Page 88 of The First Scar
"Is he—" I didn't want to ask it. Didn't want to care.
"Alive. Kaelen has him in one of the back chambers." Serenya's mouth thinned. "He's not talking to anyone."
Fine. It didn't matter.
I forced myself upright, ignoring the room tilting beneath me. My body felt excavated—like the scaffolding holding my center together had been scraped out, leaving a cold, ringing draft in its place.
Serenya watched me with that healer's gaze—cataloguing symptoms I didn't want named.
"You're getting weaker." Not a question. "The dizziness. The shallow breathing. That tremor in your hands you think I haven't noticed." She paused. "The Veil is unraveling, Amaria. And so are you."
I grunted. She wasn't wrong. I'd felt it for days now—the deep-set thrum in my spine that never quite faded, my Marks syncing with the bleeding wound in reality, a mimicry that felt like a death sentence. Like we were connected. Like whatever was killing the Veil was killing me too.
"I'm fine," I said anyway.
Serenya didn't dignify that with a response. Her palm was cool against my forehead. Her own Mark pulsed faintly at her heart—I'd seen that glow before. It meant she had more work to do.
"Let me finish," she murmured. "You're not all the way back yet."
Immediately my eyes wanted to close. My body wanted to sink. I fought both.
"Let me in," she said softly. "Just breathe."
The Old Tongue came soft and low—not words exactly, but sounds that lived beneath language. I knew this ritual. Had felt it a hundred times in childhood, when nightmares clawed too close and Serenya would weave me back together with thread-light and true memory.
The world frayed then softened.
I let myself drift.
And then I wasn't in our quarters anymore.
Rough-hewn walls. A narrow cot pushed against the corner, blankets untouched. Eryndor's quarters—I recognized the sparse discipline of it, the absence of anything personal. The Crownforged lived like he was already a ghost and just hadn't filed the paperwork.
He sat on the edge of the cot, alone.
His cuirass lay discarded on the floor, shirt unlaced. His hand flew to his Mark. Right where his Command-Rune had blistered and burned. Even from here, I could see the angry red of damaged skin, the dark veins still spidering outward.
His lips moved.
A hum escaped him—tuneless, almost unconscious. A melody I knew. A melody I'd heard children singing in an alley not two weeks ago.
"Turn once for Light, turn once for Shade." His voice was rough. Barely audible. "Bind the thread or all shall fade."
Serenya's fingers dug into my arm. I felt it from far away—her shock bleeding through the weave.
That's not possible. How is he—
The vision fractured. Shifted.
Not the stone walls anymore. Somewhere warm. Firelit. A nursery with the faint sweet scent of milk-soaked cloth. Soft furs on the floor, firelight pooling orange across the stone.
A boy—barely more than a baby, toddling on shaky legs. His torso bare, a Luminar Mark glowing faint and new against his skin. A caretaker knelt beside him, kind-eyed, her voice soft as she sang.
"Turn once for Light, turn once for Shade..."
She took his tiny hand. Pressed it to his heart.
"Bind the thread or all shall fade."
