Chapter One: Sparks Beneath Stone
But tonight, that warmth felt… off.
Like a song played slightly out of key.
Cassie held her breath.
The wind smelled of burnt metal and ancient dust — not the incense-laced air of Iskarra's upper sanctum, but something older. Something below.
Behind her, soft footsteps. Elara stepped onto the balcony without a word. Her robes clung tighter than usual, and her braid had come undone, strands fluttering in the restless wind.
"The southern flare wasn't a rumor," she said quietly. "The Sable Mire lit up half the scrying lattice. A dead node reactivated. Violently."
Cassie didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Eyes fixed on the dark sliver of horizon that hid the Mire.
"It's waking up, Elara."
A pause. Then—
"It?"
Cassie turned her head, just slightly. Her eyes glowed faintly.
"The world."
The Hall of Reflection sat at the heart of Iskarra — a cathedral of crystal and silver, suspended in the air like a raindrop held by prayer.
Its domed ceiling was made of living glass, showing not the sky above, but the leyline lattice itself: shifting rivers of color crisscrossing the continent, glowing in real time.
This morning, one of those lines — a dull, forgotten strand buried beneath the southern marshlands — pulsed red.
Elara stood before the council table, a smooth crescent of star-metal with no visible seams. Seven robed figures sat around it, their faces veiled in silk. Titles mattered more than names here.
Cassie remained behind her, quiet but coiled, her fingers unconsciously tracing a pattern across her wrist — the same glyph that had appeared in her vision the night before.
Elara's voice was calm, but every word landed like a dropped stone.
"The ley-node in the Sable Mire has reawakened. There's no natural reason for this. It was sealed off after the Binding Wars. We believe a relic has been disturbed — possibly one of the Crown fragments."
A ripple moved through the council.
One of the elder speakers — Councilor Senra, voice lined with the weight of decades — leaned forward.
"The Crown of Binding is a myth."
"So was Vaelorin," Cassie said flatly, eyes still on the floating lattice above them.
"And yet we found it," Elara added, more gently. "And nearly lost it again."
A pause. Another councilor — Maelor of the East, a man who had once condemned the Twilight Accord — turned toward Cassie.
"We've heard reports. That the leyline responded to you. Directly."
"It didn't obey me," Cassie said, voice tight. "It remembered me. That's not the same thing."
She hesitated.
"But it might be enough to track the next fragment before someone else finds it."
A long silence. The sound of distant crystal chimes stirred in the air — the natural pulse of Iskarra's magical systems correcting for imbalance.
"You want us to send you south," Senra said.
"We want you to let us," Elara corrected.
"The Mire is cursed," another voice muttered. "Nothing's come back from there in decades."
"Then it's time something did," Cassie said.
They stepped out of the council dome just as the glass above shimmered — and a second ley-thread pulsed near the Mire, like a heartbeat echoing the first.
Cassie felt it before she saw it.
Not pain. Not prophecy.
Pull.
"They're not random," she murmured. "They're connected. Like a signal path being rebuilt."
Elara looked over.
"You think someone's assembling the Crown."
Cassie nodded once. Her breath fogged the air, even in the warm light of morning.
"I think they're not just assembling it. I think they're feeding it."