Lyra had spent the whole night, and more of the morning than she cared to admit, staring at the faint patterns of lantern-light on her ceiling. She couldn’t escape the memory of Caelith’s voice. I will find you as soon as I can, Lyra. Please trust me.

  His presence stirred something deep inside her, something she’d spent her life keeping quiet. If she had been wiser, she would have pulled away from him last night. Instead, she replayed the way he’d looked at her, as if she were the only part of the world still holding him together.

  Later, Selinne found her near the archive terraces. Selinne moved quickly even at the best of times, but today she was almost running.

  “Lyra! Oh gods, have you heard?” Selinne rushed to her side, gripping her arm. “They’ve started unchaining them. Not all, but enough. The Umbralyns are moving freely.”

  Lyra froze. Unchained. Caelith… unbound.

  A knot of fear and fascination twisted inside her. She had mostly known him restrained, controlled, contained. What would he be like now? What would this change for the city? For them?

  The streets felt hollow under curfew, lanterns casting muted light across the stone. Lyra and Selinne stayed close to the walls, moving through a quiet upper-tier corridor that led past the healer’s wing. Worry for Julen tugged at them both, a shared weight.

  Selinne slowed as they passed the old archive annex. “The healers moved half their supplies down here after the last quake,” she said quietly. “I promised Julen I’d bring back the notes he left in the east stacks before the curfew tightened further.”

  “Selinne,” Lyra whispered, slowing. “Hold on.”

  Beneath the distant clatter of armour, another sound threaded through the quiet: a low, rhythmic murmur. Something secretive.

  Selinne’s fingers tightened around Lyra’s sleeve. “That’s… men’s voices. But not Guardians.”

  This part of the city had been abandoned since the second quake, its wards left dormant, its passages half-forgotten. They followed the sound just far enough to confirm it was real, steps soft, breaths held.

  The corridor pinched into a blind turn, and beyond it, a thin strip of glow pressed through a crack in heavy doors. Doors that should have been sealed.

  Lyra eased forward, heart thudding, peering through the gap.

  A sunken service court lay beyond, lit by dim, hooded lanterns. At least six Umbralyns stood in a loose half-circle, cloaks shifting like living shadow. No chains. Not a single one.

  Shards of fractureglass hovered in the centre, suspended in a crude warding lattice that strained visibly under their weight. Someone whispered too quietly to make out, and the fragments pulsed once, violently, like a heartbeat trying to escape a cage.

  Selinne leaned in, glimpsed the scene, and jerked back, pale. “Lyra. No. We shouldn’t…we need to go.”

  Lyra forced herself away from the door. Whoever these Umbralyns were, they weren’t on ordinary patrol. And whatever they were doing with the shards, it felt wrong. Forbidden.

  The scene twisted her stomach. Shadows bending towards the shards - too close, too deliberate - dragged her back to that night in the corridor, the brush of cold darkness at her throat, the feeling of being hunted.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  A tall Umbralyn spoke first, his voice edged like gravel dragged over metal. Lyra leaned back in to listen.

  “They said the wraith wouldn’t cross the Archive threshold without direction.”

  “Then someone directed it,” another replied. “The Guardians wouldn’t let something like that wander in by accident.”

  A low hum of agreement.

  Lyra’s pulse thumped painfully.

  A third Umbralyn - shorter, hood pulled low - hissed, “It wasn’t supposed to strike the scholars, the Guardian was supposed to keep them clear. It was meant to retrieve the fragments. Nothing else.”

  Lyra’s skin went cold. Selinne’s hand clamped around her wrist.

  A fourth voice, quieter, but colder for it, cut through them all: “It turned on the girl. The scribe. That wasn’t part of the design, or the parameters.”

  Lyra’s breath caught sharply.

  “She means nothing to the Fracture,” the tall one muttered. “The wraith should have ignored her.”

  “It didn’t,” the cold voice said. “It went for her. As though it sensed something it wasn’t meant to.”

  A pause. The lantern above them sputtered.

  “And then someone or something stopped it,” the gravel-voiced one added. “No trace of a binding. No redirect sigil. The wraith didn’t flee, it was repelled. Violently.”

  A hush fell. Selinne trembled beside Lyra.

  The cold voice spoke again. “And we're supposed to think the boy in the healer's wing did all of that on his own, and still lived to tell the tale?”

  “Clearly one of our own broke the formation. He warned us someone might interfere. We should have listened,” another whispered.

  One of their own? Was Caelith part of this? Lyra’s heart twisted, the memory of silver light and shadow flaring violently in the Archive rushing back.

  Something clattered behind them, just a shifting of stone, but it was enough. The Umbralyns went rigid.

  Lyra jerked back, grabbing Selinne, the two of them slipping into the darker corridor as fast and silently as they could manage before any of those shadow-drunk figures could turn.

  They didn’t stop running until the corridor opened into a broader walkway, where the faint glow of ward-lights offered the illusion of safety. Both girls leaned against the wall, breaths sharp and uneven.

  Selinne was shaking so hard her teeth clicked. She pressed a fist to her mouth, eyes wide and glassy. “Lyra… they would have killed us. They would have—”

  She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.

  “I know,” Lyra whispered, though the words barely found shape. Her pulse still thundered. The voices still echoed. Retrieve the fragments. Repelled violently. One of our own.

  Her stomach twisted even more.

  They didn't know who stopped the wraith.

  But they did know one of their own had interfered with something deliberate. That the wraith was meant to be there. That they weren't there to protect Eryssan at all.

  And Caelith had stopped their plans… not because the wraith had been unleashed, but because it had come for her.

  “Lyra?” Selinne’s hand found her arm again. “Are you alright? You look… pale.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “Let’s get back before the patrols change.”

  But fine was the last thing she felt. Every step back toward the scholar quarters throbbed with dread, guilt, and something sharper… anger. At Caelith. At what he hadn’t told her. At the danger he'd put them in. That Julen almost died. That she almost died.

  --

  The rest of the day dragged in a haze. Lyra tried to focus on her duties in the Archive, but her thoughts spiraled again and again toward the hidden courtyard and the Umbralyns’ words. Selinne said nothing, though Lyra caught her glancing toward the doors more than once.

  Julen slept through their quiet visit in the healer’s wing. His stillness only made Lyra feel more unsettled. As she left the healers behind, she felt it: that subtle shift in the air, the faint pressure she now instinctively recognised.

  A presence.

  Watching.

  Her breath caught. She turned, expecting to see a dark silhouette at the end of the hall.

  Nothing.

  But the impression lingered, warm as a hand at her spine. He’s looking for me.

  Every corridor felt wrong. Every shadow felt like it held a secret she wasn’t meant to know. And beneath all of it simmered a growing, sharp-edged anger; at Caelith for keeping the truth from her… and at herself for caring so much.

  By the time dusk sank across the high arches and the city dimmed under curfew’s final bell, Lyra’s anxiety had reached a blade’s edge. She walked the narrow corridor toward her quarters and nearly reached her door when a voice slipped from the shadows behind her.

  Quiet. Low. Unmistakable.

  The anger inside her finally settled into something sharper. When she turned to face him, she already knew she wasn’t going to stay silent this time.

  “Lyra.”