A week passed.
Kael returned to light duties—not full Witnessing yet, but the preparatory work that occupied most of a junior Witness's time. Filing death certificates. Organizing memorial materials. Sitting with families in the waiting room while more senior members attended to the actual dying.
It was tedious work, but it kept him busy. And busy was good, because busy meant less time to think about the impossible thing living inside his chest.
Ember, meanwhile, discovered the House Mourning library.
"There are so many books," she said one evening, her eyes wide with wonder. They were sitting in the library's reading alcove, surrounded by shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, filled with volumes that ranged from relatively recent to incomprehensibly ancient. "I didn't know this many books existed."
"Most of them are records. Death certificates, family histories, accounts of notable passings." Kael gestured at the shelves. "House Mourning has been keeping records for almost three hundred years. Every death we've witnessed, every regret we've carried—it's all documented somewhere."
"Can I read them?"
"Some of them. The older ones require special permission." He watched her trail her fingers along the spines of the nearest books, her expression fascinated. "You like reading?"
"I don't know." She pulled a book at random—a slim volume bound in faded green leather. "I can't remember if I could read before. But when I look at words now, they make sense. So either I knew before, or..." She shrugged. "Maybe I just learned fast."
Kael thought about that. Most children her age could read basic texts, but the books in the House Mourning library used formal language, complex vocabulary, archaic spellings. Ember had picked up a scholarly treatise on debt theory and begun parsing it without apparent difficulty.
Either she was educated before she lost her memories, he thought, or she's learning at a rate that shouldn't be possible.
The warmth in his chest pulsed. Agreement? Concern? He still couldn't always tell.
"Read whatever you like," he told her. "Just ask permission before taking anything out of the library."
Ember nodded, already absorbed in the green book. Kael settled into a chair nearby and pulled out his own reading material—a primer on debt fundamentals that Vessen had assigned him.
They passed the evening in comfortable silence, the only sounds the occasional turn of a page and the distant footsteps of Witnesses moving through the compound.
The next morning, Kael woke to find Ember sitting at the foot of his bed, watching him sleep.
He startled awake with a strangled yelp, nearly falling off the narrow cot. Ember didn't move, her expression serious.
"You talk in your sleep," she said.
Kael's heart was still hammering. "That's... you can't just watch people sleep, Ember. It's unsettling."
"Why?"
"Because—" He stopped. How did you explain social norms to a child who didn't remember having learned any? "People need privacy. Even when they're unconscious. It's a boundary."
"Oh." She considered this. "I'm sorry. I won't do it again."
"It's fine. Just... knock next time?"
She nodded solemnly. Then: "You were talking to someone. In your dream. You kept saying 'I understand' over and over."
Kael tried to remember his dreams, but they slipped away like water through fingers. There had been something—a sense of vastness, of being very small in the presence of something enormous—but the details were gone.
"I don't remember what I was dreaming about," he admitted.
"Maybe it was the warmth thing," Ember suggested. "Maybe it talks to you in your sleep."
The thought was unsettling enough that Kael didn't respond. He got dressed while Ember waited in the hallway (she had at least absorbed that lesson about privacy), and they went to breakfast together.
The House Mourning dining hall was a somber space—long tables of dark wood, walls hung with tapestries depicting scenes of peaceful death and dignified mourning. Junior Witnesses sat at one end, seniors at the other, with Masters and administrators at a raised table near the front.
Ember attracted stares wherever she went. Children were rare in the compound—most Witnesses didn't have families, and those who did typically kept them in separate residences outside House grounds. A small girl eating breakfast among death-workers was noteworthy.
"They're looking at me," Ember murmured, hunching her shoulders.
"They're curious. You're unusual." Kael guided her to a seat at the end of the junior table, putting himself between her and the majority of the stares. "Just ignore them."
"That's hard to do when I can feel their eyes."
"I know. But you get used to it."
"Do you?" She looked at him with those too-old eyes. "Do you really get used to people staring at you?"
Kael thought about his own first months in House Mourning—the whispers about the scholarship boy from nowhere, the questions about his family, the sideways glances when senior Witnesses discussed his "unusual sensitivity" to death-regrets.
"Not really," he admitted. "But you learn to pretend you don't notice."
Ember nodded slowly, as though he'd confirmed something she already suspected about the nature of the world.
They ate in relative silence. The food was plain but nourishing—porridge, bread, fruit that had seen better days. House Mourning was not wealthy; they subsisted on fees from families who could afford Witnessing services, which meant the compound's luxuries were few and far between.
After breakfast, Kael had duties to attend to. But when he moved to leave, Ember grabbed his sleeve.
"Can I come with you?"
"I'm just filing papers. It'll be boring."
"I don't care. I don't want to be alone."
There was something in her voice—a thread of fear she was trying to hide. Kael remembered how she'd looked in that alley, before he'd found her. Blood on her hands. Terror in her eyes. Running from something she couldn't escape.
"Okay," he said. "You can come."
The filing room was exactly as dull as Kael had promised—rows of cabinets containing thousands of documents, organized by date and family name and cause of death. His job was to take the stack of new certificates from the past week and place them in their appropriate locations.
Ember watched with interest for approximately five minutes. Then she started asking questions.
"What's the most common way people die?"
