Ardan watched the multiton stone slabs grind shut with a ponderous clang, sealing the grotto’s roof above his head. A hulking demon, several Cloaks, the Grand Magister, the half-orc, and the dwindling echoes of a battle gone mad were all left behind. Ard found himself standing in the middle of… a meadow. A small, flowery meadow where, among the tall grass that brushed against the torn fabric of his trousers and tickled the skin of his knees and thighs, blossoms strained toward the sun: buttercups, violets, bellflowers, even the occasional cornflower. However, just like their “free” brothers and sisters far above, none of them would ever touch that distant star. And while the laws of creation forbade it in the world outside, down here, the reason was very simple: in this grotto, there was no sun at all. The underground area, which was only a little larger than a standard lecture hall at the Grand, was lit by a glass sphere hanging from the ceiling. Dozens of cables had been hooked up to it, bundled into tight braids and fastened to supports driven into the earth. The supports looked like trees — iron trees. Their roots were gutters where the intricate weave of Ley cables crossed, overlaid, separated, and crossed again before vanishing into enormous machines that ringed almost the entire perimeter of the grotto. Some of the cables disappeared into the walls, presumably leading to the engines that had remained outside. Professor Lea, who was no longer hiding the birdlike talons that served as her legs, nor her arm that resembled the clawed appendage of some reptile, calmly pored over a logbook and entered the last few numbers into the instruments. She was flipping toggles, turning relays, and from time to time, pressing massive buttons. Ardan’s presence seemed not to trouble her in the least. If anything, it was quite the opposite. “I have already spoken, student Egobar,” Ms. Morimer cut him off, her tone tired but devoid of malice. Her logbook and the booming, trembling apparatus clearly mattered far more to her than Ardan. “You have lost.” Ardi cast a quick glance at the glass globe. Inside, shimmering with every color of the rainbow — along with hues for which no one had yet coined names — burned a sphere that was unlike anything he had ever seen. It was not a flame or condensed light, not a liquid, not a blazing gas, and yet, it was there: imprisoned, quivering, hammering against the walls, seemingly attempting to break free. Instead, with every passing second, fresh droplets of prismatic radiance tumbled into it, birthed by the cables feeding into the globe. “This is an intriguing device,” the professor muttered, yanking another lever. She closed the log and turned to Ardi. “Its principle, however, is painfully prosaic. You see, my dear student Egobar, when the Aean’Hane craft their splendid artifacts, they embed within them a portion of the Ley. That is why their works never lose their properties — unlike Star-forged objects. The machine above us” — Lea tapped the ceiling with her logbook — “draws this Ley out, then condenses it and splits it into separate fields which are” — she gestured behind her — “synthesized anew into a single substance down here. After going through the stages that Paarlax termed ‘partial decay,’ the matter gains greater energy density, and as a result, we have…” The professor nodded toward the glass sphere, which had something incredible burning within it… “Purified Ley… That truly has been stripped of all impurities,” Ardan finished for her. “Because, just as with mages, the Ley touching any natural object picks up its… charge, a portion of its properties, if you will. That is why it is so difficult to use in machinery.” “Excellent! Were this the exam in Star Engineering, I would give you top marks.” Lea’s face — she had removed her porcelain mask — didn’t so much as twitch a single time, just like before. Admittedly, not much of her original self remained. Most of her visage was an assembly of artificial bones attached to the few “organic” ones that had survived the tragedy with screws and plating. They were plainly visible beneath strips of scar-seamed skin where countless tiny dots glinted, left there by needles and sutures. Where an eye had once been, an empty socket stood, its bottom stretched out with that same ugly, blistered membrane that could scarcely be called skin. Several of her teeth were also gone, and her exposed tongue kept curling into a tube to draw saliva down a throat seared raw. Ardan shuddered, but not because of how gruesome her wounds looked. Rather, he was horrified to realize that every breath, every word, every movement of her tongue must’ve been agony for her, akin to the moment a drowning person, down to the last dregs of air in their breaking lungs, bursts from the water for a scalding breath. “I never wanted this,” Lea whispered, touching the ruins of her face with the claws that served as her fingers on her reptilian arm. “I begged them to let me die, but they would not…” Ardan did not ask the obvious question. He already knew the answer. Because those who had not let Lea Morimer die had needed her to do what she had done. They hadn’t even needed to beg or bargain with her. “No one seduced me, no one shoved me onto a dark path,” the professor said, as though voicing Ardan’s thoughts. “I was merely looking for a way to heal myself. Myself and those who’d ended up beside me.” “Beside you?” Ardan repeated, opening his grimoire. “A military healer, a Blue Star Mage aboard a vessel in neutral waters. A vessel that left no trace in official ledgers, yet bristles with Ley equipment, and-” “You have a keen mind, student Egobar,” Lea interrupted. “But if you think you know anything, you are mistaken.” “I know enough,” Ardi shook his head. “You were part of experiments conducted on-” Lea raised her single eye toward him, a shade saddened. Ardi flinched. He flinched and stepped back. He and Milar had misunderstood something. They’d read the picture wrong. Nalimov had never had a family with one of the Firstborn; that was why Arkar had found no record of it at the Conclave. At some point, Ildar Nalimov had seen something more than extra exes on his account — he had seen what lay behind them. And his conscience had started to gnaw at him. It was something so mundane, and yet beyond a purely material view of the world. “The Firstborn…” Ardan breathed. “Quite right, student Egobar,” Ms. Morimer nodded. “Ildar Nalimov supplied our vessel