Sylas's wall of golden light crackled through the alley, sealing us in like a gilded cage. The humming energy raised the hair on my arms as I stared at our impossible situation. Veyra stood between me and him, her shoulders squared in defiance despite the milky haze clouding her once-sharp eyes. Her knuckles had gone white around her cinder pouch.
"We'll see about that," she said, her voice steady but thin. Something about her determination made my throat tighten—not quite fear, not quite admiration, but something raw and painful that reminded me of Lyra's final stand in Thornhollow.
Behind me, Toren pressed against the damp stone wall, his cinder knife glinting in the golden light. His face was taut with fear he couldn't hide, not after seeing that Abyss rune glow when Sylas had traced it in the air moments ago.
Sylas smiled, cold and calculating as Varn's rain-soaked cobblestones. "The Veilkeepers have questions for you, Starborn," he said, the title dripping with hunger. "Your immunity is a puzzle worth solving, piece by piece. Like your friend Lyra—she lasted three days under my knife before her mind shattered completely."
My Spark surged in response, heat blooming beneath my skin. I could weave right now, create a shield, but it would mark us even more clearly. Starborn weaves left distinctive trails in the cinder-currents—bright azure streaks that Veilkeepers could track for miles. Worse, it would draw that haunting chant from Thornhollow—my true name echoing from the Abyss.
"Veyra, move!" I hissed, grabbing her arm. Her skin burned against my palm, feverish from her recent weaves—threads of protection that had saved us from the Ashwraiths earlier, each one stealing another piece of her memory. She didn't flinch at my touch, her gaze locked on Sylas as his cinder blade flared blue.
"What's your plan?" I whispered urgently. The narrow crevice we'd discovered was just behind us, too tight for fighting. In the distance, an Ashwraith's screech echoed—those twisted creatures born from the collective lost memories of weavers, now hunting their former owners with relentless hunger. My pouch hung heavy with cinders against my thigh, both a lifeline and a curse. I could weave without losing memories, unlike Veyra, but the Abyss watched constantly now, its whispers growing louder since I'd eased her memory haze.
"No time for plans," she rasped, her voice steady despite her trembling hands. She hadn't reached for the hidden pocket where she'd hinted at keeping something important. Instead, she nodded toward the crevice. "Just follow me."
She darted toward the narrow opening, her slight frame moving with surprising strength. I followed immediately, feeling Toren close behind, his boots scraping against stone as Sylas's blade hummed closer. The wall of light pulsed, its heat searing my back as we squeezed into the gap. The rough stone scraped my shoulders, and the air grew thick with rot and decay that stung my eyes.
Inside the crevice, darkness swallowed us whole. The passage widened into what must have been a tunnel carved by Varn's forgotten builders—smugglers, maybe, from before the Veil's cinders had choked the city into submission. I pulled a small cinder from my pouch, cupping it in my palm to create a makeshift lamp. The flickering orange glow cast jagged shadows on roots that pierced the walls like petrified veins.
Veyra's breathing was ragged, the haze in her eyes worse than before. She stumbled slightly, catching herself against the wall with a grimace.
"How are you still moving?" I asked quietly, genuinely awed by her resilience. After the weaves she'd performed to save us from the Ashwraith earlier, most weavers would be bedridden.
She gave me a tight smile, teeth clenched against obvious pain. "Practice," she whispered. "Years of pushing through the haze, finding pathways in the fog. You learn to function when half your mind is gone." There was no self-pity in her voice—just the matter-of-fact tone of someone who had long ago accepted her fate.
Her intimate knowledge of Varn's underbelly guided us forward,just like before, when we'd narrowly escaped the Ashwraith. Toren remained unusually silent, his hand never straying far from his knife, his glance at my cinder pouch too sharp after the rune's warning: "For those who seek the Abyss."
I studied Toren's profile in the dim light, remembering what Veyra had told me about him three days ago. Born to an Ashbreaker family but raised among Veilkeepers after his parents' execution—his loyalties had always been murky. He'd helped us evade capture twice, but that scar on his knuckles—the inverted Ashbreaker sigil—made me wonder which side he truly served.
"We need to reach the safehouse," I said, keeping my voice low as I helped Veyra over a particularly thick root. My immunity to memory loss was still a secret I hadn't fully shared—not with Veyra lost in her growing haze, not with Toren and his own secrets. "Toren, how much farther?"
After Joren's betrayal—selling our location to the Veilkeepers—every word felt like a gamble. Toren's claim of innocence grew thinner with each passing moment.
