Mihalia pulled Sefara closer, leaning down until her breath brushed Sefara's cheek. “The people who took you… they’re here in the city.” Sefara froze, the triumph curdling in her gut. A familiar chill seized her ribs, phantom fingers lingering from months in the dark. She saw Zareh, a few paces away, his sharp gaze fixed on Mihalia, then on Sefara’s sudden pallor. He caught the whispered words, his brow furrowing. “What are you talking about, Mihalia?” Sefara's voice was a strained whisper, barely audible over the receding cheers from the Guildhall. She searched Mihalia’s wide, dark eyes for an explanation. “I saw them,” Mihalia insisted, her grip on Sefara’s arm tightening. “Two figures, cloaked in the drab, light-absorbing robes of the Sunder-Sects. Near the Whisperwind Bazaar, just this morning. I recognized their gait, the way they moved like shadows even in bright sun. The same ones, Sefara.” Her gaze flickered to Zareh, then back to Sefara, filled with a desperate urgency. “Be careful. They always want something back.” Zareh stepped forward, his expression hardening. “Sunder-Sects? Here? This is highly irregular. Why haven’t the Wardens been alerted?” Mihalia wrung her hands. “Who would believe me? They melted away before I could even find a patrol. I just… I had to tell Sefara.” Sefara felt a cold knot tighten in her chest. Her curse, a silent clock, seemed to tick louder. “Thank you, Mihalia,” she said, her voice regaining a brittle composure. “We’ll be careful. Zareh and I have to inspect the Sky-Spire site. It’s too exposed to linger.” Mihalia nodded, her face etched with worry, then melted back into the crowd, her urgent warning hanging in the air like a storm cloud. Zareh’s hand brushed Sefara’s elbow, a fleeting, unexpected touch that pulled her from her morbid thoughts. “The site,” he stated, his voice low, “is west of the Grand Cascade, past the Opaline Veins. It’s desolate. Few patrols. We should proceed with extreme caution.” The Sky-Spire plot was less a foundation and more a basin of unbridled power. Wild flares pulsed from rifts in the obsidian bed, twisting into ephemeral spires before unraveling in the dry heat. Great pillars of condensed radiance rose like unfinished titans, blinding and brittle. The air tasted of ozone and dust. “This nexus runs hotter than the schematics recorded,” Zareh murmured over the deep resonance beneath their boots. He raised two fingers, tracing the invisible conduits branching through the bedrock. Sefara walked beside him, her senses overwhelmed by the sheer, unbridled power. This was a world away from the refined, spun-glass elegance of the Guildhall. Here, Mirage-craft was visceral, dangerous. “It’s untamed,” she agreed, her eyes scanning the shimmering landscape. “Perfect for anchoring a structure meant to touch the outer atmosphere. But also… vulnerable.” Suddenly, a shard of solidified gloom, sharp as a dagger, screamed past Sefara’s ear, embedding itself with a sickening *thunk* into a nascent light-pillar behind her. It was obsidian-dark, utterly devoid of the usual luminescence of Yashoran craft. “Down!” Zareh shouted over the roar of the chasm. He drove his shoulder into Sefara's frame, bowling her behind an outcropping of vitreous quartz. The air *cracked* as twin barriers of woven radiance erupted from his palms, catching a volley of whistling dark glass. From the swirling wash of heat, a figure stepped forth. Tall, gaunt, wrapped in the wool of the Sunder-Sects, they moved without friction across the scree. Zareh’s plates flared green under another barrage. Each impact sent tremors through the basalt, the dissonance jarring Sefara’s teeth. He met the flurry with disciplined lattices, but the attacker drove forward with unnatural momentum. A hexagonal pane of emerald light ruptured with an ear-splitting report, spraying luminous chaff. The killer leaped through the gap, swinging a curved blade of condensed shadow toward Zareh’s flank. “Zareh!” Sefara screamed, a raw, primal sound ripped from her throat. She didn’t think. Her hand shot out, not in the elegant weaves of Mirage-craft she knew, but in a desperate, forbidden surge of dark, consuming power. A tendril of absolute nothingness, a hungry void, erupted from her palm. It wasn't light, it was the negation of light, the essence of the curse that clung to her. The air around it warped, becoming still and dead. The dark ribbon snapped around the striker's wrist, then cinched their chest. The wool dissolved into grey flakes under the touch. A stifled gasp died in their throat as the shadow ate inward, collapsing muscle and bone into a drift of soot. The blade dropped against the stone with a dull clatter. Silence reclaimed the basin, broken only by the hum of the deep fissures. Sefara pressed both hands to her ribs. Exhaustion dropped onto her shoulders like lead ballast. Her vision tunneled as the tendril snapped back into her skin, leaving behind a sharp, hollow burn. Zareh stood motionless, the remnants of his weave flickering out. He stared at Sefara's hands, then down at the soot. “Sefara,” he whispered. He took a step forward through the drift of ash, his boots scuffing the black rock. His gaze lingered on her trembling knuckles before dropping to the soot. Dread hollowed her chest. She had tapped the poison of her captors—the exact rot consuming her lifespan. The pulse faded, leaving a winter bite deep inside her ribs. She had bought survival today by burning through months she did not have. Zareh knelt beside the fallen weapon. He tilted the pommel toward the sun, revealing a mark pressed into the metal: a serpent coiling through a gnarled bough, the crest of House Vashirian. “Kyprien,” Zareh uttered, the name a snarl of disbelief and fury. His head snapped up, his gaze locking onto Sefara’s, accusation and a terrifying certainty warring in his expression. But Sefara couldn’t process it. A spasm tore through her left arm, radiating frostbite down to the fingertips. Beneath her skin, a blinding azure glow flared, washing through tissue and sinew until the limb faded into sheer glass. Looking down, she saw the basalt plateau and Zareh's silhouette clear as water through her own wrist.

Shards of the Sunless Wastes