Pyrehold, Day Twenty-Six
The first crack didn't make a sound.
But Toy Crimson felt it.
He was sharpening his blade as usual — not that it needed it, but the rhythm helped him think. Across from him, Lara sat with her back to the wall, Kaelith's spectral coils half-visible behind her like steam rising from still water. Her eyes were closed. Not asleep. Just... drifting.
It was then, in that brittle silence, that something shifted.
A strange pulse. Like a heartbeat.
Toy's cursed hand twitched. His blade slipped.
He looked up sharply.
Lara's eyes opened the moment his did.
"You felt that?" he asked.
She nodded, slowly reaching for the meteoritum collar around her neck. Her fingers didn't touch it — just hovered.
A thin line of frost had formed beneath the metal.
The collar was not supposed to do that.
"It's weakening," she whispered.
Toy stood quickly and crossed the space between them.
"Are you doing it intentionally?" he asked.
Lara shook her head. "No. I haven't cast. I haven't thought of casting. This is something deeper. Beneath the bindings."
Toy hesitated. Then slowly reached toward the collar.
The moment his fingers brushed it — pain flared through his palm.
The curse reacted violently.
A streak of shadow flickered up his arm, and Kaelith reared its horned head behind Lara, sensing the tension.
Toy gasped and stumbled back.
"Kaelith…" Lara murmured, "He's… agitated."
Toy gritted his teeth and flexed his cursed fingers. "He's warning us. Something's changing."
She nodded.
"The meteoritum was forged to bind magic," she said. "But not... souls. And you've been sharing your warmth with me. Your presence. Every night, every breath. You've made me feel again."
"And that's what's cracking the collar?" Toy asked.
"Magic is shaped by emotion," Lara said. "And I haven't felt in years."
They both looked at the collar. The crack wasn't visible — not to the naked eye.
But it was there.
A single, invisible fracture.
And Pyrehold had just become a ticking bomb.
Later that night, Toy stood alone near the sealed door. He was watching the torches. Watching how their flames bent toward the Witch like flowers to sunlight.
He didn't need a scholar to explain it.
The Vault itself was responding to her return.
"Do you regret it?" Lara's voice came from behind.
Toy turned. She had moved closer. Her collar still gleamed coldly, but there was something different in her posture — not arrogant, not regal. Just present.
"Regret what?" Toy asked.
"Coming here. Accepting the post. Watching me."
Toy considered it.
"No," he said.
"Even now?"
He walked toward her, slower this time. His eyes never left hers.
"I don't regret surviving the battlefield. I don't regret being called traitor. And I don't regret falling for a woman who can end the Empire with a breath."
Lara didn't smile.
But her eyes shimmered.
Toy sat beside her.
"What happens when it breaks?" he asked.
She looked down at her hands. "I won't lie to you. If it breaks, my magic returns. Not just frost. My essence. The power I was forged with."
"Will you lose yourself?"
"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe… I'll find myself again."
Toy reached for her hand, cursed palm and all. The veins darkened for a moment, pulsing softly — not in pain this time, but in recognition.
Kaelith stirred once more, coiling protectively around Lara's form.
The guardian spirit did not hiss.
It did not threaten.
It merely watched Toy with those ageless, moon-pale eyes.
"Do you trust me?" he asked her.
Lara nodded. "More than I've trusted anyone."
"And if I have to bind you again to keep you from vanishing into that magic?"
"I trust you to know when not to."
Another silence.
Then, slowly, Lara leaned her head against his shoulder.
Not for show.
Not for advantage.
Just… because.
The frost beneath them melted slightly.
And the collar?
It pulsed.
Once.
A hairline of blue frost spread across its edge.
It didn't snap.
But it remembered how.
In the shadows of the upper halls, Warden Vyle studied the binding runes on his control slate.
A red sigil had blinked once.
Faint.
Unstable.
He frowned and muttered, "It begins."