Arin did not remember crossing the boundary between waking and sleep. One moment he lay on his narrow cot, watching lantern-light shift across the ceiling stains; the next, the weight of his body dissolved, and he drifted into a depth that did not feel entirely his own.
He stood in the Worker's Quarter.
Except… not his Worker's Quarter.
The world stretched as though pulled by unseen fingers. Buildings elongated, corners bowed, windows too tall, too narrow—like sketches drawn from half-remembered memory. Streetlamps burned with pale, sickened fire. Fog crawled along the stones like fabric dragged through water.
And within the fog, threads shivered.
Silver-faint. Wavering. Alive.
He reached out.
When his fingertips brushed them, the world rippled. The air shuddered like canvas struck by wind. Stones beneath him thrummed with hollow resonance.
The threads tightened.
Arin…
The whisper came from everywhere and nowhere—soft, intimate, impossible. Not spoken aloud. Thought into his bones.
He turned sharply.
A silhouette lingered in the haze—a tall shape with edges bleeding into air, as though woven and unwoven at once. No face. No limbs. Only the sense of something watching, waiting, leaning closer.
The threads reacted, tightening around his feet, his wrists, his chest. Not binding. Merely touching.
Arin…
His breath faltered.
The figure stepped forward—just one step. Enough for the fog to thin around a spiraling symbol glowing upon its chest.
A spiral he had seen before.
Light surged.
The dream shattered.
*******
Arin woke with a gasp.
His room felt smaller than it ever had. Rain tapped weakly at the window, though the storm had mostly passed. Dawn had not yet broken. The air tasted metallic—like old coins and lightning.
His palms tingled.
Not the harmless numbness of sleep, but something sharper, deliberate—like a memory of light.
He lifted his hands.
For a moment—just a breath—a network of faint lines shimmered beneath his skin. Threads of cold silver traced his fingers, pulsing once before dimming into nothing.
Arin stumbled back.
"No… no, it's just nerves," he whispered. "Just—exhaustion."
He had said this yesterday. And three nights before. And the week before that, when the tingling first appeared.
He said it again. It did not comfort him.
He thought of his mother—her quiet warnings, her trembling hands after visions, the way she glowed in the dark when she thought he slept.
People who touched the Weave did not remain free.
And most did not remain alive.
He pressed shaking hands against his face.
Sleep would not return. The dream clung to him—like silk caught on a nail.
A knock sounded. Three quick taps. A habit.
Lira.
Arin hesitated, then opened the door.
She stood in the mist, cloak pulled tight, braids damp and half-undone, dark eyes sharper than usual. Lira always carried a quiet alertness, but this morning she seemed carved from it.
"You felt it again," she said.
Not a question.
Arin swallowed. "I don't… I don't know what you're talking about."
She stepped past him, scanning the room with the automatic awareness inherited from a mother she barely remembered. Corners, window, floorboards. Then she faced him.
"There was a pull before dawn," she said. "Pressure in the air. Like the city inhaled and didn't exhale. That's why I'm here."
Arin looked away.
"You look awful," she added, softer.
He huffed a humorless breath. "Thanks."
"You want to talk?"
He didn't.
But her voice was a tether—steady, grounding.
"There was a dream," he admitted. "I saw something. But it didn't feel like… a normal dream."
Her expression eased. "You don't have to understand it alone."
Before he could answer, a deep horn rolled through the Quarter—low, resonant, ancient in its warning.
Lira straightened instantly. "A Warden signal."
Arin's stomach twisted.
The Wardens only sounded that horn when something unnatural had been found.
Again.
"Come on," Lira said, already moving.
Arin grabbed his coat and followed her into the cold, waking light—heart pounding, skin humming with faint, impossible memory.
Something in Caelum had shifted.
Something the dreams had tried to show him.
And it was no longer staying in the dark.