Winter was blooming inside her. It was not a chill of the air, for the Eleysian dampness remained eternal and unchanging in Kourvan. Outside the salt-streaked glass, the world existed as a suffocating grey soup. The Eleysian Gyre pushed a river of warm water up from the south, colliding with the freezing Dragonforge current from the north to create the Vapor Shroud—a permanent, hanging mist that clung to the city like a wet wool cloak.

Kourvan was not a frozen wasteland, nor was it a tropical hothouse; it was a place of moderate, relentless damp. It smelled of brine, wet stone, and the slow decay of drift-logs trapped under the piers. But inside Qianna, her thoughts felt sluggish, as if her very soul were being coated in a fine layer of rime. It was a paralysis of the spirit that had nothing to do with the weather. It felt like fading away while still standing in the center of the room.

“Why do I have to go with him again?”

The question hung in the stale air of the Harbormaster’s office, fragile as spun glass. Qianna stood by the window, her left hand gripping the sill until her knuckles turned the color of old bone. She pressed her forehead against the cool pane, watching the condensation weep down the glass like silent tears.

“And those... things? The Nottsver?” Qianna whispered, her breath fogging the view of the grey harbor below. “I want to stay here. I want to stay with you, Loryssa. Please. Do not send me back into the dark.”

Below, the harbor of Kourvan lay as a bruised mess of churning grey water and rotting wood, a lawless gutter built on the bones of an old Therysian naval base. It was Boan Blackwater’s city, and it looked like him: pale, sickly, and dangerous. But today, a sharper scent cut through the rot like the metallic tang of warm blood and iron.

Dragonships crowded the rickety piers like sharks circling a carcass. They were low-slung, predatory vessels carved from black oak, their prows shaped into snarling leviathans. The grim flags of the Nottsver snapped in the wind, a sound like cracking whips. They were the "Sun People" who had forsaken the light, zealots who worshiped the unmaking of the universe.

And Vorik was their shepherd.

“The time has come, little bird.”

Loryssa’s voice drifted from behind the heavy oak desk. It was a beautiful sound—a cello note played in a quiet room—but it was flat, devoid of the warmth Qianna desperately tried to find in it.

Qianna did not turn. She kept her eyes on the harbor, letting her vision slip out of focus. This was her defense. When the world became too sharp, too cruel, she retreated into her Mind's Eye. She let the physical world blur until the hidden architecture of the universe revealed itself.

In that moment of Attunement, the room changed. She saw the Veins. To Qianna, the Grand Composition was a throbbing network of interconnected Pulses. The world was not made of dust and breath, but of Pressure. Every person, every object, every beam of light served as a Vessel, connected by thick, vibrating conduits of intent. Below, on the docks, the sailors were tangled in dull, grey capillaries—the Pulses of boredom and labor. The Nottsver warriors were different; they were bound in jagged, rusted Arteries that throbbed with a violent, red Intensity.

And Loryssa...

Qianna turned slowly. To a stranger, Loryssa was a striking woman of indeterminate years—sharp, elegant, and severe. Her hair was a cascade of dark auburn with undertones of midnight, but time—or perhaps something heavier—had struck it with distinctive streaks of iron-grey at the temples. She wore the dark velvets of a grieving widow, but she wore them like armor.

But Qianna saw the truth. The Veins that radiated from Loryssa possessed a terrifying, distinct quality. They were silver—but a silver so dark it seemed to swallow the light rather than reflect it. They resembled a spider’s web in the moonlight, cold and impossibly strong. She sat in the center of a circulatory system that spanned centuries, and the Pulse was accelerating.

“I did not choose the timing, Qianna,” Loryssa said, standing up. Her chair scraped across the floorboards—a discordant scratch that made Qianna flinch. “But the Song has changed. A ship left Averos seven days ago. The Sea Wolf.”

Qianna watched the silvery veins around Loryssa vibrate with a new Intensity. “The Sea Wolf?”

“Cedrik Dawntreader,” Loryssa murmured, moving around the desk with the grace of a predator stalking through tall grass. “The Wolf does not run dark and fast this close to the Council session for a simple patrol. If he is coming here, now... it means he is retrieving something. Something that could sever the connections Vorik and I have spent decades tying.”

Loryssa stopped in front of Qianna. The scent of jasmine and old paper wafted from her clothes, an intoxicating perfume over the scent of stormy air and power.

“Vorik needs you, Qianna,” Loryssa said softly. “He needs to strike for the Nottirbar—the Nightbringer—before the Wolf arrives. And you can go places he cannot. You are Elowyn.”

