Smoke still rose in thin columns beyond the barricades, and the city's tired heartbeat kept a ragged, nervous time.
Voices moved in low knots around the camp, orders, requests for supplies, the small mercies that steadied people, but the conversation at the center of the circle pulled like gravity.
Aurelia's gaze swept the group, landing on familiar faces. "If Aramont knew of the ruin here… would they help? Or would they see this as an opportunity to strike, to take advantage of a kingdom with more advanced technology… or worse, steal it for themselves?"
Lucien flicked her lightly on the head, smirking. "As the royal prince of Aramont," he said, mock indignation in his tone, "I won't have you disrespecting us like that. Aramont isn't corrupt. We take pride in our honor, our cavalry… and in doing what's right."
Aurelia let herself breathe a little easier. Nobles from Aramont were here, risking themselves alongside everyone else, and even the royal prince had come. It was a small reassurance, but enough for now.
Lucien's shrug was casual, the kind that tried to hold worry at arm's length. "If they knew, they'd be here," he said. "Or they'd send someone who cares enough to burn the place down to make a point. Either way, we wouldn't be alone."
Victoria frowned, glancing around at the ruined streets. "What about our teachers? Professor Malrec, Seris… they didn't come with us to the Heart's outer chamber. Are they… okay?"
Aurelia shook her head slightly, uncertainty in her eyes. "I don't know their full strength, but if Headmaster Veyron personally sent them to escort us, they're probably fine. They'd be at the academy, protecting the students, keeping things stable there."
Victoria's expression softened, and a small smile appeared. "Hope so… I'd hate to think they're in danger when we're already stretched so thin."
"Destroying the guardians is out of the picture, right?" Lysandra asked, voice small but sharp. She learned how much a single golem could do, her eyes still kept flashing to the silhouettes of those machines in the distance.
Kael's nod came without surprise. "Even Agnes nearly didn't finish one," he said. "That thing collapsed on him like a wall. A dozen of them are moving with coordination, no, we don't have the force. Not now."
Aurelia felt the shape of the problem settle around her ribs. They guarded the borders. They strangled escape routes. If they stand between us and help, then help is a dream at best. "They're not only patrolling the streets," she said quietly. "They're watching the approaches. Anything large or organized that leaves the city looks threatening. Even if someone from Aramont tries to rush reinforcements in, the guardians will either stop them or guide them into a trap."
Dareth stepped forward, jaw working, voice steady, "We can't brute-force this," he said. "We need to be surgical. Find the anchors, those points that give orders to the guardians, and we either isolate them or confuse them. Break the chain of commands rather than fight the hands that move."
Kestrel, drawn in despite the dust on his beard, added, "Anchors aren't all in the same place. Some are hidden in old workshops, others hang in private vaults, and some are built into public fixtures. If we can map them, even partially, we can make localized cuts. We don't need to topple the Heart today, we need to blind a few eyes."
Aurelia heard the plan like a swimmer hearing the shore, something to aim for. Her mouth opened before caution could stop her.
"I can find them," she said, voice steady despite the weight in her chest. "My Aspect, the echoes I read, led me to Halvane. I can scan for the motifs he used. They leave patterns in the old anchor work. If I can find where a node's memory is strongest, we can target it."
Agnes' eyes narrowed, but he didn't scold. "Aurelia, you've already risked enough. You stay back. That's an order."
Kael's jaw tightened, and Lysandra crossed her arms, echoing the headmaster. "You've done enough," Lysandra said.
Aurelia shook her head. "Our forces are scattered, the kingdom's ruined, and communications are limited. I can't just sit back when there could be ten, twenty, maybe hundreds of anchors connected to the Core, and I can read the past. I'm not asking to be a hero. I'm a cog. I can help the Spire."
Agnes gave a faint, wry smile. "You are stubborn. I have a feeling you'd sneak off anyway if we disapproved." He paused, then gave a slow nod. "Fine. But I won't say I approve lightly."
Kael's face darkened immediately. "You're not doing that alone," he said, his voice flat, leaving no room for argument. "I'll never let you go alone."
