at the photo again. “I’d like to get in.”
He laughs, filling a glass with water and sliding it my way. “Listen, gorgeous, the floor show is invite only. The bar, though? That’s open to everyone.”
“Thanks.” I hesitate. “I’m looking for someone.”
His mouth twitches at that. “That so? Aren’t we all?”
“No, I mean at the show.”
My head turns before I can stop it, drawn toward the center of the room, past the bar and the bodies moving too close in the low amber light, to the recessed floor below, where a ring of pale gold light hangs suspended in the dark, bright enough to catch from anywhere in the room.
The sight of it sends a jolt through me, my fingers tightening around the holoscreen as recognition hits. The ring from the photograph.
She really was here.
The bartender waves a hand in front of my face. “Hey.”
I blink and force myself to look at him. “Sorry. I just…”
“Listen, gorgeous, if you came for the floor show, I’m going to need an invitation.” Grabbing a towel, he starts drying a glass. His gaze flicks to my screen, then back to me. “But if you came looking for trouble, you found the right place.”
“N-no, I’m just—”
“Looking for someone. Yeah.” He sets the glass down. “You want my advice? Get the hell out of here. This place belongs to people you don’t want noticing you, and they already have.”
What do you mean? I want to ask.
But my gaze lifts on instinct, toward the suspended ring of pale gold and the darkness above it. I can’t make out a face, only the certainty that someone is there, watching me without moving.
Suddenly, the bartender’s warning feels a lot more urgent. My heart kicks harder as I drag my gaze back to him and fumble for my holoscreen.
“Please.” The word comes out too fast as I shove the photo toward him. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
He doesn’t look, just lifts a hand before I can turn the screen fully toward him. “No, pretty boy. Whatever it is you want to show me, don’t.”
“But p-perhaps—”
He leans in, half-amused on the surface, but his eyes are alert now. “You’re in the wrong place, darling. Trust me. Water’s on the house.”
And just like that, he drifts off, leaving me with the back of my neck prickling as goosebumps rise hard over my arms.
He’s right. Someone is watching. I can feel it now with sick certainty, standing at the bar with my pulse climbing higher and higher, every instinct telling me I’ve already made a mistake.
Light, Rowan. What are you doing?
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to come in, show the photo, ask a few questions, and leave before anyone noticed I was here. Instead, somehow, I’ve managed to do the exact opposite.
Around me, the music keeps playing. Glass clinks somewhere to my left, and people keep talking like nothing has changed, but suddenly the whole room feels wrong. And the second I look up, I regret it.
From down here, the first floor is mostly shadow, but not enough to hide the figures leaning along the railing above the recessed floor.
One of them pushes away from the darkness and starts toward the stairs. A sharp, sick certainty tears through me: if I don’t get the hell out of here right now, that person is coming for me.
Move. Get to safety.
I should never have come here. Never left intake. Never come alone.
I turn too fast and clip my shoulder on the edge of the door, hissing a curse. The cold hits like a slap, and I’m across the street before I even realize I’m running. By the time I hear the door swing shut behind me, my heart is slamming so hard it hurts, but I don’t dare stop walking.
It’s all inside your head, I tell myself. Who would leave a party to follow you through dark streets?
But even the rain, needling down hard enough to sting my face and turn the street slick and black under the lights, can’t quiet my mind.
My coat is useless. Within seconds I’m wet through and shivering hard enough that my teeth knock together.