The Grand Steam-Lift rattled as it descended through the vertical layers of Eryndral.
Alucent stood alone in the brass cage, one hand resting on the cold rail. He watched the polished marble of the Gilded Tier disappear above him. Then the air changed. The lavender scent faded first. After that came coal dust, the sour smell of fermenting Boilerbread dough, and the metallic tang of overworked pipes.
He pulled out his handkerchief and pressed it to his nose. When he drew it back, the silk was stained red.
That was the third time since leaving the Solar of the Wellspring.
The pain behind his eyes hadn't gone away. His skull felt heavy, stuffed with something that didn't belong there. A Semantic Migraine. That was the term his mind kept returning to. He rubbed his temples, but it didn't help.
At his belt, the Journal sat inside his leather purse. It wasn't glowing. It wasn't warm. But somehow, the weight felt greater than before.
This thing is changing me, he thought.
The lift jerked to a stop. The gate rattled open. Alucent stepped out onto the platform and adjusted his coat. Then he started walking toward the tavern district.
---
The Rusty Cog was crowded when he arrived.
Smoke hung low in the air, mixing with the smell of cheap ale. Runetokens clattered against wooden tables as workers gambled and argued. The noise was constant.
Alucent pushed through the crowd until he spotted Raya and Gryan at a corner table. They had positioned themselves with a clear view of the entrance. Old field habits.
Raya saw him first. She set down her mug and looked him over.
"You look like a corpse that forgot to lie down," she said flatly.
Gryan looked up from the token he was spinning between his fingers. "The nobility do that to a man," he said with a half-grin. "My uncle used to say the air up there is too thin for honest lungs."
"Gryan, your uncle was a coal merchant," Raya replied.
"Still counts."
Alucent pulled out the empty chair and sat down. Then he reached into his coat and withdrew the velvet pouch Lady Elara had given him. He placed it on the table with a solid thunk.
Gryan stopped spinning his token. He stared at the pouch. "That's a heavy sound," he said slowly.
Alucent loosened the drawstring and pulled out the contents. One hundred Silverweaves. The crisp fabric notes bore the official watermark of the Upper Vale treasury. He spread them across the scarred wood, then set the Valerius Signet beside them. The bone ring gleamed dull white under the lamplight.
Gryan let out a low whistle. "Real Silverweaves," he muttered, reaching out to touch one of the notes. "Enough to refuel the Steamwagon for six months. We could even buy high-grade Ironvine wood for the hull repairs."
Raya didn't look at the money. She picked up the signet and turned it over in her calloused fingers, examining the House symbol.
"This isn't payment," she said quietly. "This is a leash."
"It's patronage," Alucent replied.
"Noble patronage is a leash, not a ladder." She put the ring back on the table with a click. "They don't give these to Scribes they plan to let go. They give them to assets they intend to use."
Alucent met her gaze. She was looking at the dried blood near his nostril, at the paleness of his skin.
"What exactly did you do for them?" she asked.
"I analyzed an old heirloom," Alucent said. His voice was steady. "Harmonic resonance mapping. Standard Silverline work. Their house scholars had missed something. I found it."
Standard work, he told himself. Just say it was standard work.
Raya's eyes narrowed. "You analyzed an heirloom and it made you bleed?"
"Scribe's Strain. The pattern was complex."
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she leaned back and crossed her arms. "Fine. Keep your secrets. Just remember that the money doesn't matter if you burn yourself out earning it."
Gryan gathered the Silverweaves back into the pouch. "I'll secure these," he said. "We can hit the supply markets at first light."
He tucked the pouch into his inner jacket. At that moment, a shadow appeared at the edge of their table.
Alucent turned. A street urchin stood there. The boy was maybe eight years old, his face smeared with grease. He didn't say anything. He just slapped a folded piece of paper onto the table and vanished back into the crowd before anyone could react.
Alucent picked up the note. The paper was coarse and grease-stained. The handwriting was jagged, written with charcoal.
The threads are screaming, Alucent. The Shadow has a name.
Below that was a location: The Old Mill.
He passed the note to Raya.
She read it and her expression changed immediately. "Tavin," she said.
Gryan frowned. "I thought he was staying with Sir Vorn. Why is he sending messages from the Mill?"
"That's what I want to know," Alucent said, rising from his chair.
Raya was already on her feet. "If Tavin is sending notes like this, he's seen something bad. He doesn't panic easily."
