The salt air was a foreign language on Sophia’s tongue, sharp and clean, scouring away the familiar scents of dust and decay. She stood on the creaking, tar-scented deck of the Sea-Singer, a two-masted coastal trader that was the best they could barter for with salvaged Council steel and a promise of future shard-blessings. It felt absurdly small, a wooden shell against the vast, grey expanse of the ocean.The decision to lead this first expedition herself had been met with fierce opposition.“You are the Steward,” Leo had argued, his voice a low growl. “Your place is here. The city needs its heart.”“The city needs a future more,” she had replied, her gaze fixed on the crude map the children had drawn. The western point, the one that felt “deep” and “sleeping,” called to her. It was the furthest, the most alien. If they could reach it, they could reach any of them. “This isn’t a scavenger hunt, Leo. It’s a diplomatic mission. They need to see a leader. They need to hear the truth fro

The sea, once a roaring, murderous foe, had become a vast, silent prison. For three days, the three lifeboats from the Sea Serpent’s Grin drifted under a pitiless sun. The storm had scoured the sky clean, leaving a dome of brilliant, empty blue that reflected off the flat, calm water, creating a dizzying, horizonless void. The only sounds were the gentle slap of waves against the hulls, the creak of oars, and the low, desperate murmurs of the survivors.Twenty-seven souls remained. Twenty-seven from a complement of over eighty. They were a haggard assembly of merchants, sailors, and adventurers, their faces burned by the sun and etched with the memory of the sinking. Water was rationed to a few sips a day, and food was a memory. But a more insidious enemy than thirst was at work.It started with a cough. A sailor named Evin, who had swallowed a great deal of seawater during the storm, developed a wet, rattling hack. Then, the merchant’s wife, Lady Anya, began to shiver despite the hea

The chamber they had been granted in the Citadel of Silverhold was more prison than quarters. Though spacious and well-appointed, with a view of the disciplined bustle of the harbor, the air was thick with the unspoken pressure of their new status. They were Auxiliary Agents, a title that meant “weapon under watch.” Every report to Justiciar Valerius felt like a dissection, every offered piece of intelligence scrutinized for hidden motives.Ethan, the group’s archivist and researcher, felt the pressure most acutely. While Kaelen trained with the guards and Sophia was reluctantly paraded before Veridian healers to demonstrate the Shard of Depths’ “benign applications,” Ethan was buried in the Citadel’s archives. It was a privilege granted with strings; he was to catalogue any mention of obelisks or cultist activity for the League, but he knew Valerius’s true goal was for Ethan to uncover something the League could use to control the shards more directly.The archives were a cavernous,

The revelation that they carried pieces of a soul had forged them into a single, sharpened weapon. Kaelen led the charge from their chambers, his shard blazing like a fragment of the sun, its light a tangible force that made the cultists’ violet energies recoil. The Citadel’s broad, flagstoned main yard was a charnel house of clashing steel and guttural chants. League guards, disciplined and brave, fought with the grim determination of men defending their home, but they were faltering against an enemy that felt no pain and fought with suicidal fervor.Kaelen's team became the pivot point. He and Roric formed an unbreakable spearhead, his glowing sword shearing through corrupt blades, and Roric's shield slamming cultists aside like ninepins. Lyra wove barriers of shimmering force, deflecting bolts of dark energy, while Elara moved through the chaos like a phantom, her daggers finding the gaps in cultist armor with surgical precision. Sophia stayed at the center, the Shard of Depths a b

The miracle of the great hall became a legend in Silverhold overnight. They called Sophia the "Dawn-Bringer," the woman who had faced down a walking plague and wrested hundreds of souls back from the brink with nothing but light and will. For three days, the city existed in a state of stunned, grateful exhaustion. The survivors of the infected, weak but clean, were reunited with terrified families. The Citadel guards looked upon Kaelen and his team with a reverence that bordered on awe, and even Archon Theron's political calculations seemed to have been temporarily suspended by the sheer weight of what they had witnessed.Sophia was a shadow of her former self. She slept for thirty-six hours straight, and even when she had finally woken, an intense fatigue still clung to her. The Shard of Depths, which usually lay warm and comforting at her hip, felt heavy and dull, too, as if it also recuperated from the immense expenditure. Her hands still shook, and the memories of hundreds of live