The morning mist in Lightmere had a peculiar way of lingering—like the city itself refused to let the past go. Ancient spires cut through the fog, their white stones etched with glowing glyphs of old Shardbearers. They loomed over the cobbled streets, casting long shadows over a city built on memory and hierarchy.
Auren walked those streets like a ghost among flames.
The House of Caelwyn, his family, stood near the western cliffs of Lightmere—high enough to see the distant shimmer of the Shardgrave. Their manor was carved from pale stone and shimmering shardglass, whispering of legacy. Every hallway bore banners of past heroes. Every corner seemed to glare at him.
He passed a room where his sister, Elira, trained with twin daggers that left trails of violet flame. She didn't look at him. Not once. Not out of cruelty, but something colder: indifference.
Auren continued down the hall, his boots quiet on the polished floors. He reached the grand chamber, where his father, Lord Theron Caelwyn, was speaking to a Watcher. The man wore black armor laced with silver veins, the mark of those who tracked rogue Shardbearers.
They stopped when they saw him.
"Still wandering the halls?" his father said, not unkindly—but not kindly either. "Even Flickers find a purpose in Lightmere."
Auren bowed his head slightly. "I was just walking."
His eldest brother, Vaelen, stepped in from behind a pillar. Golden shards floated behind him like a royal cloak—his Light Shard in full bloom. "Perhaps that's all you'll ever do," he said. "Walk. Watch. Wait."
Theron said nothing. He simply turned and dismissed the Watcher.
After they left, Auren stood alone in the chamber. The silence pressed on him.
Later, he found himself in the gardens, the only place that didn't feel like it wanted something from him. The trees here were older than the Kingdoms, they said. A rumor, probably, but Auren liked the idea that something here didn't care about power.
That's when his younger cousin, Lyra, found him.
She was sharp-eyed and quick-tongued, younger by only a year, but already ranked a Sparked. Her Shard gave her speed and perception—she could read a person with a glance.
"You know they're planning to send you to the outer academies," she said, sitting beside him.
Auren blinked. "What?"
She picked a shard-blossom from the bush near her. It shimmered like glass. "They say you'll be safer there. Or less embarrassing."
He didn't answer.
Lyra frowned. "You ever wonder why you didn't bond with a Shard?"
"All the time."
"They say sometimes a soul isn't ready. Or that your Shard is still waiting to find you."
"I think mine got lost."
She chuckled. "Maybe. Or maybe it's waiting for the right moment."
Auren glanced toward the manor. "And what if that moment never comes?"
Lyra looked at him seriously now. "Then you'll have to make your own."
That night, Auren snuck into the vault.
The Caelwyn vault was deep below the manor—guarded by shard-locks and memory wards. But he'd watched his brother enough to know how to mimic the sequence.
He didn't know what he was looking for. Only that he had to look.
The chamber inside pulsed with quiet power. Rows of sealed Shards hovered in containment crystals—each glowing with an inner light or shadow.
He approached one that seemed... wrong. It was dull, cracked, and didn't shimmer like the others. A Broken Shard.
Something in it whispered.
Auren reached out.
Pain lanced through his hand as he touched the glass.
His vision went white.
Memories not his own flooded him—flashes of fire, grief, a child screaming in the rain, a blade breaking through shadow, a name shouted and then lost.
Then silence.
When he opened his eyes, the Shard was gone.
And so was the pain.
His hand glowed faintly—not brightly, but unmistakably. Something had bound.
He wasn't sure what.
But the whisper inside him now spoke clearly:
"You don't choose Shards. Unless the world breaks... then you do."
And something, somewhere, had just cracked.
[End of Chapter 3]