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They glanced at each other.
“If the other Umbralyn knew it existed,” Maia went on more quietly, “they would have dismantled it or hidden it to study. Or turned it into something else. If his quarters still stand, then they don’t know what they lost.”
Julen nodded once. “And they’d rather pretend he never existed than admit they missed something.”
Maia closed her eyes. Caelith had hidden the stone not because he feared it, but because he feared what others would do with it. For the first time, she wondered whether trusting her had been an act of hope, or a last, quiet contingency.
His room rose unbidden in her mind: dust-thick and bare, the stone pulsing on the table between them. And behind him, half-lost to the dark, something carved into the wall that she had been too busy looking at him to notice. The fracture map.
That was why this mattered. Not because the stone would lead her to him, but because if he had left it, it was something he had chosen to leave behind. Something he had trusted would wait.
“They didn’t ward it before,” Selinne said. “When you went in.”
“No,” Maia agreed. “Because I wasn’t important to them then.” She opened her eyes. “Or to him. If they’ve increased patrols or tightened control, we may not get through.”
“There’s no safe path left. And you and Julen have already been attacked. If this draws attention, let it be on me,” Selinne half-laughed.
“We’ve survived worse,” Maia said, squeezing her hand. “This won’t be the end of us. You know what to do.”
***
They moved at second bell, as the last of the sun went out. The city folded inward on itself and the outer wings were surrendered to routine. They were not abandoned, but entrusted to systems instead of sentries. They managed to reach the turret that split between their wing and where some of the Umbralyn were designated, the ones trusted around the humans. Where Caelith used to live before everything changed.
Selinne went first, moving ahead to where two Umbralyn sentries stood at a junction farther down the wing. She did not hide. She didn’t step into the junction. She stopped just short of it and raised her voice: sharp, clipped, carrying urgency without panic.
“You need to see this. Now!”
Both Umbralyn sentries turned.
“What is your purpose, human?” one said immediately.
“You should not be here. Return to your assigned quarters,” the other said coldly. “Did you forget your curfew?”
Selinne stepped into view and held up a strip of cloth pinched between her fingers. Something inside it caught the corridor light and split it wrong - edges too sharp, reflections bending where they shouldn’t.
“Something has happened. I need your help. I found this embedded in the eastern underpass,” she said. “Near a pile of old fracture glass. It wasn’t there before.”
The word fracture changed everything.
One sentry moved closer at once, helm angling to focus. “Has contamination been observed?”
“I don’t know,” Selinne replied. “I didn’t touch it directly. But it’s refractive. And it’s not stone.”
“That sector was cleared,” the second sentry said. “That contradicts existing records.”
“Then your clearance must have been incomplete,” Selinne replied without apology. “Because I pulled this out of a pile an hour ago.”
Silence snapped tight as the two Umbralyn looked at each other.
“Show us the source,” one said.
Before Selinne could respond, footsteps echoed from the side passage, and Julen stumbled into view. He was breathing too fast. One sleeve was darkened with what appeared to be blood.
“I—” His voice broke. He swallowed hard and tried again. “I cut myself. On the wall. By the pile.”
Of all the lines they’d rehearsed, it was the flattest. But the sentries weren’t looking at her, and Julen’s fear, whatever its source, was doing more convincing work than his script.
“Explain,” one demanded.