with Firstborn who sought to cross the Swallow Ocean illegally. Not all of them, of course — only those unlucky enough to have criminal entries in their files. I don’t know why. He never specified. Perhaps that was how he justified it to himself.” “But everything changed…” “When he discovered that there was a criminal record in the file of a little orc girl.” Ardan found it hard to breathe. A plush bear. A stupid plush bear. “Not his sister.” The professor set her log aside and opened her own grimoire. “Not his sister, Ard.” Ardan’s throat went dry and his head spun. “His daughter…” Ardi whispered. “She was his daughter.” “Children possess the greatest neuroplasticity,” a dark, almost black tear rolled down Lea’s cheek. “We preferred to work with them.” “Invasive demonization,” Professor Lea did not deny it. “Partial chimerization, high necromancy, designing the subtlest malefic seals, mutations…” Ardan was assaulted by memories of so many recent events. Alice Rovnev discovering the artificial Stars. A report noting how Irigov’s brain had melted inside his skull. Young vampires lacking even a mote of the true power of those who “walk the night.” An unknown, unregistered “Star-born werewolf.” “You have no idea, boy, what Star Magic can do when the state’s prohibitions on inhuman experimentation are lifted.” This was what Mart Borskov had told him long ago as well, stressing the word inhuman — meaning experiments that dealt with humans. But on the ship where Lea Morimer had served, the experiments had not been conducted on humans at all… And they had ended almost six years ago, when the previous Emperor had fallen ill and Grand Prince Pavel Agrov had begun, still in the shadows, to steer the affairs of state. “Do you know why I decided to build this temple, Ard?” “His Imperial Majesty Pavel IV, in one of his first ever edicts — signed while his father was still alive — ordered our laboratory closed,” Professor Lea once again made no attempt to deny it, “and, along with the lab, the destruction of every trace of our… inquiries.” “Including every person involved.” Ardan felt like just a few more words might crush him to the ground beneath their weight. The black tear rolling down the ghastly hollow that served as her cheek dried up. “There was no storm, student Egobar. No storm, no terrorists or Firstborn revolutionaries.” For the first time, some inflection entered the professor’s voice. “Acting on the orders of the Head of the Second Chancery, a squad of Daggers blew up our engine room and jammed the helm. We, together with Nalimov’s barge, were indeed marooned on that island in the Dead Lands. And anyone who tried to leave said island was immediately destroyed by the cordons the Second Chancery had set up.” “The fact that you do not know the rules of the game does not mean it has none.” Ardan’s stomach heaved and everything inside him twisted. The roar in his temples made it hard to hear his own thoughts. “I, along with three other fortunate souls — the subjects of my own experiments on the regenerative abilities of vampires — managed to survive,” the professor’s words seared Ardan’s mind like molten steel. “We cobbled a raft together and, using a real storm, reached a merchant ship bound from Dunsfield. After that, the Crown, fearing an international scandal over their violation of the International Star Magic Pact, had to acknowledge our existence. They forged a legend for us, gave us some compensation, and threw us out into the street.” Breathing hard, Ardan straightened up. Thoughts buzzed in his skull like a swarm determined to break it from within. “It must be hard to accept that all this time you have been working for those responsible for what is happening now.” “And the fact that-” Lea broke off, jerking as though struck by a whip. “What?” “No,” Ardan repeated. “You’re mistaken.” For the first time, something akin to an expression flickered across what passed for the professor’s face. Her blistered, scarred skin tightened, her thread-like, almost exposed muscles tensed, and the screws rasped in her bones. “You simply do not know the rules of the game.” “Boy!” Lea cried, raising her staff in anger, but she froze when Ardan kept talking. “If we take what you’ve just told me at face value, it seems like the Head of the Second Chancery — Grand Prince Pavel himself — knew what was happening aboard your ship, and yet, for some unfathomable reason, he gave no orders to shut the laboratory down until he had essentially replaced his late father, the Emperor.” Ardan closed his eyes, making his breathing even. “That is pure nonsense, a thing that contradicts itself. Which means that, logically speaking, what actually happened…” Professor Lea went limp, her talons biting into the wood of her staff. “He didn’t know. Pavel knew nothing at all.” “Someone was powerful enough to hide an entire floating laboratory from the Head of the Second Chancery,” Ardan raised his gaze to the cavern’s lofty ceiling. “And that is why Pavel ordered your liquidation. It was because…” “All of us were compromised,” Lea finished for him. Ardan might have added that their rescue by a vessel coming out of Dunsfield was no coincidence, and that if the general public — especially the Firstborn — had learned about what had taken place on that ship, every effort the Crown had made to normalize relations between humans and Firstborn would have sunk along with that same ‘shipwreck.’ That, more than anything, explained all the suffocating secrecy and the absolute exclusion of outsiders. But if the Second Chancery already knew about the incident and Lea Morimer’s involvement, why had the Colonel remained silent, even after Ardi and Milar had repeated Anvar’s words? “Don’t be offended,” the Colonel’s voice echoed in Ardan’s mind, “but everyone is told only what they need to know. Nothing more. That’s the job.” Ardan, as he had been reminded often enough, would forever be the descendant of Aror Egobar. He himself was a potential leak. That was why they’d been told nothing. For a while, they were both silent. Ardan was now certain that the Second Chancery had known nothing about the floating nightmare the Empire had birthed in the neutral waters between the Shallow Seas and the Swallow Ocean. However, that raised another question. Why had Lea Morimer, who’d been compromised by her part in illegal, clandestine experiments, been allowed to live? The Empire ruled by Pavel IV possessed more than enough means to erase ten such “Lea