The Temple of Renewal smelled like a funeral home that had given up trying to hide the bodies. Kael staggered up the moss-coated steps, each movement reigniting the wildfire in his side. The place looked like a cathedral designed by a goth kid on a nihilism bender—crumbling spires, stained glass windows depicting faceless saints, and ivy that oozed black sap like the QuickStop slushie machine after a syrup spill.
"Not another step."
The voice came from a shadow that peeled itself off the wall. The woman looked like a punk rock Florence Nightingale—silver hair streaked with grease, cracked round glasses, and a leather apron stained with substances that made the QuickStop meat counter look sterile. Her hands glowed faintly blue, healing threads coiling around her fingers like anxious snakes.
"Infection's in your marrow," she said, nodding at the blackened wound. "Why bother?"
Kael fumbled with his coin pouch, fingers numb. Silver pieces clattered across the steps, one rolling into the dark like a lost wish.
"Not currency," she snapped. "Truth."
He lifted his shirt. The threads around the wound pulsed an unhealthy gold, tendrils creeping toward his heart like mold on expired bread.
The healer—Liora, her nametag read—inhaled sharply. "Two ghosts in one meat sack. Come."
The treatment room felt like being swallowed by a whale with clinical depression. Bioluminescent mushrooms oozed amber light from cracks in the walls, their glow pulsing in time with Kael's ragged breaths. Liora's hands hovered over his ribs, her healing threads intertwining with his own. The pain reminded him of the time he'd sliced his palm open on a broken Forty Creek bottle—sharp, then warm, then weirdly clarifying.
Memories not his own flickered:
-A boy's laughter in a sunlit orchard
-The burn of stolen wine
-Shadowwhisper's final journal entry: "Tell them we existed..."
"You're unraveling," Liora muttered, sweat dripping onto her fogged glasses. "Living flesh can't hold this much dead weight."
The vision struck like a sucker punch—a vast void where golden threads snapped one by one, each break accompanied by a scream that sounded suspiciously like the QuickStop intercom feedback. They both gasped.
"You've seen it," Kael croaked.
"Every sensitive's nightmare now." She wiped blood from her nose. "The Weaver's grand finale."
Boots thundered in the hall.
"Inspection!" A voice barked—the kind that tolerated no unionizing, no sick days, no questions. "By order of House Luminar!"
Liora swore, shoving Kael toward a rusted iron door. "Breathe quiet. Touch nothing."
The secret room defied physics. Crystals floated in midair like frozen tears, their fractured light casting shadows that moved independently. At the center hung the Cycle's Eye—a mercury sphere reflecting cities that no longer existed. The novel had called it "the Weaver's first draft."
Kael reached out.
"Don't!" Liora hissed from the doorway. "That thing eats memories!"
The sphere rippled. For a heartbeat, Shadowwhisper stared back, mouthing words lost to time. Then the image shifted—a dark-haired boy hiding in an academy cellar, eyes blazing with familiar defiance. Reins.
The door rattled. "Seal breach in Sector 5!"
Liora yanked him back, sealing the room. Her hands shook as she thrust a vial into his. "Three drops at moonrise. Now vanish."
He stumbled into the predawn gray, the Compass needle quivering northeast. The vial burned in his pocket—and deeper still, the memory of that golden sphere hummed like a pop song he couldn't shake.