Violet drizzle clung to the reef spires like a slow-falling plague. From a distance the filaments looked harmless, delicate even, but up close they hissed against armor and stained stone a dull lavender. I hung beside the nursery archway shaping a spiral of water, trying to bend the falling threads away from hatchling lanes. The trick was to spin the vortex fast enough to refract light yet slow enough not to tear seedlings from bloom troughs. I managed three perfect loops before the pearl in my chest burned and my arms cramped.
"Angle four is holding," Rejah called, slate balanced on her forearm. Lines of data crawled across the screen, jittery but legible. "Scatter coefficient at sixty-eight percent."
"Sixty-eight is not eighty," I muttered, fighting another twitch of pain. I nudged the spiral a hair to starboard, felt the filament stream split, half sliding off into open current. Better, but my vision blurred at the edges. "How thin can we slice this water before it slices back?"
"That's what we're measuring." Rejah's tone was calm, but the faint tremor in her fins betrayed fatigue. She recorded another set, then clapped the slate shut. "You need rest or you will collapse."
"Later," I said, forcing a slow exhale through my gills. I released the spiral gently, watching it drift apart like disappearing glass. The filaments resumed their lazy descent, yet the diverted patch above the walkway stayed clear for a moment longer, enough for two caretakers to ferry hatchling pods to safer pools.
One of the caretakers paused to thank me, palm pressed briefly over the heart, then hurried on, wary of the drizzle. I caught myself swaying. Rejah slipped under my arm and guided me toward the north conduit.
"Glyphbay Seven," she said, "before you fall over. Veshra already has a tank prepped."
I wanted to argue, but the reef tilted and the argument died.
Glyphbay Seven smelled of fresh etch powder and heated kelp resin. Veshra floated over a training pool where lamplight beamed through a lens array. A pair of junior glyphbinders lingered at her shoulder, wide-eyed, holding coils of mirrored thread like stagehands waiting for direction. When we slipped in, Veshra lifted the mirror shard she had taken from the cache, tilting it so the lamp beam ricocheted across the pool walls.
"Watch," she said. At her nod a junior binder switched on a secondary lamp. The shard caught both beams, blended them, then spat a third shaft that cut the water sideways. Violet motes in the tank veered from the synthesized beam exactly as they had from my spirals outside. The juniors gasped.
"This confirms the refractive index," Rejah noted, reviving her slate. "Water spiral plus mirror reflection equals higher scatter than either alone."
I eased into the pool, letting the warm water soothe my aching arms. "Show me a grid," I said. The junior binders obeyed, stringing mirrored thread across two support poles. I shaped a gentle eddy beneath, tilting current through the lattice. Light bent, scattered, then condensed again into a faint shimmering screen. Motes darted toward it, collided, fizzled out.
Veshra's grin flashed. "Hybrid shield. Your currents, my glass."
"Fifty-eight percent filament rejection," Rejah read, then paused. "Wait, sixty-three, climbing."
Before celebration could bloom, lamp halos dimmed across the ceiling. The junior binders looked up, confused. A reservoir gauge at the wall flickered from blue to amber. I felt mana flow shift beneath my fins, like a slow drain somewhere upstream.
"What did we just steal power from?" I asked.
Rejah's slate pinged a fresh warning. "Bloom troughs," she said softly. "This configuration redirects ambient mana, and the trough roots feel it first."
The words settled like stone. Dimming bloom troughs meant slower fruit ripening, weaker hatchling feed, and flickering vine lights deep in the city. Outside the door, a caretaker's shout echoed as if to prove the point.
"Pull the grid," I ordered.
"But—" one junior binder began.
"Now." I sliced the eddy apart. The lattice sagged; Veshra and the juniors reeled the thread back. The lamps brightened again, reservoir gauge edging toward blue. Relief, but bitter, because the problem remained.
Veshra exhaled. "We need a counterflow so the grid does not steal from crops."
"Or a power source the reef can spare," Rejah added.
I rubbed water from my visor, heart drumming a frustrated beat. "We will think of something." Would we? A question no data slate could answer.
