In the Selen sanctuaries, the healers call youStar of Mercy. In Han, the artisans murmurWeaver of the Ninth Light. In the Prismatum, no one speaks your name aloud. Only your shadow.
But below?
They call you theVeilweaver.
They whisper it in the stone-veined dark. Etch it in Polis and crystal. Carve it into altar ash and Lustrals, thinking just its presence will create a miracle. The name moves in silence and rebellion, in fever and prayer.
You are seen.
You are feared.
You aretheirsnow.
My favor is complete.
My debt is paid.
I will go silent after this message.
If I write again, it will be from the dark.
May the Destroyer and the Void keep you.
—M. F.
29
Wingbeat in Silence
Six months.
Then a year.
Then another.
Time passed in thresholds, not seasons, though the Cycles shifted and turned despite all of Auryn’s prayers that they would linger. That nature might stay its hand, just once, to let those beneath its fist take even a single breath of respite.
But the Cycles were relentless.
First came Ice, when the air in the Commons burned the lungs, and the sick began to die in stillness. Then came Growth, and with it, the stench. Mold on wet straw. Fever sweat pooled on stone. Weeds threading through lattice cracks like veins carving new paths through the body.
Fireburned through the city after, sapping strength and bending the healers’ magic, spreading other illnesses and leaving those sick with the Madness unaided.
And when the Shields failed during Dark, the Council nearly toppled the Sokâr's rising light, claiming they’d been right, calling her a heretic for campaigning against the need for Estâr, and turning their glares towards the Resh’Agar. Questioning his loyalty. Questioning whether housing the Sokâr in his wing was putting him beneath her vile influence.
And still.
Still—Auryn brought them to task.
Endless banquets, processions, trading of Gleams and favors and promises. Exhaustion that ran bone-deep—fed by endless Flares and arguments with the man she loved. All of it, culminating in an act that would ripple through history for centuries to come.
Archivists notated the moment into the Umbral Archives as the Sokâr herself—breathless, fevered, burning from within — signed theWrit of the Ninth Latticeinto existence.
Nearly five long years ago.
Nearly five years since she stood before the Circle of Rule in her healing robe, bare-faced and trembling, and carved the decree into light with nothing but will and invocation. Funds would be redirected. Salves and Lustral runes would be sent to the Commons. Temples would be repaired, their sanctums restored. A thousand lives would be saved before the Cycle turned again.
The words had blazed that day—through ego, through Doctrine, through the walls Krystopolis had built between divinity and rot.Sacred. Binding. Final.