Lysandra didn't hesitate. "I'm coming too," she said firmly.
Victoria stepped forward, eyes bright. "I can help with runes, motifs, anything technical. I'll be useful."
Dareth took a deep breath and began organizing the team. "Then it's decided. Aurelia, Kael, Lysandra, Victoria, and Magus Serel. Serel?"
Serel's expression was calm, unreadable, but she gave a single nod. She had already seen Aurelia's resolve.
Dareth went over the plan. "While you're rewriting anchors, I'll work to connect with the rest of the Spire's forces. I'll share Aurelia's vision and what we know of the anchors. Coordination is vital."
Lucien stepped up beside him. "I'm coming too," he said lightly, a hint of a smile in his eyes. "I have a soft spot for your group, Dareth."
Dareth raised a brow but allowed it. "Fine. But be careful."
He looked at the assembled students and Serel, feeling something heavy and rare in his chest. They're willing to put their lives on the line for a kingdom that isn't even theirs. And they mean it.
Lucien's grin had vanished, when he spoke, it was softer. "If we do this, we don't march like heroes. We move like thieves. In and out. The Spire taught half its architects to hide things. We'll use that against it."
No loud spells, no unnecessary fights, only quiet, careful work to locate nodes.
Aurelia slid her fingers into her pocket and touched the scrap of notes she'd copied earlier, the cramped mark of Halvane's hand. I saw how he began it.
If those motifs led to the Heart, then following them might be the only way to stop the guardians from being the city's jailers. She met Kael's eyes and let herself promise, silently, I will not throw myself away for this. I will use what I have and come back.
The decision was made with nods and a tired exhaustion, not with ceremonial vows.
They left at dusk in a tight, careful knot. Aurelia, Kael, Lysandra, Victoria, and Serel.
The ruined streets closed around them like a mouth, every shadow a potential sentinel.
Aurelia felt the ledger's scrap in her pocket and the golem's memory still humming under her skin.
If Dareth's veil hid us, mine can help, she thought, hands already finding the rhythm.
She clasped her palms, breathed a single, hollow syllable, and let the silver light spill into a thin bubble.
It trembled, rough, not seamless like Dareth's practiced weave, but it swallowed the group's footprints and dampened the hiss of their breath.
The street-lamps glowed on as if nothing passed beneath them.
Serel's eyes narrowed, then widened. Not even a senior magus can form that quickly, she mouthed, disbelief tempered with professional curiosity. "Clever," she murmured.
Aurelia drew the veil tighter around them and tuned inward. Find the anchors, she told herself, and let her Aspect run its low, patient fingers through the city's memory.
Threads of Halvane's motifs began to pull like a faint current beneath cobblestones and rusted girders, ringed marks, rounded stabilizers, the same cramped loops she'd copied from the ledger.
The pattern showed as a shimmer only she could see, faint, like footprints on a riverbed.
Lysandra squeezed Aurelia's elbow, voice a bright, nervous whisper. "Think of it like the second trial, anchor hunting for points. We find the marks, we tag them, and we don't get killed." Her grin was small but fierce.
Kael sighed. "I wish it were that simple," he said. "This isn't a contest course. One wrong move and the guardians see us."
Aurelia nodded, boots crunching over old glass and powdered stone, but her mind wandered somewhere else, somewhere darker.
Why am I doing this?
The question rose unbidden, sharp as a shard of leftover ruin.
Why am I still walking forward when there are constructs the size of towers out here, things that could crush us before we even see them coming? Why am I offering myself up to this city again?
Her throat tightened.
Is this a duty? Or guilt? Or am I just another cog thrown back into the machine that Halvane left behind?
Not a hero. Not a savior. Just someone who keeps moving because stopping feels worse.
Her thoughts flickered, unwelcome, to that figure in the vision of the Spire's collapse.
Lucifer.
That silhouette amid the destruction, the one she still couldn't decide was herself or someone else entirely.
Maybe that's why. Maybe I'm afraid it was me. Maybe walking toward danger feels like… paying something back.
Atonement.
She didn't know. She wasn't sure she wanted to.
