The escarpment flinches—yes, flinches—as my power threads downward, bleeding into its deepest fractures.
I feel them all.
The scars left by the last great war.
The hollowed tunnels where the Ember Vein’s raw ore was carved out and sent to the forges.
The routes the Dreamwrights carved in secret to ferry their precious dreams and hopes to the sanctums, then out, out, out into the stupid, greedy hands of other worlds.
Other realities.
So they can dream.
So they can hope.
So they can pretend their petty little lives mean something because Nightfall spoons them stories in their sleep.
Disgust curls through me, sharp and clean.
“We mine,” I say, letting my voice carry, letting the cliff feel it. “We bleed. We sacrifice our children to the tunnels. And what do we gain, acolyte?”
He shifts nervously behind me. “Stability. The honor of?—”
“Nothing,” I cut in, power cracking through the stone like a whip. Tiny pebbles skitter over the edge and disappear into the abyss. “We gain nothing that is ours. Our magic, our ore, our forges—they feed others first. The Lords will tell you it is sacred duty. That Nightfall was created to sustain the multiverse. To give hope where there is none.”
I spit over the edge.
“Hope,” I sneer. “They give it away like water to strangers while we drink dust.”
The acolyte doesn’t dare agree, but I feel his anger pulse through the bond we share. That’s why he’s mine. Why they all are.
Because they have looked into the tunnels and seen their children’s faces reflected in the dark and known, known, that the Lords care more for distant, faceless dreamers than for the people breaking their backs at the Vein.
“I will free Nightfall,” I whisper, more to the rock than to the boy behind me. “From the leash around its throat. From the multiverse’s hunger. No more bleeding our lifeblood into every other plane while our villages burn. No matter how many must perish to accomplish this—I will see it done!”
A tremor answers me.
Ah.
There you are.
I smile.
The earth here is stubborn, yes—but everything breaks if you know where to tap.
The Eyrie. The Marches. The Ember Vein. The Tidal Lands. The Plains.
I have studied them all. I have walked beneath the forges, watched the Dreamwrights bend ore and song into visions, and I have seen what they refuse to admit—they are puppets.
Channels. Instruments of an unseen will.
The Prime knew this. He understood the leash, even if he was too weak to break it. That’s why he hid the Crown like a coward instead of destroying it.
I, at least, have no such illusions.
“Master,” the acolyte ventures, voice shaking now. “We’ve nearly reached the Dreamwright’s sanctuary. Her name is?—”
“Masielle,” I finish for him. “Yes. I know.”
