The Tribunal seeks the second half of the key.The words were a brand seared into Ren’s mind. The quiet clarity he’d found evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp fear that was far more focused than any rage. They didn't just want to cage the beast. They wanted to collar the keeper.“We need to go. Now.” Ren’s voice was a low, urgent rasp. He shoved the folio at Kael, pointing at the frantic margin note.Kael’s eyes scanned the text, his face hardening into a soldier’s mask. “The vessel. They’re after Lyra.” He didn’t ask if Ren was sure. The truth was in the chilling precision of it. The Tribunal’s moves were never blunt; they were surgical. They had tested Ren with the Echo, probed his stability with the Talon, and now they were going for the foundation upon which that stability was being built. “Greywind won’t like us leaving. He just pledged protection.”“His protection is a cage if it keeps us from her,” Ren shot back, already moving toward the lodge’s entrance. The discordant reso

The drumming from the Cradle of Stone was a sound that entered through the bones, not the ears. It was a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated up through the soles of their feet, a language of stone and patience that held no welcome. It was a sound that judged.Ren kept his arm around Lyra, her weight a testament to the terrifying feat she had just performed. She had broadcast a memory to the land itself. The concept was so vast it made his own destructive power seem crude, like smashing a lock instead of finding the key. The awe he felt was tempered by a fresh, sharp fear. The Tribunal would have felt that. They would know, beyond any doubt, exactly what she was. And what she was capable of.Kael finished tying a rough bandage around Anya’s bleeding arm. "Friendly lot, these Stonehides," he muttered, his gaze fixed on the dark entrance to the stronghold. "Send a wave of monsters as a greeting, then invite us in for a chat with a funeral march.""They are not inviting us," Ren corrected,

The Starborne Spire was not a structure one approached. It was a destination one was permitted to witness. It rose from the center of a windswept, high-altitude plateau, a needle of pure, milky crystal that pierced the clouds, catching the first and last light of the day in a way that seemed to hold the sun itself captive. There were no walls, no gates, only a series of floating, interlocking platforms that spiraled lazily around the central spire, connected by bridges of solidified light. It was a place of breathtaking beauty and profound isolation, a fortress of the mind.The journey had been a silent, grinding trial. Ren had withdrawn into a shell of intense focus, using the monotony of travel to rebuild the walls inside himself. He practiced feeling the beastlines without reacting, acknowledging the painful resonances without letting them fuel his anger. It was like learning to hold a scalding cup without flinching. He was clumsy at it. The world still felt too loud, too sharp. Bu

The revelation of the severed star-vein had sent the Starborne court into a silent, frantic uproar. The ordered calm of the Spire was shattered, not by noise, but by the intense, whispered conferences happening in every alcove, the frantic re-calibrations of star-charts, the palpable sense of a foundational truth cracking. Ren was at the center of it, a calm eye in the storm he had unleashed, patiently answering the Asteri’s increasingly urgent questions. He was using memory as a weapon, and it was more effective than any display of power.Kael watched from the periphery, as always. He was glad for the shift, for the focus moving away from Ren’s instability to something concrete, something he could almost understand. A hidden weapon was a concept he could grasp, even if it was a weapon made of light and memory. But the intense, intellectual energy of the Starborne made him feel more out of place than ever. He was a creature of instinct and action, and here, every action was a calculat

The pact with the Starborne was a cold, hard thing, forged in the aftermath of a vision of absolute erasure. There were no oaths sworn on ancient relics, no fealty pledged. There was only a shared, chilling understanding and the transfer of data. Elara provided them with a crystalline data-sliver containing the true, unredacted star-charts, its surface etched with the pulsating, angry red of the corrupted veins."The Cradle of the First Beast is shielded by primordial energies," the Asteri had warned, his voice a dry rustle. "Even with these charts, pinpointing the Tribunal's exact operation will be like finding a specific grain of sand on a dark beach. The Dusk Manifest itself is a void; it does not register. You will be tracking the sickness that feeds it."It was enough. It had to be.Their departure from the Spire was as swift and unceremonious as their arrival. Anya and her warrior, their stoic patience worn thin by the days of inaction, fell into step without a word. The air on