For a while, breathing was the only thing that proved the world hadn't come apart.
Cassian stood in the ritual circle of St. Hollow's, lungs sawing, ribs screaming. The lines etched into the stone under his feet glowed a tired gold, like embers someone had forgotten to poke. The crystal overhead flickered, dim, its facets duller than when they'd entered.
Around him, people retched, groaned, or simply folded to their knees.
Lyra's hand was still clamped around his arm. Her knuckles were white, her skin clammy with sweat.
"Yep," she rasped. "Definitely different."
The young priest who'd overseen the rite stared at them all like he wasn't sure whether to be relieved or horrified. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he remembered he had a voice.
"Return complete," he said, too loudly. "By the Final Dawn's… by the Dawn's grace, you're back."
Not all of you.
Cassian didn't look around yet. He didn't need to count. The absence sat on his skin like a cold draft.
The ash-place lingered at the edge of his perception—the circles, the grinding rings, the two voices. The ember in his chest throbbed in time with a new rhythm, accompanied by the faint, inner sensation of teeth turning on teeth.
The Shard he'd taken from the Warden had settled deep, locked into whatever his Path had become. He couldn't feel it as an object anymore. He could feel the way it affected him.
His awareness snagged on small repetitions. The way Lyra's breath hitched twice in the same way. The priest's tongue stumbling over "grace" once, then again, as if reliving the moment.
Loops.
"Cassian." Lyra's fingers dug into his sleeve. "Sit down before you fall down."
"I'm not—"
His knees tried to fold.
He let her guide him to the circle's edge, lowering himself with as much control as his battered ribs allowed. Sitting hurt differently than standing. Everything hurt. But he'd hurt before. Pain was information. He filed it and moved on.
Names began to echo through the chamber.
"Merin." Called. Answered, weakly.
"Jore." A hoarse "here."
"Kerr."
Silence.
The young priest swallowed. His gaze flicked over the circle, searching for a face that wasn't there.
"Candidate Kerr," he tried again, softer. "Kerr of Outer Ward Seven."
No response. The Mark on Cassian's arm burned in quiet sympathy, remembering the boy's scream, the way the fog had swallowed him.
"He went under," Sade said flatly from across the circle. Dried blood streaked her forearms, some hers, some not. "Fog took him. Nothing came back."
The priest flinched. "Then… his soul is with the Shroud," he said, defaulting to liturgy. "The Final Dawn will… make use of his sacrifice."
Cassian heard the words and saw Kerr's Shard again—veined with fear and abandonment, hovering where the boy had disappeared. The way it had bit into his palm before vanishing.
He didn't know if that counted as "with the Dawn."
"Seven confirmed present," the priest went on, trying to regain formality. "Sade. Torven. Jun. Lyra Senn. Maeric Thorn. Cassian Rael. Hara."
Cassian let the names roll past. He catalogued who moved, who didn't.
Hara—the older woman with the tight mouth—was slumped, clutching her side. Torven, the scar-knuckled man, sat cross-legged, staring at nothing. Jun, the skinny girl who'd said almost nothing, trembled openly.
Eight survivors, including Cassian.
Seven if you were the Engine, counting only bodies.
One of the Radiant Wardens stepped into the circle, armor clinking softly. His hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, but he moved with practiced confidence. His gaze swept the survivors, measuring.
"Healers," he called.
Robe-clad figures moved in, carrying satchels and strips of cloth. They smelled of herbs, alcohol, and fatigue.
Lyra released Cassian long enough to let a healer prod at his ribs. The man's fingers were brisk and impersonal.
"Cracks," the healer muttered. "At least two. Might be more. Any trouble breathing?"
"No more than expected," Cassian said.
"Try not to move like an idiot for a few days," the healer said. "Which I realize is a challenge for your kind." He pressed a cool palm to Cassian's Mark. Something whispered under his breath—a minor blessing, a stabilizing sigil. The burn eased a little. "You're lucky. Some who walk out of their first Trial don't walk far."
Unlucky ones didn't walk out at all.
The healer moved on.
Lyra sat beside Cassian, wincing as someone wrapped her forearm. A sluggish line of blood trickled down from her hairline. One of the smaller creatures had nicked her, or maybe she'd hit a wall. The difference didn't matter now.
Maeric stood near the center of the circle, helm under one arm, eyes closed as a priest traced a glowing pattern over his chest. The Radiant's Mark on his arm shone brighter than most, sunburst lines crisp and sure. He looked exhausted, bruised, and very much alive.