Gryan grabbed his coat. "The threads are screaming," he repeated. "That's not how he usually talks. He normally mentions whispers. Echoes. Not screaming."
Alucent headed for the door. "No. It's not."
---
The Old Mill sat at the edge of the Steamcottage Clusters, where the industrial infrastructure gave way to older construction.
The building predated the steam age. Its wooden frame was maintained by necessity rather than care, and a massive water wheel groaned at its side, turning slowly through the sludge of the canal. The Mill served as a makeshift orphanage for children the city didn't acknowledge. The ones too sick or too strange for the official workhouses.
Inside, the air smelled of damp wood and unwashed bodies. Alucent led the way, stepping over warped floorboards. The main room was filled with sleeping children huddled under gray wool blankets. None of them stirred as the three passed through.
They found Tavin in the back room.
The boy sat on a pile of straw mattresses in the corner. He was small for twelve. Wiry. His brown hair was matted, sticking up in wild tufts, and his oversized tunic hung off his thin frame.
But it was his eyes that caught Alucent's attention. The hazel irises were dilated wide, staring at something that wasn't there.
In his hands, he clutched a copper Runetoken. The cheap coin pulsed with faint rhythmic light, synchronized with the boy's rapid breathing. This was a side effect of Tavin's ability. Thread 1 Prophetic Sight. It allowed him to perceive fragments of the future through auditory whispers and symbolic visions. The Runetoken served as a focus, helping him channel and interpret what he heard.
Raya crouched beside him. "Tavin," she said gently. "Why aren't you with Sir Vorn?"
The boy didn't look at her. His gaze stayed fixed on Alucent.
"Sir Vorn is busy," he whispered. His voice was thin and strained. "He said he couldn't watch me right now. Too much happening. Too many shadows moving. He brought me here for the time being."
"To hide from what?" Gryan asked from near the doorway.
Tavin's knuckles went white around the pulsing coin. "From the Loom Shadow."
Alucent stepped closer. As he did, the Journal in his purse grew warm against his hip.
"Your note said the threads are screaming," Alucent said. "What did you mean by that, Tavin?"
The boy suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Alucent's sleeve. His grip was surprisingly strong.
"He's looking for you," Tavin hissed. "The Shadow. It covers the Loom. It's not just fog anymore. It has eyes now."
"Who is looking for me?"
"Two names." Tavin's eyes darted back and forth. "Two shadows working together. One leads the metal men. Eloha. Commander of the Forge Coalition."
Raya shifted her weight. "We know Eloha," she said in a low voice. "He's a warlord. Dangerous, but just a man with an army."
Tavin shook his head hard. "No. Not just him. There's another one. The one behind him." He leaned closer to Alucent, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "Veyris."
Alucent waited.
"The Fate-Weaver," Tavin said.
Fate-Weaver. Alucent didn't recognize the term. He knew the Rune Threadweave, the standard magical tradition that governed Scribe abilities and progression through the Thread ranks. But Fate-Weaving was something else entirely. A different Threadweave? A different system of power?
What Thread level would that require? he thought. What Threadweave does it even belong to?
He had no way to estimate. The Scriptorium had never mentioned anything about manipulating fate itself.
"He pulls the threads," Tavin continued. Tears were forming in his wide eyes. "I can hear him doing it. He doesn't just read the Weave, Alucent. He grabs the threads and twists them. Changes what happens. Cause and effect. He makes the improbable inevitable."
Raya's face had gone pale. "Altering causality," she said quietly. "Is that even possible?"
"I don't know," Alucent admitted.
"He is waiting for you," Tavin said. The Runetoken in his hand flared bright orange for a moment, then dimmed. "He knows you found the Book."
Gryan frowned. "What book?" he asked, looking between Tavin and Alucent.
Raya turned to Alucent as well. Her eyes narrowed. "What is he talking about?"
Alucent didn't answer immediately. He gently pried Tavin's fingers from his sleeve and stepped back.
"He sees the ripples," Tavin continued, rocking back and forth. "You touched the Book, and the Weave shook. Veyris felt it. He's been tracking the disturbance ever since. He knows you have it."
Raya's voice hardened. "Alucent. What book?"
Alucent felt his stomach tighten. He had kept this from them since Verdant Hollow. But now, with Tavin's words hanging in the air, there was no avoiding it.
He reached into his purse. The leather was hot to the touch. He pulled out the Journal and held it up.