“I am not Elowyn,” Qianna muttered, the denial automatic, a worn-out prayer. She looked past Loryssa, out the window again, toward the eastern horizon.

There, looming across fifteen miles of grey water on the coast of Svarg, stood the monolith.

The Lockstone.

To the Stornir, it was Lasstanar. To the Elowyn, Altarrys. It was a massive slab of black basalt that defied geology, like a tombstone for a god. It dominated the skyline, a void in the grey sky. Vorik claimed it was her ancestral home. He claimed she had been born in its shadow, that her blood sang in key with its stone.

But Qianna felt no song there. She felt only a hollow ache in her chest, a silence where a family should be. She was not the song of anything; she was a girl who had been hollowed out until only the wind could whistle through her.

“I do not know what that word even means,” Qianna whispered, her voice trembling. “Elowyn. It is just a word he uses to leash me. I am just... his.”

She looked up at Loryssa, her eyes—the color of oaken moss in the rain—shining with unshed tears. “He uses me, Lory. He touches me with those dry, dead hands. He makes me feel things I do not want to feel. He makes me... watch.”

“I know,” Loryssa said. But as she spoke, her head tilted slightly to the left, as if listening to a whisper no one else could hear. A small crack in the A’nira she portrayed.

“Why does he need me? What am I to that rock? Is the Nottirbar even real? Or is it just another madness?”

Loryssa reached out. Her hand hovered over Qianna’s shoulder.

Through her Mind's Eye, Qianna saw the silver capillaries of Loryssa’s will extending like tendrils, seeking purchase. She knew she should step back. She knew this was manipulation. But she was so cold. Winter was inside her, and Loryssa was the only fire she had ever known.

She leaned into the touch.

Loryssa’s hand landed, and the sensation proved to be a Psychic Breach rather than simple physical warmth. The shandaryn empathy flooded Qianna’s mind as an invasion instead of polite request. It felt like sinking into a bath of warm blood.

I feel your fear, child, Loryssa’s voice whispered in her head, bypassing her ears, echoing in the cathedral of her skull. It is a cold wind. It paralyzes you.

Qianna felt the blood rushing to her face. It was not a blush; it was the Mask.

She felt the heat rising in her temples, darkening the permanent grey-green pigmentation that marked her as Old Blood. The stain spread like ink in water, shadowing her eyes, betraying her vulnerability to the world. She hated it. She hated that her body, trapped in the glass prison of adolescent physiology, could not hide its terror.

Take it away, Qianna projected back, squeezing her eyes shut. Please. Make me numb.

No, Loryssa commanded. The voice was a taut Arterial Pulse. Numbness is death. Numbness is what Vorik wants. He wants a doll. I need a weapon.

The silver strings of Loryssa’s will tightened around Qianna’s mind, pulling her focus inward, past the fear, past the despair, down into the cellar of her soul.

There, Loryssa whispered. Do you see it? The Black Vein?

Qianna gasped, her breath hitching. In the dark space of her Mind's Eye, amidst the grey fog of her own dissociation, she saw it. A taut conduit, vibrating with a low, sick thrum. It was not made of light. It appeared as tar and dried blood. It pulsed with an Intensity that made her teeth ache.

That is your hate, Loryssa said. It is the strongest thing in you. It is the only thing that is truly yours.

I do not want it, Qianna whimpered. It hurts.

Touch it, Loryssa ordered. Her mental grip tightened, forcing Qianna’s inner will toward the Black Vein. She was forcing the Medium’s Load past its limit. Tug on it. Just a little. You must know the sound of your own power.

Trembling, trapped in the grip of the older woman’s mind, Qianna reached out with her will. She gripped the Vein and pulled.

SNAP.

Pain exploded in her chest—the jagged, tearing sound of her own soul being shredded from the inside. It wasn't the sting of a blade, but the hollow, freezing roar of everything she had ever lost coming back to claim her. Her skin flushed instantly, the Mask darkening into a deep, verdant bruise as her heart hammered a frantic, bloody rhythm against her ribs. 

"Fuck!" she gasped, the word tearing out of her.

Qianna hissed, her knees buckling. Her vision went white, then red. A scream built in her throat but died there, strangled by the crushing weight of the sensation.

"Stop!"

Loryssa released her. The connection snapped like a severed artery.

Qianna slumped against the window frame, panting, clutching her chest. The room spun. She looked at her left hand, the one that had gripped the sill. For a second, it flickered. The edges of her fingers blurred, becoming translucent, as if she were losing her anchor to the world’s Pulse.

Then she solidified.

"Why?" Qianna choked out, wiping the tears that leaked from beneath the darkened Mask. "Why did you make me do that?"

