Chapter Eleven: Four Names

Kaeden was woken three days after Bonding Day by someone he didn’t know.

The knock was light — knuckles, two taps. The innkeeper knocked with a fist. This person used knuckles. When Kaeden opened the door, the man was already at the end of the hallway, waiting. Corvan.

He was led to the Strategy Court. Through the Foundry’s spiral ramps, progress displays floating dense in the air — blue for normal, yellow for blocked, red for out of control. Kaeden didn’t know the terms but he could read the ratios, and the ratios were tilting wrong. Through the Forge Hall’s rock tunnels, air thick with sulfur. The Mother Forge’s flames burned lower than the advertisements on the wall showed. No fuel shortage — not enough smiths, not enough hammers. Through the Prism Studio’s ground entrance, doors open. Inside, no one — or rather, everyone was looking the same direction. Illusionists gathered around a relay of the sphere’s wreckage. A middle-aged man with color-shifting thread at his cuffs was crying. Silent tears, face showing disbelief. Not about the broken sphere. About the symbol on the light curtain three seconds before it broke.

Kaeden stored every scene in his blue-line perception. Every place he passed, another thread in the web.

The Strategy Court’s dome was transparent in the morning. Sunlight hit the dome, Prism Studio flares drifting across the round stone table. On the table: something he’d seen before. Calderis in miniature. Every tower, every street, every well. The Rift’s blue light glowing faintly in the model. Identical to the real thing.

A man sat at the table. Gray at the temples. Calm eyes. Four files in front of him. The other three were already there. First: dark hair, bulging pockets, sitting in the farthest chair with one leg draped over the armrest. Chair too tall. Feet couldn’t reach. Her expression: “Oh. You.” Second: broad shoulders, forge calluses, standing beside the table. Not afraid to sit. Just used to standing. Third: a book in her arms, copper-wire glasses, a stray lock of hair. Sitting closest to the table. Faint red-thread marks on her fingers, not washed off.

Thalen spoke.

“What happened on Bonding Day — all of you saw it. Something in your pocket, or hand, or head changed after the resonance. I don’t need you to tell me what. I need you to know something else. Your resonance wasn’t random. Four independent records show you’d each detected anomalies before Bonding Day.” He spread the files. Gray Bridge’s blue lines. Iron Kiln’s meteorite. The Lantern Tower’s red threads. The street’s fragments. “You didn’t know each other. But you saw the same thing. From today, whatever you do — or don’t do — someone is watching.”

Afterward, the four of them were left in the corridor. Thalen and Corvan disappeared down the hall. Kaeden leaned against the wall. Orion stood at the window, all of Calderis stretched out below. Aella sat on a bench, the forbidden book pressed under her thigh. Nova crouched in the corner. Feet still couldn’t reach. No one spoke first.

Then Nova said: “You guys can’t throw yours away either, huh.”

Kaeden glanced at her. Pockets still bulging. Orion looked down at his chest — the meteorite glowed faintly through his shirt. Aella didn’t look up, but the red-thread marks on her fingers caught the light.

“No,” Kaeden said. “Can’t throw it away.”

The Gray Bridge stone in his pocket, radiating heat. Not checking direction. Confirming he’d found the others.