Cassian watched him. He suspected that as long as Maeric still had a pulse, he'd find a way to make standing up look like a moral stance.
"Shards," someone said. "We need to collect Shards."
The word rippled through the chamber like a tossed stone through shallow water.
Cassian's hand flexed.
The smaller Shards some of them had scooped up in the Warden's collapse still lay where they'd fallen on the circle floor—or hovered a finger's breadth above it, their own reality not quite sure if it belonged here. Little crystals of gray and black and white, rotating slowly. They cast no real light, but the air around them felt sharper.
Several priests moved toward them with metal tongs and little boxes lined with sigils.
"Please place any Shards you recovered on the circle," one of them said. "They must be catalogued and secured. Those suited to your Paths will be returned or re-bound as appropriate."
Sade's eyes narrowed. "We bled for these."
"And you would face the Shroud barehanded without us?" the priest asked, tone mild. "We provide training. Equipment. Wards. You provide… what you can gather. This is cooperation."
Sade snorted. But after a moment, and a look at Cassian that said if we play this wrong, they'll just take them anyway, she stepped forward and dropped three small Shards into a waiting box.
Others followed. Torven. Jun. Hara.
Maeric hesitated, then placed one medium-sized Shard into a separate container. Its veins glowed faintly, reacting to his touch until the box's sigils smothered it.
Cassian didn't move.
"Candidate Rael?" the priest with the tongs said politely. "Any Shards to surrender?"
Cassian considered.
He had nothing in his hands. The most important crystal he'd taken was already sunk too deep to show. The one from Kerr… wherever it had gone, it wasn't in his pocket.
He reached into his coat anyway. His fingers brushed something cold and sharp along the lining—a small splinter of gray with a streak of white.
One of the lesser Shards from the Warden's implosion. He must have caught it out of reflex when everything exploded, without noticing.
He drew it out, rolled it between thumb and forefinger, and weighed his options.
No point hoarding this one. It was minor. Using it now would do little but paint a mark on him.
He dropped it into the priest's box.
"To be catalogued and secured," he said.
The priest didn't respond to the irony. His eyes flicked to Cassian's Mark for a heartbeat, then away.
"Not all Shards show on the outside," another voice said. "Sometimes they bury themselves in more interesting places."
Cassian turned.
The Glass Quill scribe—the same one who'd taken names at the door, who'd written "resonance unstable" in his neat ledger—stood just beyond the circle. He'd traded his plain clerk's robe for the blue-trimmed gray of a full Quill, a narrow ink-stained sash around his waist. His dark hair was pulled back in a low tail. His eyes were very, very awake.
He held a thick ledger under one arm and a pen in the other. The nib was already wet.
"Nero," Lyra muttered under her breath. "Of course you'd be here."
"I'm everywhere Shards are," Nero said cheerfully. He stepped closer, peering at Cassian as if evaluating a piece of interesting machinery. "You looked like you swallowed a storm in there."
Cassian said nothing.
Nero clicked his tongue. "No gratitude. I'm the one who flagged you as special on the intake, you know. 'Resonance unstable.' It wasn't meant as an insult."
"What was it meant as?" Cassian asked.
"A warning label," Nero said, delighted. He balanced the ledger on one hand and flipped it open with the other, pages fluttering past until he found the one he wanted. "Let's see. Cassian Rael. Outer Ward Seven. Age: somewhere between 'old enough to know better' and 'young enough to think that matters.' Drafted, survived Trial 'The Ones Left Behind' with high deviation flag."
He looked up. "That last part is new ink, by the way. Congratulations."
A shadow fell across them.
"Journeyman Nero."
The voice cut through the general murmur of the chamber like a chain dragged over stone.
Conversations died mid-word. Heads turned.
High Inquisitor Serane stepped into the circle.
Cassian recognized her from Virelion's whispered curse-prayers before he ever saw her face. The way Outer Ward folk said Serane the way they said Shroudfall and tax collector and plague, in the same breath.
She was not tall. Her presence made her seem taller.
Her hair was braided back, streaks of silver threaded through black. She wore no ostentatious armor, only a long coat of dark leather over a simple tunic, both tailored impeccably. A chain circlet sat on her brow, links fine as spider-silk, resting just above eyes the color of old gold.
Her Mark—what little of it Cassian saw—curled out from under her left sleeve, a pattern of chains woven through a stylized sunburst. Path of the Shackled King, if he had to guess. Authority built on constraint.