Loryssa stood over her, impassive, terrible, and beautiful. "Because that pain is a weapon, Qianna. Vorik has walked the path of the Symphony of Oblivion for centuries. He is hollowed out by it. He thinks he is the master of pain."

Loryssa leaned down, her face inches from Qianna’s masked features. "If you ever need to kill him... or if you ever need to save yourself from what he intends to do... you find that Black Vein. And you pull it until it snaps. It might kill you, child. It will burn you to ash from the inside. But I promise you... it will destroy him first."

The lesson hung in the air, heavy and cruel.

Before Qianna could answer, before she could process the violation and the gift, the front door of the building slammed open downstairs.

BOOM.

The entire Harbormaster’s office shuddered. Dust rained down from the rafters.

Qianna did not move. She did not need to hear the footsteps to know he was there. She felt it on her skin.

The moderate damp of the room began to vanish. The condensation on the window pane did not drip; it receded, evaporating into nothingness. The air grew steadily, painfully dry, as if a window had been thrown open to a winter gale in a warm hearth-filled room. It was a theft of Intensity—a Void entering the room and sucking the life from the very atmosphere.

And then, the sound.

Thump. Scrape. Thump. Scrape.

It was the sound of a heavy staff striking wood, followed by the dragging of a heavy cloak. It was a rhythm devoid of life, a dead beat counting down to an execution.

Qianna shrank back into the corner, making herself small, pulling the shadows around her shoulders like a shawl. As Vorik approached, her Mind's Eye caught a glimpse of the environment reacting. The structural lines of the walls, the ambient light—everything began to distort and wither. They bent away from the door as if repelled by a lodestone. The Grand Composition of the room was unraveling into Silence.

"He is here," Qianna whispered. The Black Vein in her chest thrummed in sympathetic resonance.

Vorik did not enter a room; he infected it.

He was a towering figure, wrapped in the furs of beasts that had been extinct for an age. His attire was a stark study in contrasts—black leathers and white furs, the iconography of the Starya Karza. But across his chest, disrupting the monochrome, was a sash of deep, imperial violet.

It was the color of high clergy. The color of the Crone.

He leaned heavily on a staff made of weir-wood, capped with a silver ferrule that scratched the floorboards. But it was his face that froze the blood. He was pale, the color of moonlight on snow. His hair was long, unbound, and white as a cloud. And his eye...

His single good eye was a pale, watery blue, a hole in the world that leaked cold air. The other socket was an empty, puckered scar, a crater left by a war no human remembered.

He stood in the doorway, and Qianna felt the warmth being pulled from her bones. He was not just cold; he was a Consumption.

"You are not here to pry into my affairs, are you?" Loryssa asked. Her voice shifted instantly. The stern mentor vanished; the seductive, dangerous equal of Vorik appeared. She leaned back against her desk, crossing her arms, the silver veins around her flaring with defensive light. "Unless you have changed your mind about my offer?"

"Your offer is ash, Loryssa," Vorik said. His voice was the sound of grinding stones, deep and resonant. It vibrated in Qianna’s teeth. "Just as this world will be when the Great Punisher is finally blinded."

"Elos is not listening to you, Vorik," Loryssa drawled, inspecting her fingernails. "And neither am I. But sometimes I forget that your little shard is all melted now, is it not? The frost took everything, did it not?"

Vorik’s single eye snapped to the corner. He ignored Loryssa. He ignored the insults. His gaze landed on Qianna.

She felt the weight of it like a physical touch—a slimy, cold hand sliding over her skin. It was possessive. It was hungry.

And beneath the skin, deep in her blood, she felt the Dostyeva Covenant tighten. It was a physiological tether, a hook in her blood vessels that prevented her from running, from striking, from breathing without his permission.

"Where is she?" he demanded. "Is the Vessel ready?"

"She is not a Vessel, Vorik," Loryssa said, her voice sharpening. "She is a child. And you have been scaring her again. I can feel it."

"I would never let anyone hurt her," Vorik said, his voice dropping to a purr that was infinitely worse than his shout. "She is precious. She is the bridge to the Silence."

"Anyone else," Loryssa corrected. "You would not let anyone else hurt her. But you? You have carved your name into her mind."

Loryssa beckoned to Qianna. "Come here, girl. Come out of the shadow."

Qianna hesitated. She looked at the two of them—the Silver Spider and the Prince of Winter. There was no safety here. There was only the choice between the fire and the ice.

She stepped forward, her head bowed, her hands clasped to hide their trembling. "I am here, Vorik."

"Good."

Vorik reached out with his free hand. His skin was dry as parchment, translucent enough to see the blue veins beneath. He tilted her chin up. His thumb brushed her cheek, right over the spot where the dark pigmentation of her Mask was pulsing.

