The city was still waking when Gale slipped out.

  Kentar’s upper tiers stirred with the rustle of merchants, the clatter of shutters thrown open, and the distant shrill of a fisher’s bell. But the narrow alleys below the ridge remained half-drowned in shadow, cool and damp with salt and last night’s fog. Even the air here smelled older — less of people, more of stone and secrets.

  He didn’t tell Ludmilla where he was going. Not because she would’ve objected — she wouldn’t. She would’ve arched an eyebrow, drawn a breath like she meant to say something, then waved him off with a muttered “Suit yourself.” But he didn’t want the commentary. Or worse, her approval.

  He made it to the ruined chapter faster this time. Familiarity dulled the unease, though the sight of the crooked facade still twisted something in his gut. The gates were still broken, the ward still fractured. No sign of anyone having entered since their last visit. Still, he checked the perimeter out of habit, slipping between shattered pillars and fractured glyphs with silent steps. A few seabirds had claimed the roof. A thick layer of sea-dust and mildew clung to everything else.

  Inside, the hall was quiet. The long desks where apprentices once sat lay half-collapsed, their surfaces warped and mold-bitten. Rotted curtains hung limp in doorways like shrouds. The scent of wet paper, dust, and something faintly metallic filled the stale air.

  He found the room again easily. The collapsed wall. The scattered crates. The broken lecterns. The jagged mosaic of obsidian floor tiles lay scattered across the floor. Just beside them, a small dent marked the dust where something had once pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.

  The shard still lay half-hidden beneath the dust, near the edge of a toppled crate. It hadn’t pulsed since he last saw it — hadn’t moved. Just a sliver of translucent, irregular material, faintly opalescent in the low light.

  He crouched and studied it again. Neither he or Daimon had touched it the first time. The boy had spotted it first, gone still as if struck by memory, and refused to explain why. That, more than anything, had made Gale wary.

  He reached out and plucked the shard from the floor.

  Nothing happened. No flare, no surge, no sting. Just a cool, weightless tremor — as if the shard didn’t quite belong to this plane.

  He held it up to the light. It caught the glow strangely, bending it in subtle, impossible angles. Not glass. Not crystal. Something cut from power. A fragment of something greater.

  He wrapped the shard in a thick wardcloth, binding it with a soft hiss of containment runes, then tucked it inside the inner lining of his coat.

  “Not dangerous,” he muttered. “Just… interesting. That’s always worse.”

  He stood again. Dust clung to his knees. The place hadn’t changed since their last visit, and yet now, everything felt different. The weight of deliberate concealment pressed against him. Not because of the shard — because of what had been built around it. Someone had wanted this place to look abandoned while hiding something far more significant.

  He traced a faded carving on the doorframe, something faintly reminiscent of a southern sigil — Zanatheian, or older. Wrong for Kentar. And not entirely unfamiliar.

  A name itched at the back of his mind, like an old paper cut. Something from Candlekeep. Or earlier.

  He stepped back, frowning. “This doesn’t feel like leftover debris,” he murmured. “Someone wanted this hidden. Or found.”

  On his way back through the wreckage, he paused in what must once have been the archivist’s nook — a small room ringed with rotted scroll bins and half-burnt cabinets. Dust cloaked everything in grey, but a few scraps of parchment still clung to a crumbling desk, weighted beneath a broken lamp.

  One page caught his eye. It was half-charred, but a slanted hand had scrawled a passage in tight ink:

  “...localized surges observed near southern convergence. Unstable behavioral shifts in proximity. Pattern resembles early Drift phenomena noted during Velarith containment trials. Comparison to Candlekeep fissure inconclusive. Zanatheia remains unquantified. Risk high.”

  In the margin, a second hand had added, simply: Deep Reaches?

  Gale stood motionless for several beats, the air thick with dust and something colder. Zanatheia remains unquantified. Of course it did. No one in their right mind mapped magic there. The Archipelago’s waters writhed with wild flux — more rumors than records, more myth than doctrine.

  But Velarith. Candlekeep. Zanatheia. All tied by one thing: sources of power buried deep beneath their foundations. Some stable, like the fissure in Candlekeep. Others… not.

  And the term Drift phenomena. Rare, yes. But not unheard of. He’d seen a case once, years ago, misdiagnosed as simple overchanneling. It wasn’t.