Morimers” without anyone ever noticing once the uproar had settled. Terrifying as the question was, the answer hammering at the gates of reason was worse still. “Bait…” The professor whispered, having reached the same conclusion. “To the Crown, we’re only bait.” Why keep Professor Morimer alive? For the same reason Aror’s students had been spared: so that, over the years, she might lead them to whoever had truly been behind the floating laboratory. When Ard recalled everything he had uncovered: Alexander Taakov’s journal, the notes on the demon removal process, the unsigned arrest warrant, the words of the Star-born werewolf, and Alla Tantov’s careless slip — only one thing became clear. His father had not been wrong. Nor had Alexander Taakov. A conspiracy was ripening within the Empire. It had been ripening for centuries. And that realization, now indisputable, struck Ardan hard. While he and Milar had been playing chess, skirmishing across a board full of varied pieces, an unseen hand had hovered above them all along — felt but never verified. This was a plot three centuries deep. By the Sleeping Spirits… “Professor, who helped you?” Ardan asked at last, after recovering from his shock. “Who gave you Lady Talia’s records? Who aided you with your chimerization and demonology? Who bought off Irigov and hired the Star-born werewolf?” It seemed like Lea couldn’t hear him. She was staring straight ahead, but not at Ard. Her gaze had slipped past his shoulder and into some thicket of the past, one that was veiled in blood-red muslin sewn with threads of night terrors that had scarred the body and soul of a once-gifted healer. What a twisted sort of irony this was: the ones who had orchestrated “Operation Mountain Predator” had turned a fine young woman into a monster. They’d made a healer into one of the most prolific killers in recent decades. They had inverted her very essence. Ard couldn’t help thinking about Baliero, the apartment where Lisa/Alla had lived, and Le’mrity’s Castle Tower. It was easy to glimpse the common thread between the Homeless Fae and Lea Morimer’s fate, as though a figurine had been set between two warped mirrors — no matter how mangled the reflections, something primal always peered back. “You don’t actually need me to make this machine work,” Ard realized aloud. “My presence here is part of your bargain.” “Such were the terms,” Lea did not bother to deny it. “Give me their name, Professor,” Ardan urged again, “and shut the machine down.” Lea looked at him — this was the very same look she had once bestowed upon her students during lectures and practicums, filled with care and with hope that these young mages might step into futures brighter and lighter than the past that had hunted her for the last few years. And for the briefest instant, Ardi thought that she might yield. In the single eye she still had left, he saw a flicker of the mage who had once, because of a foolish desire to push the bounds of knowledge, signed a certain document. “Have the courage to set boundaries for yourself, Ard — boundaries you will not cross in your research. Having no limits awakens the worst in us.” Months ago, Lea Morimer had warned Ardan away from Lady Talia’s research not because of common decency, but because she had bitter experience with such things: long ago, she had stepped over those ill-defined boundaries and found herself on the far side of a chasm that allows no return. And the worst thing was that, after Ardan had nearly summoned those who should never be summoned because he’d believed that Tess had died in the explosion, he could no longer condemn her. Lea Morimer’s parents had died around the same time Edward Aversky’s parents had perished. Dr. Baroness Elena Kri had found a cure for the epidemics of consumption and then smallpox that had taken them, for which the Emperor had awarded her the Order of Saint George, Second Class. “I only wanted to help them,” the professor whispered. “To help children like me, so that we would never again have to dig graves for our own parents. But magical experiments on humans are forbidden.” “Their name, Professor! Give me their name!” “And so, when the offer came, I didn’t even hesitate,” Lea went on as if she could not hear him. “In a single night, I persuaded myself the Firstborn had caused us enough grief that experimenting on their criminals was a just repayment for past tragedies, that it would serve the good of all humankind. And at first, it did. But with every passing year, I had to push my boundaries further and further. And I did. At first, I did so reluctantly, protesting all the while, and then … And then, after I performed my first vivisection on a dwarven child, there were no boundaries left to move.” “Their name, Professor…” Ardan repeated without much hope. “But I will fix it… I’ll fix everything…” Lea’s head jerked like a broken puppet’s as her words grew ever more tangled and disjointed. “No more experiments. No more deceit! And no one else will die. Those… those creatures behind it all… I’ll turn everything I’ve learned against them, Ard. No one will even know. No one but me. I’ll bear it alone.” Ardan no longer pressed her for a name. She could not give him one, same as Irigov. A smart master had to always make sure that their watchdog’s first bite was never aimed at them. Professor Lea was incapable of speaking their name, because even the attempt would have been her last act in this life. One of the alien limbs grafted to her chimerized body would have detonated, or her brain would have melted, or something worse — it hardly mattered. It mattered neither to the situation nor, perhaps, to Lea Morimer herself. She was convinced that she could set things right. “You have worked through Paarlax’s equations, Ard,” the professor roused herself from the torment of her wounded soul. “With your hunger for knowledge, you couldn’t have ignored them.” “Then you’ve seen that they preserve symmetry along both vectors of time.” Lea lifted her head, and what passed for her mouth curved into a smile — a wistful, almost dreamy expression, like the smile of a condemned man to whom the priest had just promised the embrace of the Eternal Angels. “Whether time flows onward or folds back, Paarlax’s equations remain symmetrical.” “That proves nothing,” Ardan answered, holding his ground. He was deep in enemy territory, ignorant of its pitfalls, facing a mage of unknown strength. It would be naive to assume that just because the other