Qianna had to fight the urge to vomit. The smell of him—dust, dried herbs, and something ancient and stale—filled her nose. His touch sent a jolt of terror through her, and to her horror, her body reacted. Her pulse spiked. Her skin flushed hotter.

The Betrayal of Blood. He saw it. He savored it.

"We are going back," Vorik whispered, staring into her eyes as if searching for a reflection of himself. "To the Stacks. To Azdam."

Qianna went rigid. "Azdam?"

Loryssa straightened up, her expression sharpening. "You found the entrance? The sea caves? Through the illusion?"

"I believe I have," Vorik said, never looking away from Qianna. "With the help of our little... intuitive. Her dreams have been pointing the way, even if she does not know it."

"I do not dream of that place," Qianna whispered, a spark of defiance flaring in her chest. "I dream of shattering it."

Vorik did not blink. He did not frown. His expression remained frozen.

His hand moved—a blur of motion too fast for a human eye to track.

CRACK.

The backhand struck Qianna across the jaw with the force of a hammer. It was not a disciplinary slap; it was a blow meant to silence. Qianna spun, her feet tangling in the rug. She hit the floor hard, the taste of blood flooding her mouth. Stars exploded in her vision—not those of the beautiful Bridge of Light, but the jagged, broken shards of a concussion.

For a moment, she lay there, pressed against the dusty floorboards, listening to the high-pitched ringing in her ears.

"Do not question me, girl," Vorik said calmly. He adjusted his violet sash. "I have always known where the Alfir kept Storn’s Fang. I simply needed the right eyes to see the door through the illusions. And now... we have them."

Qianna pushed herself up on her left arm. Her hand cupped her throbbing cheek. She looked up at him—at the monster who owned her name, her history, and her future.

But this time, amidst the pain, her Mind's Eye snapped open with terrifying clarity. She looked deeper than the fear. She looked past the monster.

She saw the Veins. Vorik was a mess of them. On the surface, he projected black strings of rage and power. But underneath? Deep in the center of his being? She saw it. A frayed, rotting Vein of grey desperation. It was vibrating wildly.

He is afraid, she realized, the thought striking her like a lightning bolt. He is terrified.

Loryssa was right. The Sea Wolf was coming. The Council was gathering. The world was closing in on him. He was an old wolf cornered by the dawn.

He needs me.

The realization did not bring hope—hope was a warm thing, and she was done with warmth. It brought something colder. It brought leverage.

Qianna stood up. She did not wipe the blood from her lip. She let it bleed, a stark red line against her pale skin. She let the Shadow Mask flow over her face again, thicker this time, hiding her expression, hiding her eyes, hiding the sudden, cold calculation that bloomed in her heart.

"When do we leave?" she asked. Her voice was hollow, stripped of all emotion. A perfect, empty Vessel.

Vorik smiled. It was a thin, cruel twisting of lips that revealed yellowed teeth. "Now. The Sea Wolf is hunting. And we must have the blade before the Wolf arrives to tear down our walls."

"The Nottirbar," Loryssa said, her eyes gleaming with avarice. "Bring it to me, Qianna. And you will have your freedom."

Lies, Qianna thought. All of it, lies.

But she nodded. "I am ready."

Walking out of the office felt like stepping into a cold, wet wool blanket. The dry, brittle cold of Vorik’s presence vanished, replaced instantly by the suffocating damp of Kourvan. The Vapor Shroud clung to everything—the buildings, the ropes, the people. It slicked the cobblestones with slime and turned the distant buildings of the city into blurry, weeping ghosts.

Qianna pulled her cloak tight, bowing her head against the mist. Vorik walked ahead of her, his weir-wood staff clicking on the stones, the crowd parting before him like water before a prow.

Kourvan was a city of the desperate. It was built on stilts and pilings, a chaotic jumble of shacks and warehouses that leaned against each other for support. The people here were the refuse of the Five Seas—smugglers from Therysia, exiles from Rond, and things that had crawled up from the darker corners of the world.

But today, the usual chaos was subdued. A heavy silence lay over the docks, broken only by the creaking of timber and the slap of water against the hulls.

As they reached the main pier, Qianna saw why. A man stood at the end of the dock, flanked by a dozen heavily armed guards. He was distinctive enough to be a landmark in his own right. He wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled low and a heavy, high-collared coat that seemed excessive even for the damp chill.

Beneath the hat, his skin was the color of bleached bone. Boan Blackwater. The White. The Wight. His albinism made him seem to haunt his own city. He watched Vorik approach with eyes that were hidden behind the shadow of his brim, but Qianna caught the flash of pale pink irises—crystal pools that looked devoid of pigment and pity.

