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“What’s happening, Caelith? Why have the fragments changed?”

When he looked up, the reflection left his eyes. Instead, they were just dark. “The Fracture remembers what made it bleed. And memory always returns to its source.”

Source of what? The Fracture? Her? She thought for a moment. “Of course, the riddles again. Does that mean we can no longer stop it? That it’s no longer being contained?”

“No,” he said. “No riddles. And you do not need to ask, Maia. I know you see it as I do. It’s waking up.”

The words hung between them, heavy as stone. Rain lashed the windows as thunder rolled somewhere beyond the cliffs.

Maia stepped closer before she realised she was doing it. “Is it close? Will it be soon?”

His eyes met hers, the light back in them. For a moment the room felt too small.

Maia’s heart beat hard against her ribs, but she didn’t look away. She could feel the cold coming off him from here but under it, something not cold at all.

For one quick beat, she longed for her father’s cottage and a door she knew. But she stayed where she was.

“You could stop it,” she whispered.

The certainty in her voice seemed to catch him off guard.

“One could die trying,” he said simply. “That’s not the same.”

“Is that what you told the Elders?” she asked.

“I gave them the truth. The Umbralyn have more power in stopping whatever is happening, more than the humans anyway. Our oath is to protect, so I asked to be able to do so effectively.”

“Will you go to the Fracture?”

“Others will, alongside human overseers…” His voice trailed off slightly. “Despite what happened in Meridon, the Elders trust my position here in the city. In the Archive.”

Another silence stretched between them. She wanted to ask him more; to step across the thin line between knowledge and trust, but the shard pulsed in warning, and she pulled back.

Caelith watched the fragment for a moment longer before speaking.

“You should return to your room, Maia. It is late.”

The words were quiet, but not unkind. A reminder more than an order.

She hesitated, suddenly aware of where she was. The late hour, the dim room, the fact that she had wandered into a place meant for him and his kind alone.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said again, softer this time.

He looked at her. For a moment he seemed to soften, too. “I know you didn’t,” he said. “But your kind needs sleep. And you may need more strength than you realise.”

The shard pulsed faintly between them. Caelith took the candle from the table and held it out to her. When she closed her hands around it, his were still there, cool beneath hers, and they both held on for half a second. The flame leaned towards him.

“The blue lamps don’t reach past the fork,” he said. “Bring it back whenever you like.”

She stepped back towards the doorway. As she passed him, she felt the cold again; the quiet gravity that seemed to surround him.

“Maia?” he said, looking down at her ink-stained fingers.

“Yes?”

“Write more to your loved ones,” he said. “It’s dangerous to forget what anchors you.”

She glanced back at him once before leaving. He had already turned toward the shard. When she reached the hallway, the door closed softly behind her.