Lyra remained in the healers’ wing and learned quickly that rumours had already taken root — and that everyone wanted to know what had happened in the pantheon.

  Not out of sympathy — not really — but with a careful, clinical curiosity that made her skin prickle.Healers lingered too long by her cot. Scribes pretended to be updating records while watching her hands, eyes lingering on her bandages. Even Umbralyns asked their questions, with expressions already trained to accept whatever answer she gave.

  “What went wrong?”

  “How far did the resonance spread?”

  “Was the breach human error?”

  Lyra simply answered with the words she had been given.

  “I pushed the shards too far,” she said evenly. “I was studying adaptive resonance feedback. I thought I could stabilise it alone. I was wrong.”

  The phrasing felt foreign in her mouth — precise, bloodless, rehearsed. There was no mention of the horror, the wraith, the deliberate delay in tending to her when she was hurt. No mention of a group watching her as she fought, helpless.

  Just her and her ambition. Her error. No one else's.

  The story held. It always did, when power decided it should. Clean, contained and believable - it absolved the Umbralyns.

  "I'm lucky to have survived," she always ended with.

  She was released from the healers’ wing two days later under strict instruction to avoid shard exposure, strenuous movement, and — delivered without pretense — unsanctioned inquiry. Master Orell himself had overseen the discharge.

  He had waited until they were alone.

  “I know what you're thinking, Lyra, and the city does not need fear right now,” he had said quietly, not unkindly. “Nor speculation. What occurred in the pantheon will be recorded as a resonance collapse due to overextension.”

  Lyra had stared at him.

  “You’re playing with fire,” she said. “This is the wrong move. For us. For the people of Eryssan. What if I speak out?”

  Orell had met her gaze, expression heavy with something that might once have been conscience.

  “Then the Umbralyn council will be forced to reassess everyone involved,” he said. “Including the one whose… interest in you has already raised concerns.”

  Heat flooded her face — embarrassment, yes, but mostly fury. Furiously, she understood: the truth would not save anyone, it would only decide who died first.

  So, she lied. She lied to the healers. She lied to the scribes. She lied to the city.

  And every time she did, she felt the absence of Caelith more sharply — a hollow where resonance once steadied, where presence had anchored her.

  The city felt altered when she stepped back into it. Quieter. Eerie. As if something fundamental had shifted and no one was saying it aloud.

  Umbralyn patrols moved openly now, unmasked, limiters gone. Their presence pressed against the streets like weight, not violence — not yet — but certainty.

  As soon as she could walk without assistance, she went looking for him.

  She checked assignment registries — nothing. Patrol rotations — nothing. Containment deployments. Fracture-response logs. Internal notices.

  But Caelith did not exist anymore.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He wasn't listed as reassigned, nor marked inactive. He hadn't even been announced deceased - thankfully. Instead, it seemed, he had been simply erased.

  Her chest tightened with a certainty she could no longer ignore. They hadn’t just punished him, they had removed him from the narrative.

  Her fear and determination to find Caelith overtook any rational or safety fears she had. She sought Master Orell again that evening, making sure she caught him in private as so not to break the promises. Although she wanted to find him, she couldn't risk being too obvious in case his safety was compromised.

  “Where is Caelith?” she asked as soon as she found him alone, and without preamble.

  He looked tired.

  “Reassigned,” he said smoothly, but frowning at the same time. "Again. Somewhere else."

  “To where?” she demanded.

  “That information is restricted, of which I am sure you are most aware.”

  “I know he was confined the night I was injured.”

  Orell’s gaze sharpened — just a fraction. “You were unconscious for most of that night, Lyra.”

  “I wasn’t unconscious when he tried to reach me.”

  A pause.

  Then, gently, “Ms Colwyn. I strongly advise you to let this go.”

  “Is he safe?” she whispered, her voice weaker now, stripped of its earlier resolve. "I have to know."

  “All you have to know is that we are protecting this city in the best way we can,” Orell replied. “Attachments complicate governance. And this attachment you seem to have acquired... its complicated things. If you know what's good for you, you'll let this go.”

  An Umbralyn walked past before she could argue further.

  "To your quarters, Colwyn," he uttered sternly, before walking away from her briskly. She obeyed immediately and turned to return to her quarters.

  Although nothing was answered, when she left, she felt their conversation had confirmed two things.

  One, Caelith was alive. If he wasn't, there would be another story. One like hers perhaps - he'd died at the Fracture. Or experimenting with the shards. The fact that they hadn't said that, that'd he'd just moved into the ether like he'd never existed, suggested he'd been kept alive.

  Two, he was paying for her silence.

  On her way back to her quarters, she came across Selinne in the lower corridors. It was after curfew, the setting sun almost below the skyline, beacons lit and sky orange. Everything felt warm — and wrong.

  “Lyra, thank the Gods I found you. You’re being watched,” Selinne said bluntly. “And you’re terrible at pretending you don’t know. Come with me... away from prying eyes." She glanced upward as an Umbralyn lingered at the end of the corridor, very deliberately not looking at them. "We need to talk."

  She led her to Julen’s quarters, where the wardlights were dim and angled inward. He looked better than Lyra expected — pale, still healing, but upright and alert. She felt glad to see him.

  The moment the door sealed, Julen said, “Go on then, Colwyn. Start talking.”

  So Lyra did. She told them everything. How she'd tried her best to escape the Wraith again, how she was clearly outnumbered without Caelith there and that she should have died. That they waited as they watched her fight for her life.

  “That night wasn’t an accident,” she said. “And Caelith was confined soon after happened. Like they knew he would try to reach me. Like they already knew he’d intervened before. It was proof."

  Selinne’s jaw tightened. “Where is he now?”

  “I don't know."

  Julen leaned forward slowly. “They knew he was the traitor.”

  “Yes.”

  “And now he’s gone.”

  Lyra nodded.

  “If I tell the truth,” she said quietly, “they won’t just silence me. They’ll finish what they started with him.”

  The weight of that settled heavily between them.

  Selinne swore under her breath. “So you’re lying to keep him alive.”

  “I have to... I don't know what they're doing to him. What they're going to do to him. What if I say the wrong thing and he doesn't come back? If I go along with their plans, with their lies then maybe.. maybe I can buy him some time.”

  Julen exhaled, long and controlled. “Then we use it.”

  Lyra looked at them — really looked — and felt something steady itself inside her for the first time since waking in white.

  “I can't figure out where they've taken him,” she said. “But I know they’re preparing something. Limiters gone. The shards have been withdrawn. Records rewritten. They won't tell us anything.”

  Selinne’s smile was thin and dangerous. “Then we don’t ask where he is. We write our own version.”

  Julen met Lyra’s gaze. “Exactly. We find out what they’re building — and where they hide what they don’t want seen. And we do it before whatever they’re planning reaches its end.”

  Lyra hesitated, then nodded. “You’ll help me?”

  “Caelith risked his life to save me,” Julen said quietly. “I won’t abandon him now.”

  Selinne’s smile was thin. “And I'm the only one out of the three of us who can still run if things go awry. I'd say that counts for something.”

  Lyra exhaled, steadying herself. “Thank you. I promise I will not forget it.”

  As they returned to their chambers that night, outside the city lay unnaturally still. The Fracture glowed in the distance, small calm rumbles. The calm before the storm, it seemed.

  And somewhere beneath it all, Caelith was paying the price for a truth she could not speak — yet.