"You are late, Shadowmancer," Boan rasped. His voice was like a saw cutting through wet wood.

"The tide waits for the Crone, Boan," Vorik replied, stopping a few paces away. "And the Crone waits for no man."

Boan spat into the water. "Keep your northern gods on your own ships. My docks are for business." He gestured with a gloved hand toward the end of the pier. "They are restless. Your Night Brothers. They have been carving again."

Qianna followed his gesture, and her breath caught in her throat. Moored at the end of the long pier were three massive Dragonships. They were not like the graceful Vesprian cutters or the heavy Therysian galleons. They were brutal, jagged things, built for ice and violence. The wood was black oak, but it was scarred and armored in iron, the hulls low and predatory in the water.

And swarming over them were the Nottsver.

Qianna knew these men. She had seen Vorik's guards, but seeing a full war-band in the flesh was a trigger that pulled a dark memory from the back of her mind. They were giants. Towering men and women, standing a head taller than any human on the dock. But it was not their size that made the stomach turn; it was the contradiction of their skin.

They were Nottbrir—Night Brothers. But they were also the Sun People. Their skin ranged from deep bronze to the color of charcoal, the rich melanin of a people born in the tropical fires of the south. Yet they were wrapped in the white furs of the arctic north, pelted in the skins of winter predators. It was a visual dissonance that hurt the eyes—people born of the sun who had zealously embraced the ice.

They moved with a silent, terrifying discipline. There was no shouting, no drunken revelry. Just the rhythmic thud of crates being loaded and weapons being sharpened.

As Qianna walked past the first ship, she saw the totem lashed to the prow. It was an owl. It was a sculpture made of driftwood and whalebone, painted with white clay. Its eyes were hollow pits of darkness. It was the Dark Huntress—Tyomnia Hyotnitsa—the martial aspect of the Crone.

To an outsider, it was just a bird. To Qianna, it was a perversion. It did not matter to her mockery it made of the goddess Selyne—Qianna had no love for gods she didn't know—it was about the intent. The owl was a silent watcher, a guardian of the night. But this? This was a butcher. The energy radiating from the totem was a psychic scream of hunger, a predator twisting nature into a weapon.

"Look away, girl," Vorik murmured, noticing her stare. "They do not like it when the prey studies the hunter."

Qianna tore her eyes away from the totem, only to have them land on something worse. Lashed to the railing of the ship was another sculpture. This one was not made of driftwood. It was bone. Fresh, yellowing bone, woven together with sinew and strips of leather to form a complex, abstract shape. It looked like a ribcage, but expanded, twisted into a flower of ivory and death.

Qianna realized with a jolt of nausea what kind of bones they were. They were slender. Delicate. Elowyn. She stumbled, her hand going to her mouth. The Nottsver were artists of the macabre, and their medium was the bodies of her kin.

A giant warrior standing by the gangplank watched her stumble. He was shirtless despite the damp chill, his charcoal skin glistening with oil. He watched her with flat, dead eyes, his hand resting on the pommel of a sword that looked heavy enough to cleave a horse in two. He did not speak. He did not jeer. He just watched, as if assessing the quality of her bones for his next project.

"Move," Vorik commanded, shoving her forward with the butt of his staff.

Qianna stumbled onto the gangplank of the lead ship, her heart hammering against her ribs. The air here smelled of unwashed bodies, wet fur, and old blood. She hurried to the bow, desperate to put distance between herself and the giant. She gripped the rail, looking out over the water.

To the east, the Lockstone stood silent and immovable against the grey sky. The monolith. Her prison. Her supposed home. It felt like it was watching her.

Vorik stepped up beside her, his presence drying the mist on her cheeks.

"Say goodbye to the shore, Qianna," he said, his voice low and hungry. "We are leaving the world of men."

Vorik pointed to the southwest, toward the jagged horizon of Alfirhavn.

"Through the Pillars of Fendoryn—the Stacks, as the locals call them," he said. "To the Jagged Cove. The mouth of Azdam."

He turned to her, his single eye gleaming with fanatic light.

"The Sea Wolf brings the fire of the south, Qianna. But we... we bring the Silence."

Qianna looked down at her left hand, clenching the rail. In this moment of intense stress, she felt the Veins of the ship—the tension of the ropes, the groan of the wood, and the violent, red Pulse of the Nottsver crew. And deep inside, she felt the silent Black Vein of her own hate, waiting to be plucked.

Let them bring the silence, she thought, watching the grey water churn against the hull. I will be the one who breaks it.