It looked ordinary. A weathered leather-bound ledger with faded gilt edges. Black leather, supple from decades of handling, pages yellowed with age. The kind of thing you might find in any merchant's office.
"This," he said.
Gryan squinted at it. "Isn't that your father's old ledger. I've seen you write in it before."
"It was my father's," Alucent said. "But it's not just a ledger anymore."
Raya stood up slowly. "Explain."
Alucent hesitated. Then he opened the cover.
Cyan and gold light spilled from the pages, casting strange shadows across the walls of the small room. The micro-runes on the cover ignited, shifting in fractal patterns. The dark metal filigree on the spine blazed with radiance. Script began forming on the paper, amber ink bleeding into existence with urgent speed.
The child sees the ripples, Scion. The Fate-Weaver is clumsy, but he pulls hard. If he knows of us, then we are no longer observers. We are prey.
Raya took a step back. Her hand went to the dagger at her belt. "What the hell is that?"
"It activated when I got home after Verdant Hollow," Alucent said. He closed the book, and the light faded. "The night we got back. I was trying to write in it, to document what happened. And it just... woke up."
Gryan was staring at the Journal with wide eyes. "It writes by itself?"
"It does more than that. It talks. It provides information I shouldn't have access to. It calls itself a record and a guide." Alucent paused. "It also calls itself a predator."
Raya's expression had shifted from shock to something harder. "You've been carrying that thing since after Hollow Vale. You didn't think to mention it?"
"I didn't know what it was. I still don't, not entirely. My father left it for me, but he never explained what it really was." Alucent tucked the book back into his purse. "All I know is that it might be the reason I advanced so quickly from Thread 1 to Thread 3. It's been feeding me information since it woke up, restructuring how I perceive patterns."
"And the nosebleeds?" Raya asked. "The pale skin? That's from this thing?"
Alucent nodded. "It calls it symbiosis. Every time it activates, it forces knowledge into my mind faster than my brain can process. The migraines, the bleeding, that's the cost."
Gryan rubbed the back of his neck. "So when Tavin said the Shadow knows you found the Book..."
"He meant this," Alucent confirmed. "Veyris knows I have it. He felt it activate. He's been tracking me through the Weave ever since."
Silence fell over the room. Tavin had curled into a ball on the mattress, exhausted from the vision. The Runetoken in his hands had stopped pulsing.
Raya was still watching Alucent. Her expression was unreadable. "That book. You said it talks to you. Does it tell you what to do?"
"Sometimes. It demands things. Emotional honesty. Documentation of my failures. It says it was designed to guide me, but I don't fully trust it."
"And you trust it enough to keep using it?"
Alucent didn't answer right away. He thought about the black veins that had spread under his skin the first time it activated. He thought about the way it called him Scion. He thought about how it knew things about his father that he had never been told.
"I don't have a choice," he said finally. "It's already part of me. The symbiosis started the moment I touched it that night. I can't undo it."
Raya held his gaze for a long moment. Then she exhaled slowly and nodded. "Fine. But no more secrets. If we're prey now, we need to know what we're dealing with."
Gryan touched the pouch of Silverweaves in his jacket. "This money," he said slowly. "It won't help against something like that, will it?"
"No."
Alucent thought about the one hundred Silverweaves. Just hours ago, that wealth had felt like security. Now it felt like nothing. Paper against a being that could rewrite causality.
Thread 3 wasn't enough. Silverline perception wasn't enough. Even the patronage of House Valerius was just a fragile shield against a Fate-Weaver.
"I need to advance," Alucent said. "To Goldscribe. Thread 4."
Raya looked at him sharply. "You just reached Thread 3. Goldscribe takes years. Decades for most people."
"I don't have years," Alucent replied. He looked down at the shivering form of Tavin Lang. "If Veyris can pull threads, then time is just another thing he can weaponize."
"How, then?" Gryan asked.
Alucent didn't answer. He didn't have one.
The water wheel groaned outside, its rhythmic sound filling the silence.
Finally, Alucent spoke. "We need to move. Tavin can't stay here. It's not safe."
Raya nodded and moved to help the boy up. Gryan stepped forward to assist, lifting Tavin's thin frame with surprising gentleness.
As they ushered the stumbling child out of the Mill, Alucent glanced back at the dark corner where they had stood. The shadows seemed to stretch longer than the light should allow.
Somewhere out there, a Fate-Weaver named Veyris was watching. Waiting. Pulling threads.