Dry hay crunched under my boots. The cart's wooden floorboards creaked with every rotation of the wheels. I sat on a bench, my back against the side board, sunlight falling through the gaps in the canvas cover in warm, dusty stripes. Somewhere ahead, a horse snorted. Across from me sat a man. Dark beard, trimmed short. Calm eyes. Worn travelling clothes — a heavy coat, simple boots. He was talking. His voice was low and measured. "—five percent of the population is born with active channels. Five. And of those, ninety percent never find out. Because the Academy decides who's worthy of knowing." He paused, tilted his head. "Imagine that. Nine out of ten people with the gift of fire, or stone, or wind — and they die old, tired, never having lit a spark." I heard my own voice answer. I didn't choose the words. My mouth moved, my voice spoke, but I was somewhere behind my own eyes, watching. "And you think you can fix that." The man smiled. Not wide. Just the corners of his mouth. "I think I already have. The black crystals aren't just storage vessels. They resonate. Point one at a dormant channel, feed it the right frequency, and the channel opens." He held up a thumb and forefinger, pressed together. Then opened them. "Done. Permanent." My voice again: "The Academy will burn you for it." "The Academy," the man said, and the smile went away, "sells people what belongs to them by birth. And executes those who try to return it." He reached into his coat. Pulled out something small and wooden. I felt my — his — our — body lean forward. Recognition. Deep, physical, bone-level recognition. A wooden token. A circle that didn't close. A broken wheel. He placed it in my palm. His fingers were warm. "If you forget everything else," he said quietly, "remember this." The word forget struck my mind like a physical blow. I tried to speak — my own words, not the memory's — but my jaw wouldn't move. I was locked inside. The cart lurched. The sunlight went white. The man's face dissolved. The wood, the creak of wheels, the dust — all of it stretched thin and tore apart. And I fell. * * * I hit the ground on my knees. Cold. Hard. Not stone — something denser. I pressed my palms flat and looked down. I knew this. The surface beneath me was a tight weave of brown and yellow fibers, pulsing with slow, deep currents. The air around me shimmered with silver threads, drifting like cobwebs in a breeze that didn't exist. The Flow. This wasn't the brief flash Silas had shown me through his black pebble. That had lasted seconds. I was inside. I looked at my hands. My body was visible, but translucent. Inside my chest, a bright core pulsed — white, dense, alive. Channels of light branched from it down my arms, my legs, my spine. But the channels running up into my skull were different. They were cut short. Severed. Capped with thick, dark knots of violet energy, pulsing slowly, like a second heartbeat. The Seal. I stood up. My legs held. The hammer was in my right hand. My right palm burned — a small, clean mark in the shape of an open circle. The token's symbol, seared into my skin. The space behind my eyes was empty and still. No Voice. I looked ahead. Through the silver haze, a shape. A structure made of woven fibers, glowing faintly with residual warmth. Low roof. Wide doorway. The unmistakable silhouette of a forge chimney. Hollen's smithy. * * * I walked toward it. The ground shifted under my feet — not physically, but in texture. The tight brown weave loosened, softened. The air grew warmer. The silver threads thickened into something golden and slow, drifting like embers. The smithy materialized around me. Not all at once — it assembled itself, fiber by fiber, pulling details from somewhere deep in my head. The anvil. The water barrel. The shelf of rough dishes. The sheepskins by the stove. It was too warm. The forge fire wasn't the angry orange I remembered. It was soft gold, steady, gentle. The air should have tasted like coal dust and hot metal. Instead it tasted like fresh bread. Hollen stood at the anvil. The scar from temple to mouth. The thick arms. The leather apron. The close-cropped grey stubble. He was smiling. A wide, genuine curve of the lips. "Back again," he said, and his voice was warm. Warm like the fire. Warm like the bread. "Sit down. Rest. You've been walking too long." My body leaned toward the stool by the stove. The warmth wrapped around my shoulders. My eyelids grew heavy. Sit down. Eat. Sleep. Stay. "You did good out there," Hollen said. He set down an imaginary hammer and walked toward me, wiping his hands on the apron. "But you're done now. No more fighting. No more running. This is where you started. This is where you belong." I almost sat down. Then I stopped. Hollen had never said "you did good." Hollen said, "Stop standing there like a post." Hollen said, "I'll rip your ears off." "You're not him," I said. The forge fire flickered. The golden light stuttered. Hollen's smile froze — the muscles held the shape, but the eyes behind them went flat. Dead. Like painted glass. The warmth drained from the room in a single breath. The bread-taste vanished. The air turned stale and cold. Hollen's face twitched. The smile widened past what a human jaw should allow. Then the smithy shattered. The fibers unraveled in every direction, scattering into the silver haze. The anvil dissolved. The stove went dark. Hollen's shape collapsed inward like a puppet with cut strings and fell into a small, dark knot of tangled threads on the ground. I stood alone in the haze, my heart hammering. I