Spiders’ minds had burned out due to their artificial Stars, Professor Morimer — a powerful mage even before the maritime incident — had not kindled those same fires. “It proves,” the professor insisted, “that in theory, the Ley can move in both directions.” “Come to your senses, Professor!” Ardan could no longer keep calm. “Paarlax dealt with particles of Ley so minute that they cannot be separated from reality except in mathematical equations! It’s only numbers! Digits and symbols! They describe a sliver of creation, nothing more!” “Only numbers? A sliver of creation? Such words from a student every professor is expecting the brightest of futures from?” Love this novel? Read it on NovelHub to ensure the author gets credit. “Predictions don’t matter.” Ardan flicked his grimoire shut. “You were right when you spoke of boundaries in research. So live by your own words! You’re planning to drag a delicate mathematical puzzle into reality!” “If the equations preser-” “To the abyss with the equations!” Ardan’s shout rang out through the grotto. “We’re talking about living people here, Professor, not mere numbers and symbols! Even if you succeed, you cannot know what you will succeed in making! You cannot cancel the paradox of multidimensionality! You might very well create a separate reality, might actually arrive at the very moment you need, but here… in this reality, you will obliterate a quarter of the capital, along with millions of lives, and…” And Ardan fell silent. Because Lea knew that, too. She knew the risk and was willing to accept it. She was willing, because … “You are right, Ard.” Her smile turned even more wistful. “I shall never find out how it turned out.” Ardan slammed his staff against the ground. His modified shield snapped into place a heartbeat ahead of Lea’s attack. When the violet lightning reached him, the young man was already wrapped in a defense tailored to the exact parameters of her spell. Lea had hidden compressed air beneath a veil of sparking energy, ensuring it was dense and fast enough to cleave through steel. Half a year ago, Ard would have gone straight to the Sleeping Spirits. After his training with Aversky, however, he’d been ready for it. The shimmering curtain of his shield swallowed the glittering lightning with ease, and the pressurized air that followed at its heels was instantly trapped by a second spell. His Water Shroud unfurled into a wide veil, devoured the wind and, after reshaping it into a humming, drill-like icicle, did not send it flying toward Lea, who already had the metallic threads of a dense sphere surrounding her. Lea was well-schooled in military magic and, after seeing her own spell transformed into a physical attack, she had hurried to manifest a shield fashioned precisely to stop an object possessed of weight and mass. But Ardan had seen something before. It had been wrought with far greater skill. For all her talents, Lea did not yet possess even a Magister’s degree in war magic. Another seal bloomed beneath Ard’s feet, and an orange cloud of gas burst forth from the tip of his staff. Wherever it touched the grass and flowers, they rotted away and covered the ground in a foul-smelling slurry. This was a simple spell, infused with only two rays of the Red Star, but it forced Lea to dismiss her specialized barrier and raise a universal one. And the moment she did so, the Water Shroud, now a potent icicle, struck. Flying past the acid cloud with only a minor loss of mass, it punched through the shimmering veil and, veering wide, sliced open the professor’s right shoulder. She was hurled away by the force of it. Dark, mutant-like blood spattered onto the grass. The acid drifted farther, almost brushing the instruments, but a gust of wind launched from the tip of the professor’s staff blew it aside. Ardan was breathing hard. The whole exchange had lasted no more than a few seconds, and yet both his Stars had spent most of their rays. He had enough strength left for only a handful of spells. “You truly are a monster, student Egobar,” Lea said as she levered herself upright with her staff. Her grimoire slipped from her ruined, numb hand — hard to hold anything when your bones are shattered. “Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would never believe that you are just finishing your first year.” “But I shall say it again — you have already lost.” She rapped her staff against the ground, and the very air started quivering at the force flooding out from her body. Lea Morimer had indeed kindled artificial Stars, and Ardan now faced a mage whose mind burned with six of them. Half of those Stars bore “only” a single ray, but that didn’t matter. The seal unfolding beneath her feet could have rivalled the horror Aversky had conjured in his battle against the elven Aean’Hane: a complex construct of tangled vectors, dozens of nested seals, and countless arrays. A crimson light seeped out of her staff, forging an immense sword. It had a hilt and guard hammered into being from the screams of bodies writhing in agony, and its blade was a droplet-shedding lightning bolt made of liquid fire. Even from ten paces away, Ardan felt his skin starting to blister, his eyelids already scorched by the heat. He didn’t have the slightest, microscopic chance against a six-Star mage. Only Aversky might’ve held his ground against Lea, but he was currently busy with a demon that was no less powerful. The Spiders had thought of everything. Except for one thing… Ardan lifted his gaze toward the ceiling, where the glass sphere shone, almost full already. He could see the path, yet he did not know whether he had the strength — of body or of heart — to walk it. But if he did nothing, then … Streets he loved wandering flashed through his mind. The laughing children in squares and parks. The cheerful conductor who always asked about his studies at the Grand. Madam Okladov’s atelier. “Bruce’s.” His friends and… The scent of spring flowers blooming by rivers. She was waiting for him at home. “And come back soon… I’ll be waiting.” But why should you return if there was nowhere left to return to? Perhaps … Perhaps that was what his father had thought when… Ardan, around whom danced the reflections of the blood-red flame that was devouring everything but the apparatus behind the professor, looked at his staff. He remembered the creature from Baliero, and how it had screamed when he’d struck it.It had claimed his staff was made of Ley-wood… Closing his eyes