"Close," he muttered, eyes constantly scanning the darkness around us. "It's an old Ashbreaker den, underground where the cinders don't fall." He paused, looking over his shoulder to ensure no pursuit. "The Ashbreakers abandoned it after the Purge of '89, when the Veilkeepers executed their leaders—my parents among them. But Sylas..." He trailed off, unconsciously rubbing the curious scar on his knuckles—a tell I'd only noticed. "He's not just hunting you for being a weaver, Kael. That rune he used—it's ancient, tied specifically to Starborn. He knows more than he should."
My blood chilled at the word. Starborn. The Abyss had whispered it beneath Thornhollow, Sylas had spat it, and now Toren's obvious fear confirmed it was no coincidence. The old tales claimed Starborn were children of the shattered star itself—immune to the memory tax that all weavers paid, capable of communing with the Abyss without being consumed by it. Myths, most called them. Until me.
"What exactly do you know about this?" I demanded, stopping in my tracks. Veyra's weight leaned heavily against me, her breathing shallow. Her haze-clouded eyes flicked toward Toren, searching his face as if she too sensed his half-truths.
"Later," he snapped, tension making his voice tight. "The Veilkeepers are tracking us through the tunnels—that weave you did for Veyra lit a beacon for miles. Starborn weaves have a distinctive signature—azure trails in the cinder-currents that only Veilkeepers can see." His accusation stung, but he wasn't wrong. My attempt to help clear her memory haze had stirred something in the Abyss, and Sylas's relentless pursuit proved it.
I remembered that moment clearly—Veyra collapsed after our escape from the marketplace, her eyes so clouded she couldn't recognize me. Desperate, I'd woven a thread of clarity through her mind, and for a brief moment, she'd seen me clearly again. But something had changed after that—the Abyss's whispers grew louder, more insistent, as if my weaving had awakened something that had been watching all along.
Veyra's cold hand grazed mine, a fleeting touch with no warmth, just necessity. "Kael," she whispered, her voice faint but urgent, "the cipher... we need it now." Her mention of Lyra's cipher—reportedly hidden in the safehouse, a possible map to her journal—reignited my sense of purpose. Lyra, taken for discovering a forbidden weave, was the reason I'd come to Varn in the first place. Her smile was the one memory I'd never risk losing, thanks to my strange immunity. But Veyra's worsening condition, her sacrifices to help me, were a debt I couldn't ignore.
The tunnel widened gradually, roots coiling around us like frozen serpents. The walls were etched with faded sigils—remnants of Varn's weaver past, before Ashwraiths had claimed its shadowed corners. In the early days after the Veil's formation, weavers had been revered here, not hunted. Their symbols adorned every surface: protection runes, healing signs, markers of safe passage. Now they were just ghostly reminders of a lost era, before the forgotten memories of countless weavers had coalesced into the first Ashwraiths—hunger given form, emptiness seeking to fill itself with the minds of others.
Finally, a wooden door, splintered but intact, marked our destination. Toren knelt before it, carefully tracing a cinder-rune across its surface, his knife moving with practiced steadiness. The rune flared briefly, and the door creaked open to reveal a stone chamber lit by a single hanging cinder-lamp.
Inside, wooden crates were stacked against the walls, stuffed with papers, vials, and—there on a scrap of hide—what could only be Lyra's cipher, glowing faintly with her distinctive sigils.
I eased Veyra onto one of the sturdier crates, noting how her breath came in shallow gasps. "Rest for a moment," I said, my voice coming out softer than I'd intended. Her bloodshot eyes held fear—not of Sylas or the Veilkeepers, but of losing herself piece by piece.
"I'm fine," she lied, licking her cracked lips—a gesture I'd come to recognize all too well. But the haze in her eyes was a storm now, clouding the fierce defiance that had faced down Sylas in the alley.
"How much more can you lose before..." I couldn't finish the sentence.
"Before I'm gone completely?" she finished for me, a bitter smile twisting her lips. "We all face that question eventually. Some weavers save one final memory—clutch it so tightly the Abyss can't take it. For some it's a lover's face, for others a child's name." She looked down at her trembling hands. "I chose to remember why I betrayed them. Why I couldn't be what Sylas became."
I turned my attention to the cipher, fingers tracing over Lyra's sigils as my Spark hummed in response, just as it had that first night in Thornhollow. The hide scrap pulsed with recognition, revealing what appeared to be a location deep in Varn's lower tunnels—where Lyra's journal waited.
"It's deeper in the city," I said, hope warring with dread in my chest. The Abyss's tug sharpened in response, a whisper echoing through my mind: *Starborn... come closer. Your light is mine to claim.* I noticed Toren's eyes lingering too long on the cipher, his expression too eager, his hand unconsciously rubbing that scar again.