A gust of stale wind rippled the dust ahead of them. Victoria slowed, eyes flicking to Aurelia.
"So the anchor… this is really where it's leading us?" she asked, voice hushed by the weight of the dead city.
Aurelia blinked, grounding herself. The faint trail she'd been following, those quiet pulses of old instructions, throbbed beneath her feet like a buried heartbeat.
"Yes," she said quietly. "It's inside that building. The traces go straight in."
They rounded a fallen column, stepping over twisted metal, and the workshop came into view.
They pushed through a yawning doorway into the ruined space, benches overturned, coils of copper hanging like broken veins, a brass vise half-buried under rubble.
The air tasted of oil and old solder, lanternlight picked out tools frozen mid-task, and the faint shine of runes half-scratched into metal.
Someone had once lived and worked here in long hours and small, careful motions. Now it smelled of abandonment and dust.
Magus Serel paused in the threshold, and a shadow of something like nostalgia crossed her face. "This was my place once," she said quietly, fingers brushing a scorched workbench. "Before the Council took me up, I came down here to test theories and build nonsense that usually exploded." Her smile was half-amused, half-sad. "Small hands, big mistakes. It's good to see it standing still for once."
Aurelia's voice dropped to a whisper. "If one of Halvane's anchors connected to the Heart is here… this could be where he worked. Where he taught others to braid runes and metal." If the past left its mark, then it'd be in places like this.
She moved ahead, following a faint, steady pulse only she could feel, a ghost of patterns in the mortar, a leftover hum where wire had once carried purpose.
They followed that thread down through a corroded hatch into a low basement beneath the workshop.
The light narrowed, the air grew cooler. There, framed by rafters and scaffolding, rose the anchor, not a slab or a machine but a pillar of soft, inner light.
Concentric rings ran up its face, each ring scored with tiny tick marks like the notches on a measuring rod.
The motif, a ring within a ring, repeated itself in the metalwork and the faded sketches pinned to the walls.
Around it, ancient runes and cramped scripts crowded the stone, ink and metal fused into a palimpsest of instructions.
Lysandra's practical question came quickly. "Can't we just smash it? If it's tied to the Core, destroying these things should help, right?" Her tone was blunt, scared.
Serel set a gloved hand on the pillar's cool flank and shook her head. "No," she said flatly. "Think of the anchors as part of a big clockwork, they don't only supply the Core with power, they teach it how to behave. If you break one, you don't silence the clock, you make it stumble. The Core will notice the gap and try to 'fix' it. That could force it to reroute its logic, to compensate in ways we can't predict. In plain terms, smashing them risks making the problem worse. Rewriting is surgical, we change what the Core reads without tearing its connections." Her eyes were steady. "We reword the instruction. We don't yank the power plug."
Kael crouched and ran a hand over a line of carved glyphs. "Do you even recognize these runes? They look ancient."
Serel looked at them, then at the walls, then smiled a little ruefully. "The letters are old, but the ideas aren't foreign. The Spire's makers used the same basic principles: balance, dampening, and directed flow. Their words have shifted, their tools improved, but the rules for keeping a machine steady haven't changed much. I can read the function even if I can't recite the exact phrasing." She glanced toward the others. "If we live through this, I'll find an archaeologist to translate the language properly." The attempt at levity earned only tired smiles, it did nothing to make the basement feel safer.
Magus Serel didn't reach for a chisel or a hammer. Instead, she gathered the ambient Aether in a practiced, small-motioned way that made the air itself seem to fold.
Where her fingers moved, a ribbon of pale light unspooled and snapped into a shape, first a keyboard of brass-and-inked glyphs suspended in thin air like a typewriter, all of it made of Aether and held by a faint humming undercurrent.
No one in the room had seen the device before, it looked like a weird contraption dreamed in glow.
It was a typewriter of light, a mechanical interface for arcane computation, but for the students, it was stranger.
A floating image of keys, each key etched with tiny runes, each press sending a tiny bell-chime through the room.
Serel's hands moved over that ghostly keyboard with the confidence of someone who'd used far stranger tools.
As she typed, a ribbon of letters unfurled in the air ahead of her, lines of runes and symbols that hovered like the words on a scribe's monitor.
