The scent of burnt toast filled the cramped kitchen as Kael scraped charred bread into the waste bin. His hands trembled slightly—not from nerves, but from the bone-deep exhaustion that seemed to have settled into his very marrow.
'Third attempt. Maybe I should stick to water.'
Behind him, Lyra stirred on the makeshift bed they'd arranged in the main room. Her breathing had finally steadied during the night, the violent shaking replaced by restless sleep. The fever had broken, but she looked... fragile. Like spun glass that might shatter at the wrong word.
"Kael?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
He turned, forcing what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Morning. How are you feeling?"
Lyra struggled to sit up, her pale eyes focusing on his face with growing alarm. "Your hair..."
Kael's hand moved instinctively to his temple, where silver now threaded through the dark strands. More than before. Much more.
"It's nothing."
"Nothing?" She pushed herself higher against the pillows, wincing. "You look like you've aged ten years overnight. What did you—" Her breath caught. "The threads. You used them on me."
'Perceptive as always.'
"You were dying," he said simply, turning back to the stove. "I made a choice."
"At what cost?" The bed creaked as she shifted. "Kael, look at me."
He kept his back turned, stirring the thin broth he'd managed not to ruin. "You're alive. That's what matters."
"I remember... fragments. Dreams, maybe." Her voice grew distant. "Seven lights in the darkness. And one by one, they... they went dark. Was that real?"
Kael's hand stilled on the spoon. 'Too perceptive.'
"Fever dreams," he lied smoothly. "Nothing more."
Silence stretched between them, filled only by the gentle bubbling of the broth. When Lyra spoke again, her tone carried the steel he remembered from their childhood arguments.
"Don't lie to me. Not about this."
Kael ladled the broth into a chipped bowl, adding the medicine Mira had procured—bitter herbs that would help with the lingering effects. He carried it to her bedside, noting how her hands shook as she accepted it.
"I'm going to find a permanent solution," he said quietly. "The threads... they're not sustainable. But there are other options."
"What kind of options?"
"The kind that don't require you to worry about them." He retrieved his coat from the chair, checking that his blade was secure. "Rest. Take the medicine. I'll be back before evening."
Lyra's grip tightened on the bowl. "Kael—"
But he was already closing the door behind him.
The Lower Market's morning bustle provided perfect cover for clandestine meetings. Kael found Mira hunched over a steaming cup at their usual spot—a cramped tea stall wedged between a fishmonger's booth and a cloth merchant's display. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, but her posture held less tension than he'd seen in weeks.
"You look almost... rested," he observed, sliding onto the opposite stool.
Mira's lips curved into something resembling a smile. "Ava slept through the night. First time in weeks she didn't wake up screaming." She studied his face over the rim of her cup. "Your sister?"
"Stable." The word tasted like ash. 'For now.'
"The threads?"
Kael nodded once. No point in elaborate explanations—Mira would understand the implications without them. The temporary nature of his solution. The ticking clock that had replaced his heartbeat.
"What we witnessed last night..." Mira set down her cup with deliberate precision. "That wasn't healing. That was something else entirely."
"Transformation." The word emerged harsher than intended. "The Weaver isn't curing the plague. He's... adapting it. Controlling it."
"To what end?"
'That's the question, isn't it?'
Before Kael could respond, Mira leaned forward. "There's something else. Lyra mentioned seven lights going dark?"
His blood chilled. "How do you—"
"You're not the only one with sources." Her tone carried gentle reproach. "Kael, the murals in the cathedral district. Remember the binding ritual? Seven towers arranged in a specific pattern."
The pieces clicked together with nauseating clarity. Ancient rituals. Seven points of power. And now, one by one, the lights were failing.
"We need to return," he said quietly.
"Agreed. But not at night." Mira's fingers drummed against the wooden counter. "Daylight hours. When the guards are focused on their patrols and we can examine those murals properly."
"The cathedral district will be crawling with security after last night."
"Then we'll be careful." She stood, leaving coins beside her empty cup. "Meet me at the old aqueduct entrance. Two hours past noon."
Kael watched her disappear into the crowd, his mind already racing through possible approaches to the cathedral. The murals held answers—he was certain of it. But answers often came with a price.
'And I'm running out of currency to pay with.'
The morning sun felt cold against his skin as he melted back into the market's chaos, counting down the hours until they would venture once more into the heart of the city's darkness.
The afternoon sun cast long shadows through the abandoned building's broken windows as Kael traced his finger along the ancient mural. Details emerged that had escaped his notice during their frantic midnight escape—subtle brushstrokes, deliberate patterns, symbols that seemed to pulse with meaning just beyond comprehension.
'Seven towers arranged in perfect symmetry...'
Beside him, Mira crouched before another section of wall art, her brow furrowed in concentration. "Look at this binding circle. The proportions are exact—mathematical precision that shouldn't exist in artwork this old."
Kael activated his thread-sight, and the world exploded into luminous connection. Golden threads stretched between each painted tower, forming a complex web of power that made his eyes water to follow. The pattern was... familiar. Disturbingly so.
"The lights Lyra saw failing," he whispered. "They correspond to these towers."
"Which means—"
Footsteps echoed from the chapel beyond, measured and deliberate. Both of them froze, exchanging glances as the sound grew closer. Too late to run. Too exposed to hide effectively.
