CHAPTER 13: VOID GLASS

Tiara swore. "Voidglass."

She sighed beneath her teeth.

The assassin had dropped dead after swallowing the poison.

Serenya wrenched her blade free and wiped it clean. " He took Marrowind poison , he seemed like an amateur."

Valerius’s face didn’t move. "Drag the bodies to the ash pit. Seal this wing. I want every ward strand tested, every latch glyph checked for imitation."

He gave out stern orders without motion.

All the guards scattered. Calvess hesitated, wringing his cone. "My lord, we have to..."

"Begin," Valerius said.

Calvess flared. "I do not take orders..."

"In my House, you do," Valerius returned, already walking. He stopped at Kaelen. "You move to Dawn, the Hall of Ash. Is it either you train, or you leave."

Tiara stepped half in front of Kaelen. "You mean submit."

Valerius’s eyes cooled. "I mean survive."

He swept away with a wake of orders and obedient footsteps. Serenya watched him go, then hooked her blade home and turned to Kaelen.

"You better eat something," she said. "You look too skinny and you might faint."

"I’m fine," Kaelen said.

"You’re rattling," Serenya said. "Rattling men die."

Tiara touched Kaelen’s sleeve. "We don’t sleep here."

Serenya’s mouth tipped. "Good instinct. Also, there are three listening wards in your chamber. Someone wants your nightmares."

Kaelen’s jaw tightened. "Remove them."

"I already did," Serenya said. "Then I found two more. Someone’s hungry."

"For what?" Tiara asked.

Serenya’s eyes slid to Echo. "Everything."

Before dawn, the Hall of Ash breathed heat like an animal at rest. Ranks of braziers burned low. Scorched walls bore old sigils that had blistered and healed a hundred times.

Valerius stood bareheaded in training leathers, a ring of gold sigils coiling his right forearm. "You touch the Weave and it answers." He gestured to the braziers. "Show me control."

Kaelen stared at the nearest flame. He felt the press of life around it: old oil, char, smoke, the breath of guards posted out of sight, Echo’s steady pulse at the door. He lifted his hand.

"No heroics," Valerius said. "No floods. A cup of water, not a river."

Kaelen inhaled. A sharp threads of heat loosened from the brazier, eager to leap. He didn’t seize; he asked. The flame leaned toward his palm, thinned, and settled there like a tame bird.

Valerius’s expression did not change. "A mimic could do that with Fire."

Kaelen closed his hand. The flame’s hunger unstitched. The heat sank back into bronze.

Valerius moved closer. "Now hold it with your breath. Bind, don’t smother."

Kaelen set his palm over the flame and woven not the fire itself, but the air, the memory of heat, the ambient life that fed the burn. The flame hovered between dying and roaring, pinned to a line only he could feel.

Valerius’s eyes flicked. Approval did not reach his mouth. "Again."

They repeated until sweat slicked Kaelen’s back and his shoulders hummed. Valerius’s corrections were bland:

"If you are too greedy, you’ll starve what you don’t mean to."

"Too timid... that’s how things break when you didn’t intend them to."

"You ask when you should command. Feel free and learn to connect with yourself!"

"I won’t strip living things," Kaelen said finally.

"You will strip what I tell you," Valerius said.

"No."

Valerius stepped into the brazier’s heat. "Your mother asked. Look where it got her."

Kaelen’s breath stuttered. "Say her name again."

"Lysandra," Valerius said, and something ugly flickered through the word like a fish through deep water.

"She believed in whispers and gentleness. It made her careless."

"Or it made you cruel," Tiara said from the doorway.

Valerius didn’t turn. "You have a talent for appearing uninvited."

"I have a talent for saving boys from the men who think they own them," Tiara said.

"Dawn is for training, not sermons."

"Then train him to live," Tiara snapped. "Someone used voidglass last night. That’s Marrowind, and you know it."

Serenya slid in behind her, breathing quickly from the stairs. "And the coin trail I sniffed? Lily-and-moons mark. The Silent Seat either has a mint... or an imitator with a very good press."

Calvess arrived last, sanctified cone tucked like a child.

"The Sanctum rejects the suggestion of..."

"Save it," Serenya said. "You’re not the Silent Seat."

Calvess drew himself up. "No one is in the Silent Seat. It is a... abstraction."

Tiara’s laugh was all knives. "Abstractions don’t hire killers."

Valerius flicked his fingers and the braziers steadied. "Enough. Emergency session in two hours. The Houses are circling."

Serenya tilted her head at Kaelen. "Are you ready to be weighed in public like a fish?"

"I’m not a fish," Kaelen said.