for a moment, Ardan ran toward the blade wrought by the School of Chaos. The professor swung her staff — and the fiery sword she’d conjured atop it — at him, but Ardan pushed off the ground before she could hit him and shouted: As he did so, he smashed his staff against the glass globe surrounding the sphere. Perhaps nothing would have happened normally, but at the last second, Ardan whispered a Word with his mind and will. Ghostly blue light wrapped around the tip of his staff, shaping a thin, razor-sharp edge of sapphire ice. The sphere cracked, and rainbow light flooded the grotto. Ardan was standing in the middle of a graveyard… maybe. He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure he was anywhere at all. Everything around him glowed and blazed like a mirage borne on a dawn wind heavy with mist and dew, like a vision in the shards of a broken mirror, like the first touch or a whisper carried by chance from the far side of the street. In place of trees stood tall tufts of multicolored light, soaring upwards from the earth into a sky that had become a soap bubble veil of shimmering hues. The ground was a haze of impossible blossoms. The stones were something dense, yet turned in upon themselves, sparks flaring over a dying firebrand. Why, then, did he think this was a graveyard? Because in this place, instead of the air, pain, sorrow, and unspoken love had congealed, brought here by the living in hope of sharing them with the dead. And among these flickers, Ardan made out something that looked like a little girl. She was curled up like a kitten beside a stone, weeping softly, and calling out to someone. Only silence answered her. The girl became a maiden. The maiden a woman. The graveyard changed to a tall building, the headstones to lecture halls filled with students. One thing did not change: the inconsolable sobbing that seemed to have taken the woman over entirely. Ardan wanted to come closer, to say something that might not comfort her, but would at least… But the moment he moved, everything shifted. No, he was still somewhere that resembled a Grand lecture hall, had it been built not with concrete and steel, but from spilled paint, with people and Firstborn alike replaced by drifting motes of color. One of those motes was crippled and smelled like suffering, regret, and loneliness. It stood beside another that had a blinding fire of rage burning within it. It had been easy to convince her that the Firstborn were to blame for her parents’ death. A few words, a few photographs, and Selena had started believing what she’d wanted to believe, what she’d been allowed to believe. Then came the other flares, myriads of them: Nalimov, Indgar, the vampires, so many ordinary people… All of them had been eaten from within by a black blot of pain, spreading like tar across a puddle, claiming more and more space. Even the brightest threads that had once touched that darkness had dimmed and vanished into the gloom. He was standing in the midst of what was, perhaps, Ley energy itself. Maybe this was how Atta’nha saw the world — as an endless interweaving of the Ley. Ard lowered his gaze to his own chest. There, amid those multicolored lines where the blue one burned the brightest and was as cold as ice, that same black stain was spreading. Ard shuddered and reached for it, wanting to tear it out and crush it, but the moment he touched the darkness… Everything was drowning in white light. Not the glow of artificial Ley-lamps, nor any color found on a palette, but true white. Ardi had never known such whiteness existed. It was as though everything else had vanished: every shadow, every object, the smallest sparkle, the faintest glint — gone. Only the light remained. He turned toward the voice and saw the familiar staircase leading to the veranda of their house in the foothills of the Alcade. This was the home that, on paper, belonged to the Imperial Army, but had in truth been built by Hector Egobar. That same Hector Egobar now sat on the steps, puffing his pipe. He rose and peered into the distance, as if unaware that Ardi was standing an arm’s length away from him. “Ardan? Is that you?” Ardi’s heart clenched and he remembered lying on that cliff, watching as… Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡~𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚~𝙣𝙚𝙩 “Forgive me, Ardan, I-” “I had so much to say,” Ardan cut him off, clenching his fists until his nails bit into his skin. “I wanted to shout at you. Maybe even hit you. For choosing them — those children — over us. For not coming back. For giving up. For leaving Mother and Erti… leaving me. Leaving me! To die for people who thought you a monster! You abandoned us all! You abandoned Grandfather — he never even got to apologize…” Hector blinked and lowered his gaze as though he were at last able to see Ardan through the flood of light, standing so near to him and yet somehow at the far edge of infinity, in a place that might not even exist. “You’ve grown so much, Ardan.” Something warm settled on Ardan’s shoulder. Even after all these years, he was still only tall enough to reach Hector’s chin. “I blamed you for so long, Father,” Ardan whispered, unable to lift his eyes from the ground. “So long…” At last, Ardan found the strength to look up and meet his father’s gaze. “And now I’ve done the very same. Because I could not do otherwise.” Hector said nothing, only stayed beside him. If all of this wasn’t just the delirium of a mind burning away in a torrent of purified Ley. “Tell me, Ardan,” Hector murmured. “Tell me everything I’ve missed.” Ardan sat down beside him on the steps of their family home and began to speak. He spoke of the six years he had spent with Ergar. Of the way Mother had lived in Evergale, the small room she had rented above Mrs. Bayreg’s tavern. He told him about Grandfather, who had first served ale behind the bar and later walked the windy streets as the town’s postman. He spoke of how they’d managed in those first lean months. Then how he had returned to the family, how he had studied at school. He spoke of Erti. He even told him a bit about Kena, and how his mother had found a friend and a faithful companion in Kelly, and how two broken hearts had made a quiet haven in each other. And he admitted that, even now, even after all these years, he could not quite reconcile himself to that truth. He spoke about Anna, his school days, the farm, and working for Timofey Polskih. Oh Spirits… How Hector