'Wonderful. Just wonderful.'
Father Aldric appeared in the doorway, his weathered face stern beneath silver hair. "Trespassing is still a crime, even in these troubled times."
Mira straightened slowly, hands visible. "Father, we mean no disrespect. We're seeking answers about the plague."
"Are you now?" The priest's voice carried skeptical authority. "And what answers do you expect to find in defaced walls?"
"My sister is dying," Kael said quietly. "So is hers. The physicians can't explain what's happening to them, but these murals... they show something. A pattern."
Something shifted in the priest's expression—suspicion giving way to weary compassion. "Your sisters... they speak of lights failing? Of threads beneath their skin?"
The question hit like ice water. "How did you—"
"Because you're not the first to come asking." Father Aldric stepped closer, studying the murals with eyes that held too much knowledge. "And because I've been watching this city die for longer than you've been alive."
He paused at the altar's edge, fingers tracing worn stone. "If you truly seek answers, perhaps... perhaps it's time someone learned the truth. But understand—knowledge carries its own curse."
'Isn't that always the way?'
The priest pressed against a seemingly solid section of the altar. Stone ground against stone, revealing a narrow staircase descending into darkness.
"The archive has waited long enough."
The hidden staircase descended into suffocating darkness, each step echoing like a funeral bell in the confined space. Father Aldric led them deeper, his weathered hands steady on an oil lamp that cast dancing shadows on ancient stonework.
'Of course it's underground. Why wouldn't forbidden knowledge be buried where normal people fear to tread?'
The archive opened before them like a tomb—rows of stone shelves lined with crumbling texts, scrolls sealed in oiled cloth, and maps that seemed to predate the city itself. Dust motes swirled in the lamplight, disturbed after decades of stillness.
"Sealed during the Awakening," Father Aldric said, setting the lamp on a central table. "When the first barriers rose and the districts were... separated."
Mira approached the nearest shelf, fingers hovering over leather bindings. "These records... they're older than the plague."
"Much older." The priest pulled out a massive tome, its pages yellowed with age. "Before the seven cities, there was only one. A single metropolis spanning what we now call the districts."
Kael leaned closer as Father Aldric opened the book. The pages revealed architectural drawings—not of separate cities, but of a unified structure connected by towering spires.
"The towers," Kael breathed. "They weren't just buildings."
"Resonance points." Father Aldric traced the intricate diagrams. "Part of a protective grid that kept... *something* contained. The barriers between districts weren't meant to defend us from each other—they were meant to hold something *in*."
The priest turned more pages, revealing calculations that made Kael's head spin. "The system was never permanent. Fifty years, perhaps sixty at most. After that..."
'After that, everything falls apart.'
Mira had found another text—a journal bound in dark leather. Her voice carried new dread as she read aloud: "The Weaver stirs in its prison of light and stone. The threads grow stronger with each passing year. When the barriers fail, as they must, the seven will become one again... and the hunger will be fed."
Kael's blood turned to ice. Those black threads he'd seen in the cathedral, spreading beneath Lyra's skin, connecting the victims like a vast web...
"The other cities," he said slowly. "They're experiencing this too, aren't they?"
Father Aldric nodded grimly. "The wasting sickness has appeared in all seven. The barriers are failing, and the Weaver..." He paused, meeting Kael's eyes. "The Weaver was never something that came to us. It was something we built our city to contain."
Father Aldric's hands moved with practiced urgency, spreading fresh parchment across the desk. "These passages—memorize what you can while I copy the critical sections." His quill scratched frantically against the paper, ink flowing in desperate strokes.
Kael committed the architectural diagrams to memory, tracing the connection points between districts with his finger. The resonance grid... if they could understand how it worked, maybe they could—
Heavy footsteps echoed from the chapel above.
All three of them froze.
"Father Aldric?" A gruff voice called down. "Cathedral Guard. We need to speak with you about unauthorized access to restricted archives."
'Shit.' Kael's pulse spiked as more boots thundered across the floor overhead. Multiple guards. Armed.
The priest's face remained calm, but his hands never stopped copying. "The tunnel behind the altar leads to the old crypt system," he whispered. "Follow it east—you'll emerge near the fountain district."
"We heard voices down here," another guard said, closer now. "Someone's been asking questions about the old records."
Mira was already stuffing the copied pages into her pack, securing the leather straps. Father Aldric pressed the original texts back into their hiding places with methodical precision.
"Coming!" the priest called upward, his voice carrying just the right note of confusion. "Just conducting evening prayers in the archives."
He gestured toward a narrow opening behind a stone effigy. The passage looked barely wide enough for a person, disappearing into absolute darkness.
'Of course it's another creepy tunnel.'
"Go," Father Aldric urged. "I'll tell them I've been alone all evening, lost in meditation."
Footsteps began descending the stone steps.
Kael squeezed into the passage first, the ancient stone scraping against his shoulders. Mira followed, her pack catching momentarily on the rough walls. Behind them, Father Aldric's voice rose in improvised prayer, covering the sound of their escape.
The tunnel stretched ahead, carved from living rock and thick with the weight of centuries. Each step took them deeper into the cathedral's buried heart, away from the guards' voices and toward... what?
As they moved through the darkness, Kael couldn't shake the image of those resonance points failing one by one. Seven cities becoming one.
And somewhere in that unity, the Weaver waited.