Kael paused, a certificate in his hand. "Age. Old age, usually in their sleep. The peaceful deaths."
"What about the not-peaceful ones?"
"Disease. Accidents. Violence." He filed the certificate and reached for another. "Debt-consumption, in some cases."
"What's debt-consumption?"
"When someone takes on more obligation than they can handle. The debt starts to... eat them, I suppose. From the inside. It's not pretty."
Ember was quiet for a moment. "Is that what might happen to me? With my debt?"
Kael's hand froze on the next certificate.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "Your debt is... different. Master Vessen says debts to Absent creditors behave unpredictably. But we're going to figure it out before anything bad happens."
"You keep saying that. 'We'll figure it out.' How do you know?"
"I don't." He turned to face her. "But I know that worrying about it constantly doesn't help. So we do what we can, prepare as much as possible, and deal with problems when they come. That's all anyone can do."
Ember looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded.
"Can I help with the filing?"
"You want to help organize death certificates?"
"I want to do something useful." She shrugged. "And it's better than sitting around worrying."
Kael found himself smiling. "Fair enough. Here—these go in the cabinet marked 'V.' The families are alphabetized."
They worked together for the rest of the morning, Ember's small fingers surprisingly deft as she sorted through papers and matched names to files. She asked questions occasionally—about the people who had died, about their families, about the Witnesses who had attended them—and Kael answered as best he could.
It was peaceful. Almost normal. For a few hours, he could almost forget that they were both carrying impossible burdens, bound together by contracts with forces they didn't understand.
Almost.
That afternoon, a summons came from Master Vessen.
Kael left Ember in the library with strict instructions not to leave the building, then made his way to Vessen's chambers at the top of the central spire. The Witness-Master was waiting for him, a stack of ancient documents spread across her desk.
"Sit," she said. "We have much to discuss."
Kael sat. The documents on the desk looked old—parchment yellowed with age, ink faded to near-illegibility. One of them bore a seal he didn't recognize: a symbol that seemed to shift and writhe when he looked at it directly.
"I've completed my initial research," Vessen said. "The results are... concerning."
"Concerning how?"
"Concerning in that everything I've found suggests you and the girl are exactly what I feared—Harbingers, carrying fragments of power from the Reckoning itself." She tapped the documents. "But concerning also because the records mention something I hadn't anticipated."
"What?"
"The Harbingers didn't travel alone." Vessen's hollow eyes met his. "They traveled in pairs. Always pairs. One to carry the warning, one to carry the purpose. Two halves of a single function, bound together by the fragments they bore."
Kael felt the warmth pulse in his chest. He thought about Ember—the heaviness she described feeling, the connection that seemed to exist between them even when they were apart.
"You think Ember and I are a pair."
"I think it's possible. The timing of your meeting, the way you were drawn to protect her, the complementary nature of your... passengers." Vessen shook her head. "It's all consistent with the historical accounts."
"What does that mean for us? In practical terms?"
"In practical terms, it means you shouldn't be separated. The pairs who were split apart during the Reckoning—" She hesitated. "The records suggest they didn't fare well. The fragments they carried became unstable without their counterpart. Destructive."
Don't leave her, Kael thought, and the warmth surged in agreement.
"What about training?" he asked. "Learning to control what we carry?"
"That's the other thing I wanted to discuss." Vessen leaned back in her chair. "House Mourning's resources are limited. We can shelter you, research your condition, provide basic guidance. But we cannot teach you to master what you carry. That requires expertise we don't have."
"Then who does?"
"The Three Pillars Academy." Vessen's voice was careful. "They have scholars who have studied the Reckoning for generations. Access to archives that make ours look like a child's collection. And—most importantly—they have experience with unusual students. Students whose abilities don't fit normal categories."
Kael had heard of the Academy, of course. Everyone in Verantum had. It was the most prestigious institution in the known shards, training the most powerful debt-mages and obligation-workers in the world.
It was also nearly impossible to enter without connections or extraordinary talent.
"Could we get in?" he asked.
"I have... contacts. Old favors I could call in." Vessen's expression was unreadable. "But Kael, you need to understand—the Academy is not a safe place. It's political, competitive, and often cruel. Students from minor Houses like Mourning are seen as easy targets. And if anyone discovers what you and Ember truly are..."
"We'd be valuable. Or dangerous. Maybe both."
"Yes." She stood and walked to her window, looking out over the compound. "I'm giving you a choice. You can stay here, continue your training as a Witness, try to manage your condition with the limited resources we have. Or you can go to the Academy, risk exposure and exploitation, but gain access to knowledge and training that might be the only things that can save you."
Kael thought about it. The warmth pulsed, offering no clear guidance—it seemed to want him to make this decision himself.
"What about Ember?" he asked. "Does she get a choice too?"
"She's a child. The choice falls to her guardian." Vessen turned to face him. "At the moment, that appears to be you."
The weight of that responsibility settled onto Kael's shoulders. He was sixteen years old. He had a piece of a god living in his chest. And now he was being asked to decide the future of a child he'd known for less than two weeks.
But when he thought about it—really thought about it—there was only one answer that made sense.
"The Academy," he said. "If there's a chance it can help us understand what we're carrying, we have to take it."
Vessen nodded slowly.
"I'll begin making arrangements."