sometimes laughed, how he sometimes grew grave, and yet, he mostly smiled. And Ardan talked. And talked. And talked… Once again, just like in the past, he found himself by a brook: he was small, goofy, his cheeks round with childhood. Father sat behind him, holding him close — tightly, yet not so tightly as to hurt him. But only for a moment. Because, in truth, they were seated on the steps of their house. They were no longer just father and son, not quite. They were two men, each bearing his own tale, his own demons to fight, his own mistakes already made. Ardan spoke of Milar, and of Tess. And Hector smoked, and listened. “That is a good life, Son,” he said at last when Ardan fell silent. “Yes.” Ardi looked ahead of him and saw a tiny bundle almost swallowed by a blot of darkness — a blot that had not vanished from Ardan’s chest, though it had shrunk, if only a little. “A good life,” Ardan echoed, and added into the emptiness, “I miss you, Father.” “And I miss you, Son,” Hector answered from somewhere far away. “But we shall meet again…” “…upon the paths of the Sleeping Spirits,” Ardan finished for him, and rose to his feet. Leaning on his staff — lightning wrought from snow-white brilliance, a rope plunging into the endless deep — he stepped toward the little bundle. It lay among cold stones, drowning in the gloom. “Tell him, will you?” Ardan asked, bending over it. “Tell him what I have told you about Mother and Great-grandfather, about Mrs. Bayreg’s tavern, about Evergale. Will you?” “And ask him… ask him to find the strength. For his mother, for his brother, and for himself. He will need it.” “I promise,” Hector nodded. Ardan looked once more at the cocoon woven from the Ley. He looked at himself lying in Ergar’s cavern, his life ebbing away. The Paarlax equations truly did keep their symmetry in both directions… Ardan longed to touch that little bundle — he longed to reassure himself, to whisper that things would be all right, as much as they could be. To speak of the good and the ill, to tell himself about many things, perhaps even of the flowers that bloom by spring brooks… for that was how Tess smelled. Their Tess. He might have found her again. Changed everything, saved everyone, and then found her once more. “One day, you will understand, little Speaker, that the power given to you by the Sleeping Spirits should not be called into this world often, and that what you can do with its help, you can do with your own two hands as well. This is what it means to be Aean’Hane — to have great power and the even greater wisdom required to not use it.” “I am going back, Father,” Ardan stepped away from the bundle. “That is your choice, Son, yours and no one else’s.” “Yes… They are waiting for me.” He turned and looked at his father — or rather, at the flickers of Ley frozen in the snow-white light. “Farewell, Father.” “No!” Lea cried out, but it was already too late. Ardan’s staff, sheathed in the shard of the Ice’s Name, shattered the glass sphere, and purified Ley surged into the branch of a primeval oak, one old enough to witness the rise of the Matabar race. Ardan, who was suspended in mid-air, had no earth beneath his feet to ground the Ley with; the current did not strike him but surged, bottomless and terrible, into the only refuge it could find. The shard of Ice at the staff’s head filled with radiance. Ardan, after harnessing it with his mind and will, dropped to the rime-crusted grass and struck his staff against the ground. Everything froze. The snow coiled around the center of the blizzard that was Ardan and his staff. He lifted his faithful companion and slammed it down again. The soil beneath him became the anxious surface of a lake. Ripples passed through the frosty patterns, splitting them, and a moment later, the grotto was alive with ice-wrought animals. They leaped upon the fiery blade, raked at it with their claws, tore into it with their fangs, and sliced it with their razor-sharp wings. Hundreds of long, spear-like icicles streaked toward the professor. They burned away in blood-red flame, only to clear the way for the next. Lea took one step back. The medallion at her throat cracked and the accumulators in her rings shattered into crystalline dust. Ardan, feeling the Ley burn within his staff, swung it and spoke a Word. A bitter cold burst forth from his lips — a blizzard the likes of which the Metropolis had never known, the sort that whips mountain peaks until a person cannot see their own nose in front of them. There was just one difference: where snowflakes should’ve whirled, bright shards of ice flashed instead. They scoured the grotto, shaving away all that could be removed. And when the storm finally quieted, the remains of Professor Lea lay bubbling in a red froth amid iron wreckage and sparking, severed cables. Ardan exhaled and slammed his staff against the ground a third time, drawing back all that lived inside it. His right hand blistered, looking raw, as though it had been steeped for an agonizingly long time in boiling water. He didn’t think he could remove his fingers from the wood, which was as hot as smelted iron. “Arrrrd…” Gurgled what was left of Lea’s torso. Perhaps the thin patch of ice holding her wound closed and stemming her blood loss had barred her path to the Eternal Angels. “Arrrrd.” Limping and spitting blood, Ardan reached her. “Harrrrrvest,” she whispered. “The har… vest. N-not here… It’s n-not he-ere… You… lo-o-st… to them. Lost… to the Duke…” She convulsed once and her single eye glazed over. Thoughts galloped through Ardan’s tired mind. “You cannot stop the harvest, Speaker...” Ardan rose and made his way over to the opposite wall, where his hand found a lever, or what remained of one — a bent iron bar. He knocked the ice from it and hauled. Slowly cracking the layer of frost, the stone ceiling heaved aside the grotto’s unyielding lid. Using the dregs of Ley within his Stars, Ardan opened his grimoire to the page of his modified Ice Wall and summoned it. A staircase of ice formed before him. “I’m working on a strategic water-element spell for the army. The deadlines are, frankly, unrealistic.” Leaning all his weight on his staff, Ardan climbed, already knowing what he would find. The ruins of a Temple of the Old Gods met his eyes. Cooling lava from melted stone mingled with the crystalline spikes that jutted from the wall and floor. There were deep gouges left by spells and claws everywhere. The stink of char, acid, and iron clawed