"Everyone’s a fish when the market’s hungry," Serenya said. "We go now. Corvain wants you to see something first."

Valerius turned. "He sees it after he bleeds for a lesson."

Serenya didn’t blink. "He’ll bleed either way. Choose when."

Valerius’s jaw worked once. "Ten minutes," he said. "Then the Tower."

Corvain’s office smelled of iron ink and dried rosemary. He had already laid a lacquered case on the table, blue clasp unhooked. Inside, a sheaf of parchment lay like a sleeping animal.

Tiara’s hand hovered. "Is that the letter..."

"The letter," Corvain said. "From the Ember Ledger’s pocket. The one your eyes kept drifting toward, Master Tiara."

She did not apologize. "What did you unlock?"

"Not enough." Corvain slid a page closer to Kaelen, careful fingers avoiding the margins. "It’s written in Sanctum script but the seal’s... personal."

Kaelen frowned. "My mother’s."

"Yes." Corvain tapped three characters with a bone stylus. "This line is stable enough to read."

Kaelen read aloud. "If you are reading this, the Source has already stirred."

Calvess made a strangled sound. "Blasp..."

Tiara moved the page. "There’s more under this layer. Tilt it."

Corvain did. Under a certain light, hidden ink bled like bruises. Tiara whispered a wind-syllable; the air cooled. The ink crawled toward legibility.

"Seek the Vein Below,’" Tiara read. "Follow the echo, not the crown. The Crown of Echoes is not a crown.’"

Serenya huffed. "Ahhh...Cryptic mothers, my favorite."

Kaelen’s finger hovered over another bleeding line. "This part?"

Corvain shook his head. "It’s tethered to a key-sigil I don’t have."

His face suddenly grew cold and provoked.

Calvess licked dry lips. "Destroy it."

Tiara’s head snapped up. "Why?"

"Because if that letter speaks of the Source, it is a danger to every ward in this city," Calvess said.

"Or it’s the only thing keeping those wards from eating the world," Tiara shot back.

Valerius’s shadow filled the doorway. "It’s time!"

Corvain closed the case with a click. Kaelen’s hand stayed on the wood as if heat bled through it.

"Bring it," Kaelen said.

Valerius shook his head. "No artifacts in the Tower. You’ll answer questions, not bait snares."

Serenya slid the case into her cloak anyway. "Oops." She winked at Kaelen. "I’m very forgetful."

The Conclave Tower rose like a black tooth over Luminis. The heavy bells called the Houses to session. In the vaulted chamber, banners hung in patient judgment; beneath them, seats filled with people who had never been patient in their lives.

Idran of Soltair stood first, glass staff catching pale light. "Let it be known that Kaelen, whose origin is still in question, prevented a calamity in the city and thwarted assassins last night."

Venra of Marrowind stood second, lightning hissing at her wrists. "And let it be entered that his existence invited both calamities."

A murmur ran around the circle. Valerius remained standing at his table; Kaelen stood beside him, Echo at heel, Tiara and Serenya flanking like mismatched angels.

Calvess lifted his cone, voice magnified. "The Sanctum is gravely concerned. Unregulated power breeds rupture. The boy’s magic is that of..."

"Older than your categories," Tiara said. "Say it. Aether. The thing your elements gorge on."

The hall increased with gasps, hissed insults, the almost-audible clench of rules.

Idran raised a calming hand. "We are not here for brand names. We are here to decide a course."

Venra’s smile was sugar over a blade. "Containment."

"Protection," Idran countered.

"Exclusive custody," Valerius said.

The chamber rippled with that third option. Eyes cut between them like thrown knives.

Kaelen stepped forward. "I will not be bound."

"You already are," Venra said sweetly. "By accident of birth, by your mother’s oaths, by the way you tug at the Weave and make it squeal."

Calvess pointed his cone. "Answer directly, boy. How did you gain this power?"

"I didn’t gain it," Kaelen said. "I stopped pretending I didn’t have it."

"Who taught you?"

"Life," Kaelen said.

Venra snorted. "And a vagrant wind-witch."

Tiara’s eyes flashed. "Say that again."

Idran interposed quickly. "Insults make bad policy."

Serenya, bored with decorum, tossed a small black coin onto the center dais. It spun with a soft, predatory hum and settled lily-side up.

"Payment token," she said. "Hollow Veil. Found in a gutter two corridors from Kaelen’s door. It has two sigils pressed into it. One cheap, one very good."

Calvess went pale. "That is not a Sanctum coin."

"No," Serenya said. "But it tells me someone copied the lily-and-moons press, very well. And that someone had access to the inner rings. My rings."

Eyes slid toward Valerius. He did not flinch.