The council summoned me before I could catch another breath. Rejah and I arrived with dripping armor, our report shards still warm. Guards barred us from the main chamber, so we waited in the outer ring where the coral floor curved like a giant clam shell. Voices filtered through vents—sharp, overlapping, angry.
"…mirror arrays cripple bloom yields…""…Lithari suits mapping choke points…""…Exile liaison claims crystal stockpiles…""…we cannot afford to—"
The doors parted for an Exile envoy, masked in barnacle thread, skin dull gray in the gloom. They carried a single fruit pod cradled in a resin cloth. Guards stiffened, but the envoy only inclined their head, placing the pod on a pedestal. Inside it, the fruit glowed the soft gold of demi-god sustenance. A hush fell behind the sealed doors.
Rejah and I exchanged a glance. Exiles offering fruit was as rare as clear water in a decay zone.
The envoy departed without a word, slipping down a service conduit toward lower currents.
"They will ask us to vouch," Rejah murmured.
"I will," I said, pulse quickening, "but that does not mean they will believe."
The doors opened, a clerk beckoned us in, and conversation lanced like spearpoints. Elders fired questions faster than I could sort them: details of the violet seed, the mech, the drizzle. When I mentioned that hybrid shields drained trough fields, arguments bloomed all over again—mana economy, hatchling risk, council pride bruised by Exile solutions.
I half expected Ashekan to barge in, spear first, and settle debate by sheer presence. Instead, the elders ordered us dismissed to the outer corridor, promising to "deliberate in private." Which felt like code for "nothing will change tonight."
Outside vaults I found Ashekan leaning against a coral column. Darun stood nearby, shoulder tightly bound. Both looked worn, edges frayed. Ashekan lifted a sealed scroll. "Council told me to 'make ready for contingencies'," he said, voice flat. "Means they are still arguing."
"We have a new problem," I replied, explaining the bloom drain. Darun's expression soured further. Ashekan listened, then slipped a small, mirrored flare into my hand.
"Break it if you need me," he said. "It will light the trench for half a league."
I turned the flare over, noting a single rune etched into its side, the symbol for "meet." "Thank you," I said quietly.
Darun slapped his spear butt on the floor. "West trench mech is still scouting. If you or any Exile guides get trouble, we are close enough to bite back."
It was rough assurance, but I took it.
I returned to my quarter dome well past mid-cycle. The reef lights pulsed low, colors warmer than usual, a sign the bloom troughs had yet to stabilize. I stripped out of gear, muscles trembling. The seedstone glowed faintly beneath its tangleweed nest. One vine had grown long enough to drape across the pearl socket; its tips quivered, as if listening to distant tremors.
I trimmed the vine carefully, hearing each soft snip echo in my skull. Over the past cycle I had felt mana in water, but tonight the water in my own dome felt shaky, like it could not decide how fast to flow. I laid the vine aside, observing the pattern of light rippling through the seedstone. It flickered, caught, then steadied. A cautious rhythm, nothing more.
Rest should have come, but the whisper from the Demi-God's conduit circled my thoughts. Metal learns faster than coral. We were coral, weren't we? Slow, layered, beautiful, but slow.
Tomorrow would test that.
When dawn-cycle glow edged into the dome, a runner shard floated outside my entrance. Yera's handwriting filled the crystal lines.
Two missions. Horizon Team: retrieve Exile crystal stockpile. Vanguard Team: shadow the multi-organ mech. Half-tide launch.
Below the text my name appeared with Rejah, Veshra, and an Exile guide identified only as "Echo-Hand." Horizon team. Retrieve crystals, bend light better.
I tucked the shard into my harness. Ashekan's mirrored flare slid beside it with a soft clink. In the narrow mirror of the dome wall, I saw the flare's rune shimmer and fade.
If light could bend, perhaps trust could too, but both could break just as easily.
I checked my spear, steadied my pulse, and stepped into the outbound current, water humming against my fins in unfamiliar patterns that felt less like a tide and more like a question.