at his throat. His skin was pricked by the charged air, which seemed like it might loose a bolt of lightning at the slightest provocation. Here and there, ice still gleamed. Elsewhere, white and blue flames smoldered. In distant corners lay the remnants of something unnamable, ground to a pulp. This was the aftermath of a battle between a demon summoned by the Spiders and the Grand Magister of war magic and bearer of six Stars, Edward Aversky. “You want something about Aversky. I don’t know the details, but it must be tied to the Grand Magister.” On the floor sat Milar, cradling a broken arm. Spent casings and fresh “moons” lay scattered around him, and his shattered, half-melted saber glimmered nearby. Beside him was Din Erson, missing his splendid hair — and his left eye; three deep furrows left by claws had scored his blood-drenched face. Dozens of smaller bodies were sprawled out around the vast carcass of the fallen demon — its spawn or summons, no doubt. Next to one of those lay Alexander Ursky. He was breathing but unconscious. His right leg had been broken so completely that it was bent at an odd, almost impossible angle, and his chest had been flayed raw, ribbons of flesh hanging off him. “And you, Captain, don’t you think I have more pressing matters to deal with than chasing children across the capital?” With his steel staff — bent and half-melted — resting on his shoulder and his back propped against the slain giant demon, Edward Aversky sat on the ground. Thick blood, clotted with dark lumps, was trickling from the corner of his mouth. His left arm was gone, removed up to the shoulder. His right leg had melted up to his knee and his left had vanished altogether amid tatters of flesh and ruined cloth. A ghastly hole yawned in his chest, entrails dangling like a tangle of holiday lights. Only the sigil burning on his staff kept Aversky from following Lea Morimer into death’s embrace. But even that flame was guttering. Ardan hobbled over to the Grand Magister and sank to his knees beside him. He looked to Milar, but the captain slowly shook his head. “You managed it, Ard?” Aversky asked in his usual scholarly tone, as though they were discussing formulae once more. “The experiment was halted? The apparatus destroyed?” “I did ask you… to use my first name, Ard.” Bloodied lips twitched. “I could do with a smoke…” Milar, face contorted with pain, pulled out a crumpled case, awkwardly shook out a cigarette, and offered it to Aversky. He caught it between his lips. Milar patted his pockets and groaned — it seemed his ribs were broken — and shook his head again. Ardi’s Star Magic had been reduced to nothing, not a single ray left. “What rotten luck,” Edward Aversky drawled, curling his lip in that habitual, arrogant manner. “Perhaps it’s a blessing, my dear Ard, that I’ll never see you surpass me. Though it’s a shame… Maybe… I would’ve… still… wanted… to congratulate… you… someday…” The seal on his staff went dark. The Grand Magister’s lips froze, and the cigarette slipped out from between them. All life departed from Edward Aversky’s wounded body, and Ardi, deprived of every last shred of strength, sank into the darkness of oblivion that had been waiting for him for so long. Ardan sat on a windowsill, legs swinging. An almost suffocating night had enveloped the Heroes’ Hospital where he had awakened after some time. Chances were that the Second Chancery had pulled them out of that underground temple — its operatives had been waiting for Milar’s signal. But the problem was that they’d had to spread out across the entire city because Ardi and the captain had not discovered where exactly the experiment would be held beforehand. Though perhaps that was for the best. Who could say how many more would have perished? Aversky likely wouldn’t have been able to shield them all. Ardan, who, strangely enough, felt better than before those cursed events (he’d clearly spent several days in a medicated sleep), gazed out at the city lights, watching them twinkle at him as if trying to disperse the shadows that had swallowed the Metropolis. The capital had no clue about the fact that it had nearly turned into a blazing fireball. The people slept peacefully. Had he and Milar won? They’d saved not mere thousands, but millions of lives. After all, those behind the Spiders had achieved their true objective, a goal buried so deep that none of them had even imagined that the genuine threat was not directed at the city, nor the Emperor, but at Grand Magister Aversky, who’d been baited into a trap and dispatched like cornered prey. And how did Ardan feel about that? He still didn’t know. “You’re here, aren’t you?” He asked into the darkness. He never doubted that he’d receive an answer. This was someone whom even Star shields erected around a major military hospital could not keep out. “Yes,” came the reply. “What you want from me isn’t on me right now.” “Why not just take it yourself?” “Because that would be rude, Ard. And dishonorable.” “I’m afraid they’ll notice your absence, and you’ll have to explain yourself.” “All right… your choice.” From the shadows, a hand emerged and touched his shoulder. Ardan opened his eyes in the tiny apartment with bay windows at number 23 on Markov Canal. There was the bed, neatly made with fresh sheets. There was the closet where he’d used to stash his eternally-shredded suits. There was the desk heaped with notes, books, stencils, empty ink jars, and a jumble of pencil stubs. The windows were nearly covered with blueprints and unfinished equations. He really ought to buy a graphite board someday. Ardan bent down and carefully slid aside the broken floorboard, revealing his meagre inheritance: a slim volume written by Nicholas-the-Stranger, an old ring, and… the candle. This was the Aean’Hane artifact under whose light he had studied Star Magic for years. He thought that was quite a fitting irony. “Shall we go outside?” Ardan asked. “I feel like I need some air.” “Certainly,” answered the darkness. When Ardi opened his eyes once more, he found himself on granite steps that led down to the water — the very same steps he’d used to wash his laundry on back before he had… moved in with Tess. He dangled his legs in the canal’s warm water, the candle resting in his hands. “You really won’t take it without my permission?” “It’s yours, Ard,” the emptiness replied. “It belongs to you, and so only you can decide its fate.” Ardan lifted his gaze toward the building. “Bruce’s” had