"Sylas..." Veyra suddenly murmured, her eyes distant as if seeing something beyond the stone walls. "We had the same mentor... she trained us both to hunt Starborn. Sylas stayed loyal. I... defected." Her voice broke, the words raw and painful. "She taught us about Lyra's patterns—the forbidden weaves."
A sudden memory seemed to grip her, and she spoke as if seeing it unfold before her: "In the Temple of Ascending Light, our mentor would blindfold us, make us recognize weave-patterns by their hum alone. Starborn weaves have a distinctive resonance—like crystal breaking underwater." Her voice grew distant, lost in memory. "She made us practice with prisoners—weavers captured during the Border Wars. We'd extract their memories systematically, looking for signs of immunity, for traces of Starborn blood."
I saw it clearly in my mind: a vast stone hall bathed in cinder-light, their mentor's cold calculating eyes, Sylas's blade flaring as he mastered a weave that Veyra refused to perform.
"The final test came when they brought in a young woman—barely more than a girl," Veyra continued, her voice hollow. "She'd been found weaving without losing memories. Our mentor ordered us to break her mind completely, extract the secret of her immunity. Sylas stepped forward eagerly." She swallowed hard. "I refused. That night, I freed the girl and fled. I've been paying for that mercy ever since—both in memories and in knowing Sylas has been hunting me as relentlessly as he hunts you."
My breath caught in my chest. Veyra's connection to the same mentor linked her directly to Sylas, to what had happened to Lyra. "Why didn't you tell me before?" I asked, feeling betrayal sharp in my chest, though the sight of her haze held back my anger. She was paying enough already.
"I couldn't," she whispered, wincing as she shifted position. "At first, I didn't trust you. Then, as the haze grew worse... I feared forgetting the truth entirely before I could share it." Her clouded eyes met mine with surprising clarity. "Sylas doesn't want to capture you for the Veilkeepers, Kael. He wants your immunity for himself. He would kill anyone for Starborn secrets. Just like he did for Lyra's."
"What did Lyra discover?" I pressed, sensing we were running out of time.
Veyra shook her head. "Her journal might tell us. She was researching the Veil's formation—the shattering of the star. She believed the memory tax wasn't inevitable, that it was imposed deliberately by something in the Abyss. Something that feeds on our forgotten past."
Before I could press her further, the safehouse door's rune suddenly flared bright—a trap triggered. Cinder-light flooded the chamber, searing my exposed skin. My Spark urged me to weave a shield, but the Abyss's chant roared in response: *Starborn... mine. Your memories cannot escape me forever.*
Toren's knife flashed as he cut through a crate, dragging it to block the door, but his eyes darted repeatedly to the cipher, hunger evident in his gaze. "Veilkeepers," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Sylas must have tracked your weave through the tunnels. That blue trail you left—it's like a road map for them."
Heavy boots echoed from the passage outside, accompanied by the distinctive hum of cinder blades. Sylas's voice cut through it all: "The Starborn is here! I can feel the resonance of untaxed weaving!"
Veyra struggled to her feet, nearly collapsing as the haze overwhelmed her. I caught her weight, feeling the debt between us grow heavier. A small glass vial gleamed among the scattered contents of the broken crate—marked with Lyra's distinctive sigils, pulsing just like my cinder had that night in Thornhollow. I grabbed it quickly, shoving it deep into my pouch alongside the cipher's map. Lyra's journal was close, but so were the Veilkeepers.
Toren's glance shifted from Veyra to me, too calculating by half. "There's a passage behind that shelf," he said, pointing. "Leads deeper into the old Ashbreaker network. The same tunnels where Lyra's journal is hidden, according to the cipher." He paused, something unreadable crossing his face. "My parents died protecting those tunnels and what they contain. Now I understand why."
"Can we trust you?" I asked bluntly, remembering how his hand lingered on his knife—too similar to Joren's stance before his betrayal.
"You don't have a choice," he replied, pulling the shelf aside to reveal a dark opening. "But know this—Ashbreakers have waited generations for a true Starborn. One who could break the Veil without paying the memory tax." His eyes gleamed with something between reverence and greed. "If Lyra found a way to end the memory tax for everyone, the Veil's power over us would shatter. That's what Sylas can't allow—and what I've spent my life searching for."
The Abyss's chant grew louder in my mind, the roots around us trembling as if Varn itself sensed the trap closing. Veyra's secret connection to Sylas, Toren's complex loyalties—trust was becoming a luxury I couldn't afford, and Sylas's blade was mere seconds from breaking through.
I made my choice, supporting Veyra toward the passage as the door behind us began to splinter. The Abyss whispered promises and threats as we descended into darkness, toward Lyra's hidden truth and whatever price awaited us below.