  He folded the page carefully and tucked it into his coat pocket. Later, he’d transcribe it properly. Maybe there was more in the archives of the Scarlet Crescent. Maybe even Ludmilla didn’t know.

  By the time Gale left the ruins and returned to the upper tiers, the market below was already a hive of color and noise. Dawn had been pale and sluggish, filtered through high clouds that dulled the sea’s brilliance and left the stone streets damp from a night breeze. Even now, the air carried a scent of brine, roasted fennel, and cooling tiles. Autumn, in Kentar, didn’t arrive with frost — it came with slower mornings, longer shadows, and the sharp tang of dried citrus curling in copper trays.

  He moved uphill with the city’s rhythm pressing around him: carts squeaking, apprentices running, linen curtains flapping from open balconies. A troupe of dancers rehearsed near the marble fountain, drawing lazy applause from passersby. Two priests were already arguing outside a bathhouse about something that sounded theological, but might have been plumbing.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  The climb toward the upper tiers was more architectural than physical. Stone changed from chipped basalt to pale limestone. Signs stopped being painted and started being carved. The same olives and silks sold below were suddenly double the price — and the vendors offered them in a whisper, not a shout.

  Gale adjusted his coat against the wind. It wasn’t cold, not by Candlekeep or Vartis standards — but the sea made everything feel colder than it was. And he hadn’t slept.

  Still, the arcane district came into view exactly where it always had, sloping just below the temple quarter, behind a crooked street of spice merchants and windowless courtyards.

  He passed the arched teak door of the Main Chapter without slowing. The sigils carved into its wood stirred lazily, reacting to his presence, but he didn’t so much as glance toward them. Marven Nirello was likely inside, doing whatever it was that spiritual barnacles did between bursts of administrative authority — but Gale had no intention of being catalogued, processed, or reminded to fill out Form 8-D.

  Instead, he turned down a narrow flight of steps that opened into a lower street lined with quiet courtyards and forgotten doors. Here, magic was not a performance. It was a utility. Enchantments shimmered faintly over windowpanes. A lantern adjusted its brightness as he passed beneath it. The scent of salt and old parchment drifted from a nearby balcony, mingling with dry sage.

  Gale stopped before a door nestled between a binder’s workshop and a closed tailor’s shop whose window still displayed mannequins in enchanted robes, rotating slowly behind dusty glass.

  There was no sign. No brass placard. No sigils or charms. Just a narrow iron knocker shaped like a curled fern — too old to be aesthetic, too deliberate to be decorative.

  He hesitated, then knocked twice.

  The door opened within seconds.

  Gerolf Marzahn hadn’t changed.

  The man was pale in the way only long winters and northern blood could produce. Pale yellow hair, balding at the crown, combed back with the precision of someone who considered order a moral virtue. His light blue eyes, magnified by a set of old circular lenses, gave him a permanently startled expression. He was shorter than Gale by a full head and built like a census clerk — thin wrists, pressed vest, clean collar. The sleeves of his charcoal shirt were rolled up with geometric care.

  And yet, beneath the mild appearance, something else stirred. Not power on display, but knowledge — compact, quiet, sharp enough to draw blood if you weren’t paying attention.

  “Dekarios,” he said without inflection.

  “You remember me?”

  “You once returned an alembic set unscorched and alphabetized the labels. That tends to make an impression.”

  Gale stepped inside.

  The shop smelled of ash, copper, and old tea. It was little more than a front room with high shelves, a central counter, and tools arranged in surgical neatness. Jars of powder, resin, crystals, and dried roots lined the walls, each labeled in an immaculate hand. Two mortar bowls sat beside a weighing scale. A sealed crucible rested on a runic plate still faintly warm.

  The floorboards creaked softly underfoot, worn smooth by decades of careful footsteps. Dust motes drifted through a shaft of light from the single window, and somewhere behind the counter, a clock ticked with mechanical precision.

  “I thought you’d moved,” Gale said, removing his coat.

  “I considered it,” Gerolf replied. “Then remembered retirement requires either peace of mind or funds. I have neither.”

  He gestured toward the stool. Gale sat. The alchemist remained standing.

  “Well?”

  Gale reached into his inner pocket and carefully unwrapped the shard.