tightened my grip on the hammer and kept walking. * * * The next shard formed slowly. It built itself around me as I walked — the ground hardening into packed dirt, trees rising from the weave like grey pillars. A road. Muddy ruts. Familiar fence posts. The south road out of Ashford. The one I'd walked a hundred times. Sitting on a fallen log by the roadside, one boot propped on his knee, was Renn. He was cleaning his nails with the tip of his skinning knife. Lazy slouch. Angled shoulders. The grip on the blade. He looked up and grinned. "There you are," he said. "Took your time." I stopped ten feet away. "Where's Pol?" I asked. "At the tavern. Where else?" Renn flipped the knife, caught it by the handle. "Sit down. You look like hell." "I'm not sitting down." "Suit yourself." He stood up, stretched, rolled his neck. "So what's the plan? You keep walking into the dark until something eats you? Sounds about right." He started walking alongside me, matching my pace. "Listen, I'm not going to lecture you. We both know you're in over your head. Greyve's circling. Veyra's out of patience. That necromancer friend of yours is going to get you killed eventually." "Stay here," he said, and his voice softened. Just a fraction. "You've got people who actually give a damn about you up there, and you keep running away from them to chase things that might not exist." My throat tightened. "Renn," I said. "Which hand do you draw your sword with?" He blinked. "What?" "Which hand?" He paused. Half a second too long. "Right," he said. "Then why are you walking on my left?" Renn always took my right. Dominant side toward the threat. Every patrol. Every fight. This Renn was on my left. His face changed. The grin didn't fade. It peeled off, like paint lifting from wet wood. Underneath was something dark and empty. The skin of his cheeks rippled. His jaw stretched. His eyes sank into his skull, and from the sockets, thick violet threads pushed outward like roots breaking through soil. The shape that had been Renn unfolded. It grew taller, thinner. The arms lengthened past the knees. The fingers fused into long, whip-like tendrils of braided mana. The legs bent backward at the knee. The Renn-skin hung from its frame in tatters. Through the gaps, a dense core of tangled violet fibers pulsed with a sick, rhythmic light. It lunged. The first tendril-whip cracked across the space between us. I threw myself sideways. The tip caught my shoulder, burning through my jacket and leaving a line of fire across my skin. I rolled, came up on one knee, and swung the hammer. It passed through the creature's midsection. Nothing. The violet fibers parted like smoke and reformed behind the iron head. Fire and steel didn't work here. The second tendril came low, sweeping for my ankles. I jumped, pulled mana into my left hand, and slammed my palm onto the ground. The brown-yellow fibers of The Flow's floor responded. A jagged spike of compressed weave erupted upward, catching the creature's lower body. The violet threads shrieked — a high, thin sound like tearing metal — and tore. The thing recoiled. Dark fluid, thick as tar, dripped from the torn fibers. I pressed both hands to the ground and pulled harder. The floor buckled. A wall of dense, woven stone rose between us, three feet high. I vaulted over it, closing the distance while the creature was still tangled. It recovered faster than I expected. Three tendrils lashed out simultaneously. One caught my wrist. The grip was crushing, ice-cold. It pulled me forward, off balance. And then it spoke with Renn's voice. "What are you doing?" Renn's exact tone. Renn's exact cadence. Hurt. Confused. Betrayed. "It's me. It's me, you idiot. Stop!" My hands froze. My grip on the hammer loosened. My chest seized. You're pathetic, the Voice hissed in my head. The paralysis snapped. The real Renn would've called you an arrogant prick and punched you in the mouth. Hit it. Now. I ripped my wrist free, tearing skin. Grabbed the tendril with both hands and pumped Earth mana straight into the creature's core. Not shaped. Not controlled. Just raw, grinding force. The violet fibers ruptured. The Earth mana shredded through the creature's core. The demon split apart. The violet threads unraveled in every direction, writhing, and then went limp. The dark tar-fluid pooled on the ground and was absorbed by the weave. Renn's face — the last scrap of it — dissolved into nothing. I stood over the dark stain, breathing hard. My wrist was bleeding. My shoulder burned from the whip strike. The road was gone. The trees were gone. The shard had collapsed when its anchor died. I was back in the open Flow. Silver haze. Brown-yellow ground. Silence. * * * I sat down. My core was dimmer than before. Each Earth cast in this place pulled more than it should. I could feel the reserve thinning, the warmth in my chest cooling to lukewarm. I looked at my right palm. The burn mark — the open circle — pulsed faintly. Warm. Alive. Azhas, I thought. "If you forget everything else — remember this." I closed my fist around the mark. Ahead, in the haze, two new shapes were forming. The first: familiar walls, a courtyard, the outline of barracks. The 4th Company compound. I could almost hear the scrape of boots and the clatter of mess trays. The second: something I didn't recognize from life. Grand. Dark wood, tall windows, candlelight behind glass. A manor. Or a palace. A place my body knew but my mind didn't. Two shards. Two traps. I pushed myself to my feet. Picked up the hammer. Walked forward.

Chapter 27: Shards