closed its doors for the night. Apparently, Arkar still hadn’t returned. Given the fact that Ardan hadn’t seen Arkar or Indgar among the bodies, the obvious guess was that both had survived. One could only hope that the half-orc was all right. The gang war would still need to be stopped before the lurking puppet masters took full advantage of this chaos. “Show yourself, please.” Next to him, also dipping his feet in the water, Anvar Riglanov — an old man with eyes that shone like stars — appeared. This was the very same shimmering starlight that had glinted in the eyes of those ice cream sellers. “Enchanting me and my partner wasn’t especially polite,” Ardan said. “So you figured it out,” “Anvar” replied. “Forgive me. We didn’t have much time. Staying here, where the Ley is all but dead, isn’t simple.” “So you never actually escaped any prison?” “I did escape,” “Anvar” retorted, “and in doing so, I’m afraid I put you in danger. They might come for you… but forgive me, Ard. I saw no other way.” Ardan stared at the candle. “Why choose that appearance?” “Maybe it’s because I liked Anvar’s books. Or maybe because he freed me even as his own life was ending.” “Anvar” turned to him, and — Ardi wasn’t sure how — the stooped elder transformed into a young man who was more striking than any elf and more regal than the princesses of Scaldavin. His skin was purer than mountain snow, glowing with silver and gold and his hair was a living flame draping over attire that reminded Ardan of daybreak. “Mendera robbed the Castle of the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn,” Ardan said, playing with the candle in his hands as though it had no weight. “Your castle.” “That’s correct,” replied the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn, surprisingly candid. “And they imprisoned you, and the Fae left this realm because… you gave the sergeant and his men the Flame.” “Strictly speaking, I helped them defeat my sister, who was guarding it.” Ardan had no idea if the Sidhe was speaking the truth or not. The Sidhe didn’t reply right away. He, like Ardan, simply stared at the sky where, in the east, a golden, burning dawn was beginning to bloom. “Are you aware of a historian’s problem, Ard? You can unearth scientific achievements from the soil. You can preserve through the centuries the study of Ley fields, or the speed of a light’s wave… Gravity’s acceleration remains stamped forever in countless research papers. Somewhere in an ancient monastery, there might even be drawings made by monks who dissected their brothers’ bodies in the name of knowledge.” “But compassion — you can’t excavate that,” the Sidhe said, running a hand close to the water’s surface as though afraid that mere contact with it might make the entire Markov Canal seethe and disappear. “You can’t dig up someone’s realization that their neighbor who looks different, speaks another language, and prays to another god… is still the same at heart. He wakes and wrestles with the world, loves his children, seeks to make their lives better. He fears. He aches. He loves. He grows lonely. You can touch none of that. None of that can be preserved. Science only keeps what can be handled, what can be observed through time. And yet, I’ll say this: all that can be touched or seen matters about as much as a spark over a campfire. It’s here one moment and gone the next. But the soul, my friend — the soul can’t be seen. You can’t carry a mother’s tear through the ages. You can’t preserve a child’s laughter in a jar. You can’t pass a father’s handshake on to posterity. The thumping heart of whoever shares your bed is just as fleeting as your own life. Historians won’t record it, scholars won’t solve it, and only an artist might try to preserve it in songs, paintings, books, poems, sculptures — or even in dreams. Which brings me to my question, young Speaker: which is more important for humankind — to know how to count the stars, or to yearn to reach them?” Ardan was looking at the same dawn but seemed to be seeing something different. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Nor do I,” the Sidhe said. “But I do know this, Ard: perhaps someday, humans will find out. Maybe when they journey beyond, to other stars. Perhaps when they leave our galaxy behind.” Again, the Sidhe lifted his hand as if he were wary of touching the water. “It’s so strange, my young friend. I witnessed this land’s birth from the same flame that brought me forth. How fragile it is. How fleeting. Like a vision. An illusion. A-” “A dawn,” Ardan whispered. “Because somewhere, a dawn is always happening, right?” “Our dawn,” the Sidhe agreed. “But on other planets, a different dawn, a different story, one where we have no place. And one day, humans will leave us. Then we’ll be alone, forgotten. Because if no one’s there to watch a dawn or bathe in its glow… then why does it exist at all?” “I don’t know,” Ardan said again. “You’re not going to tell me why you gave the Flame to Mendera, are you?” “I’ve already given you the best answer I can, Ard. The rest is your decision.” “And you won’t say why you’ve chosen to take it back?” “Because if it remains in human hands, when the time comes, there will be no humans left.” Ardan glanced down at the candle he held — the Sidhe Flame, an inexhaustible source of Ley that had altered the course of the War of the Birth of the Empire. An artifact hidden among several others by Aror, below the floor of a rickety shed. He tossed it lightly in his hand, caught it, then set it beside him, farther from himself and closer to the Sidhe. The Fae paused briefly, retrieved a scroll from thin air, and- For the first time, an expression — genuine, deep surprise — appeared on the Sidhe’s face. Ardan turned his head away. “My teacher told me once that not all answers can be found in books.” The Sidhe sat for a bit in silence, then quietly picked up the candle and, without another word, dissolved into the night. Brushing off his coat, Ardan grabbed his staff and climbed back up to the street. He crossed the road he’d traversed a hundred times before and stepped through the door whose ancient hinges still squeaked even after the bar’s renovation. Then he went up the staircase, walked to a familiar apartment, and knocked. A moment passed, then another, and soon enough, he heard bare feet rushing across the floor. The door flew open, nearly striking him. He caught the scent of spring flowers by a stream. “Yes,” Ardan whispered. “I’m home.”