The scrap of parchment felt heavier than it should.
Not from its weight, but from what it implied.
Lysander turned the words over in his mind — She is closer now.
Closer to what?
To him?
To the Weave fractures?
Or to whatever lay beneath the shadows of his past?
He slid the note into the inner lining of his coat and scanned the courtyard. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from the bare branches above, making a slow, patient rhythm against the stone.
No footprints in the mud. No disturbed snow where the figure had been.
It was as if the messenger had stepped in from another place entirely.
---
When he returned to the upper halls, Elara was waiting.
"You were gone," she said, crossing her arms. Her formal attire from the day had been traded for a sleeveless black tunic, her hair pulled back in a tight knot.
"I was chasing a shadow," Lysander replied.
"Caught it?"
"No. But it left me something."
He handed her the scrap of parchment. Elara read it twice, her brow furrowing. "You think this is about the woman from your dreams?"
Lysander didn't answer immediately. "If it is… then she's not just a fragment of memory."
Elara set the parchment down. "Or someone wants you to think she isn't."
---
Later, Brell arrived, smelling faintly of metal dust and smoke. His copper lenses reflected the candlelight in sharp points.
"You sent for me?" he asked.
Lysander nodded, gesturing toward the map of old waymarkers. "I need you to trace these symbols. Quietly. No one else sees them."
Brell tilted his head. "Because they're dangerous?"
"Because they're bait."
The artisan's grin was thin and humorless. "I like dangerous bait."
---
That night, sleep came reluctantly.
When it did, the dream was different.
No battlefield. No throne room.
He stood in a dim corridor, walls covered in the same faded symbols as the map.
At the far end, the woman. Her face was still blurred, as if seen through rippling glass.
But this time, she didn't speak. She turned — and walked away.
Lysander followed, but the floor beneath him shifted, each step heavier than the last. The air thickened. The walls pressed closer.
When he reached the end of the corridor, there was no woman. Only a door.
A door he knew.
One he'd seen before.
But not in this life.
He reached for it—
And woke to a sharp knock on his chamber door.
It was Elara.
"They've found another marker," she said.
"Where?"
"In the palace itself."