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“They’re making a noise. Humming. You can’t always hear them, some are louder than others. But enough to know things have changed.”

Maia felt a chill.

“Maia.” His voice dropped. “The thing is… it’s as if they’re remembering something.”

He left before she could answer.

***

By morning, the laboratory wings were alive, but not with their old rhythm.

Scholars worked in tense pairs. Hands stained with ink and now fine glass dust. The fragments, mirrored slivers cut from the Fracture’s edge, lay scattered across tables, emitting faint, discordant tones. When Maia reached for one, it trembled beneath her glove, light pulsing through it like a heartbeat.

“Look at that,” Julen muttered, recording figures. “They’ve never reacted unprovoked.”

“Maybe it isn’t unprovoked,” she said quietly. “It’s bothered by something.”

He frowned, but she didn’t explain.

Across the hall, a containment circle snapped with a sharp crack. Shards skittered across the floor. Someone cursed. Someone else began to pray. Through it all, the fragments seemed to pulse in faint, uneven harmony. If you listened carefully, it almost sounded like a voice trying to form.

Maia glanced instinctively toward the laboratory doors. For a moment she half-expected him to be there, but the doorway remained empty.

Julen followed her gaze, then rolled his eyes. “Expecting someone?” he asked lightly. “You’ve got that look again.”

“I don’t have a look.”

“You have a look.” He went back to his figures, already smirking. “It’s the one you get right before you say something’s ‘nothing.’”

Maia shook her head, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly. “It is nothing,” she said, and returned to her work, ignoring the way he chuckled to himself.

***

By evening, Maia’s ears rang, her fingertips tingled with a faint heat.

She wandered back to her room alone. She loosened the tight braid she wore most days, letting her unwashed hair tumble down onto her shoulders. She took off her shoes, loosened the ties at her waist, changed into a looser dress and lay down on her bed. Lying down, at last, felt glorious.

She thought about the road to Meridon, about Caelith, silent as shadow, yet always aware of them.

She wasn’t sure why, but she felt she could see him more clearly than the others did. The hatred the city carried had never been hers; she had come to the Umbralyn the way she came to everything, wanting to understand before she judged, and she had never been given the chance to do either. Perhaps that was all this was. Perhaps she simply wanted to know him the way she’d once wanted to glimpse a shape in the fog. Or perhaps it had already become something she didn’t have a word for yet.

The feeling lingered long enough that she finally decided to write to her father.

A storm rolled in as she dipped her quill. Rain struck the window in silver threads, thunder murmuring beyond the mountains. The city’s wards pulsed in uneven waves beneath it all; a heartbeat not entirely steady. She began her letter.

Dearest Father,

I’m writing from Eryssan and I’m safe. I need you to know that first.

She wrote of tremors, of fractured wards, of scholars arguing and soldiers recalled. Of her trip to Meridon. Her hand slowed.

There’s talk of more Umbralyn being summoned to guard the spires and the Fracture itself. Some here don’t trust them, but I…

The ink hovered. She saw him in the firelight. In falling dust. In silence.

I’ve met one. He’s not what they say.

The words looked fragile on the page.