The runes shifted and reconfigured with every keystroke, the air-screen filling and reforming as Serel stitched syntax into meaning.
Kael's mouth went wide open. "What the hell is that?"
Victoria, slate tucked under her arm, did not look surprised for long. "It's a computation weave," she said, eyes bright. "A way to do complex rune-work in real time, sort of like running equations on a mechanical brain. We don't have this back home at Aramont, but here the Spire's engineering mixes with practiced magic."
Serel worked faster, pressing the luminous keys in a steady rhythm.
She called the method a kind of harmonic ciphering, an old Spire technique for shaping instruction so a machine could take it without misreading.
The air-screen showed simulations as she typed, a tiny model of the pillar, lines of energy tracing in and out, a readout that coloured green when a line would accept the change and red when it would not.
"Halvane used a short phrase because short phrases are easier for a machine to hold," Serel murmured without looking up.
Her fingers found the key that would fix form into function. "We'll do the same. Not to erase him, just to add a brake."
She typed the word cleanly, like a carpenter driving in a final peg.
On the screen, the runes rearranged, folded inward, and then a new instruction winked into the pillar's projection: STOP
A blunt, unambiguous command rendered in the Spire's older script and in the new glyph-form, the anchor could parse.
As Serel fed the instruction through the computation weave, the runes carved along the pillar's face began to shift.
The concentric ring-marks rearranged themselves with quiet clicks like metal cooling, no sparks, no fanfare, only the soft, deeply mechanical whispering of logic changing its mind.
They watched the anchor as the last of the old glyphs faded and the fresh line, Stop, settled into place.
Only Serel had seemed to know precisely what she was doing, to everyone else, the light-device and the word it wrote felt like a small miracle dressed in workshop metal.
The pillar's glow changed, just a degree, enough to be different from when they'd first found it, enough to let them hope.
Serel turned to Aurelia. "Did you see, in the memories you read, how many anchors feed the Core?" she asked.
Aurelia swallowed. I only saw threads. Enough to know there were many, but not their full map. She answered, "No. I saw anchors, patterns, but not the whole web."
Lysandra leaned forward, frowning. "How will we know if this does anything? How do you test a word inside a machine the size of a mountain?"
Victoria tapped her slate, mind moving through possibilities. "If the command works in that anchor, the Core should change how it answers that node. Practically, that means nearby guardians might slow down or hesitate when they receive the altered instruction. They won't stop outright, not until enough anchors accept the new pattern or the Core itself is fully rewritten or removed. Still, we should see a measurable effect, those being reduced aggression, lag in responses, or shortened commands."
Kael let out a low breath. "So this is the first of many."
Serel nodded once, grim but not without hope. "One anchor rewritten is a foothold. If we can replicate this across critical nodes, we can blunt the Core's behavior while the conservators and engineers work on a larger solution."
Kael crouched beside the freshly rewritten anchor, brushing soot and debris from his hands. "Should we go back to camp?" he asked. "Tell the others this worked… maybe Dareth and Lucien will have returned by now with more experts from the Spire. It'll speed up the rest of the anchors."
He turned to Serel, the senior of the group, for guidance.
Serel's eyes flicked to Aurelia, sharp and unreadable. "That depends," she said calmly. "Can she locate more anchors safely? If so, staying might be worthwhile."
Aurelia swallowed, conscience pricking. "I… I can, but the Aspect takes a lot out of me. I'll tire quickly if I keep pushing."
Lysandra crossed her arms, giving a thoughtful glance at the ruins around them. "The wiser choice is to head back," she said firmly. "We can't afford to burn ourselves out before the real work begins."
Aurelia hesitated, torn between the urgency of the task and the fatigue threatening to drag her down. Finally, she nodded. "You're right. We go back for now."
Kael's hand brushed her shoulder in a brief, grounding touch. "We'll get it done," he said quietly. "Step by step."
The group moved carefully through the rubble, each step measured, alert to the shifting Aether around them.
The first anchor had been rewritten, but there were many more, and the weight of the kingdom's survival pressed heavily on them all.