  Gerolf did not flinch. He retrieved a glass wand and a flat glyph disc, placing the shard at the center. The etched rings remained dark. No flare of reaction. No magical flicker.

  “That’s odd,” Gale murmured.

  “It is,” said Gerolf.

  He leaned in. Adjusted the lenses on his nose. The wand hovered above the shard. A faint shimmer moved along the edge — barely perceptible, like heat above stone or light filtered through deep water.

  “It’s been charged,” Gerolf said, “but not by standard means. The structure is crystalline, yes — but only as a base. It’s been transmuted. Sculpted by arcane force, not tools. Willpower left a fingerprint.”

  Gale studied the disc. “But no active spellwork?”

  “No sigils. No channeling residue. But there’s something else.” He tapped the wand once. A hum rose, then died. “Whatever this is, it isn’t inert. It’s dormant. Watching.”

  That was not the word Gale wanted to hear.

  Gerolf tilted his head slightly, as if listening to a sound only he could hear. “It’s reactive. Not to you — not directly. But to something close. Unstable magic. Drift variants. Residual trauma. I’d advise against keeping this near anything… unfinished.”

  Gale’s pulse did not quicken. His fingers, however, closed slightly tighter on his knee. “How much do you know about the Drifts?”

  “I’ve lived in Kentar for thirty years,” Gerolf said calmly. “Before that, Velarith. Before that, Candlekeep. And long before all of them — Benaris.” A brief, wry smile. “Even the most civilized lands have their monsters.”

  Gale blinked. “You studied the Deep Reaches?”

  “I studied what came from them. Not willingly.” He tapped the edge of the shard again. “This… folds light in the same pattern I once saw in a specimen retrieved from the southern faultline.” Gerolf’s expression darkened slightly. “Beneath Velissa. Where the old excavations went too deep.”

  Gale felt something cold settle in his chest. He knew those excavation reports—the ones that ended abruptly, mid-sentence.

  Gerolf rewrapped the shard and passed it back. “Keep it sealed. Keep it cold, if you can. Don’t sleep near it. And for the love of clarity, don’t let it near a child.”

  Gale stood. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Gerolf, brushing a speck of dust off his counter. “Try not to die.”

  Outside, the arcane quarter was waking fast. Gale paused on the threshold, Gerolf’s warnings echoing in his mind. Don’t let it near a child. The shard felt heavier in his coat now, its presence a cold weight against his ribs. Voices multiplied, doors opened, the scent of cardamom and ink mingled in the air. Somewhere, a bell rang seven chimes. A group of students walked past laughing — all carrying lacquered cases and speaking too loudly about stabilization matrices. Gale watched them turn the corner, then adjusted his coat and stepped back into the morning.

  He walked without direction, his mind still turning over Gerolf’s words. Reactive to something close. Unstable magic. The weight of not knowing pressed against him, familiar as an old wound. At the end of the crooked street, a familiar silhouette paused outside a jewelry house. Ezaryon Dekarios — unmistakable, even in profile. Broad shouldered, polished, the way some men became when they’d stopped trying to prove anything. His hair tied back with careless precision, hands gloved, coat too fine for a merchant but worn like one. Laughing at something. Not alone.

  Gale stopped.

  He hadn’t planned to — hadn’t even thought of this quarter as his brother’s. But of course it was. Ezaryon knew every profitable street in Kentar by instinct. He would’ve recognized the clientele, the flow of coin. He always did.

  For a breath, Gale didn’t move. His side ached phantom-sharp, muscle memory of their last conversation echoing in the space between his teeth. He could cross the street. Should he? After what they’d said? After what they’d done? The words had been worse than the bruises, and the bruises had been mutual.

  He could have. Just a few steps down. One hand raised. A simple, stupid, brutal gesture — hey.

  He even started, one foot shifting forward before the familiar weight of old arguments, old disappointments, old silences stopped him cold.

  And then didn’t.

  Ezaryon looked up — perhaps sensing something — and their eyes met across the cobbles. Neither of them smiled. Neither looked away quickly enough. For a heartbeat, Gale saw something flicker across his brother’s face—surprise, wariness, something that might have been regret. Or calculation.

  Gale held the gaze for a beat longer than he meant to, then turned away first, pace even, coat fluttering at his heels. His hands, he realized, had clenched into fists. He forced them open. He didn’t look back.

  Some things were harder than magic.