She took in the scene with one sweeping glance: the survivors, the injuries, the priests. Her gaze lingered on the empty spaces in the circle.
"I see seven of fifteen bodies," she said. "Eight souls, if the reports are accurate."
The young priest swallowed. "Eight survived within the Shroud, High Inquisitor. Some deaths left no… remains."
Serane hummed thoughtfully. She turned to Nero.
"Later," she said. "I want a clean copy of the Trial's record. All deviations marked."
"You already have it," Nero said. "I'll make it prettier."
Her lips twitched, the ghost of a smile. Then she looked at Cassian.
It felt like being weighed.
"Cassian Rael," she said. There was no question in it. "From Outer Ward Seven. Drafted. Marked as unstable at the Rite."
"High Inquisitor," he replied.
"Walked into your first Nightmare," she went on, "and chose to leave the scenario's anchor rather than die with it."
It wasn't a compliment.
It wasn't a condemnation either.
"How do you know that?" Maeric demanded, stepping forward. His face was pale but set. "We only just returned."
"The Shroud is not the only thing that gathers data," Serane said. "The Trial circle records… impressions. Path signatures. Major decisions. It tells us enough."
She didn't take her eyes off Cassian.
"I would like to hear it from you," she said. "Why did you leave the ones left behind?"
There were priests listening. Survivors. Nero, pen hovering over page. Lyra, tension coiled in her shoulders. Maeric, half-hoping Cassian would express remorse so he could fit him into a more comfortable shape.
Cassian considered lying.
It would be easy to say something about panic. About confusion. About following others.
But Serane's gaze was too sharp. She'd see through anything soft.
"The scenario was designed so they couldn't leave," he said. "We couldn't change that without breaking the Trial's frame. We could either stay and die trying, feeding it more Shards, or use them as fixed points to open a different door."
"Door," Nero echoed under his breath, scribbling.
Serane tilted her head. "And you didn't feel obligated to stay, regardless, to protect them as long as possible?"
"I feel obligated to survive," Cassian said. "I don't see the value in noble corpses the Engine can wind back into monsters later."
A murmur ran through the surrounding priests at his choice of words. Engine. Not Shroud. Not Dawn.
Serane's eyes narrowed just a fraction.
"You've given it a name," she said. "Interesting."
"I didn't," Cassian said. "It introduced itself."
Silence followed that.
Not the shocked kind. The noting kind. The we will come back to that kind.
Serane studied him for another heartbeat. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled. It wasn't warm.
"The Radiant Orders," she said, "would call that an abominable way to think. The cults would call it an invitation to madness. The Consortium would call it promising."
"And you?" Cassian asked.
"I call it useful," Serane said. "As long as it can be aimed."
Her gaze dropped to his Mark. The lines there glowed faintly, the sunburst pattern intact. But up close, Cassian had noticed something else: hair-fine cracks radiating from the symbol's center, invisible unless you were looking directly, in this light.
Resonance unstable.
Serane reached out, not touching his skin, just hovering her hand over the Mark. The hairs on his arm rose, responding to whatever Path-pressure she exuded.
"You are not neatly aligned with any of the Church's favored Paths," she murmured. "Not Radiant. Not Prophet. Not Chains. There is ash in you. And something… off-rhythm."
Nero made a thoughtful noise. "A little loop in the signature. A hitch. As if something keeps… almost repeating."
Serane withdrew her hand. "Whatever you did to bring the building down, do not do it inside city walls without permission."
"I'll keep that in mind," Cassian said.
"You will have reason to," she replied. "Surviving one Nightmare is coincidence. Surviving your first with a deviation this large is… selection."
She turned, addressing the whole group now, voice carrying easily to the chamber's edges.
"Those who walked out of this Trial," she said, "have proven you can follow orders, improvise under pressure, and not collapse at the first brush with the Shroud. That makes you valuable. To the Church. To the Consortium. To the city."
Her gaze swept over them all.
"Some of you will be released," she said. "Returned to your Wards with Marks that will draw attention and opportunities—if you live long enough to take them. Some of you will be claimed by Orders for Path training. Radiant, Silent, Shackled."
Her eyes flicked to Maeric as she said that. His spine straightened.
"And some of you," she went on, "will be offered a place in a joint initiative—the Sanctum of Concord. There, Church and Magus Consortium work together to train Nightmare operatives. We teach you to walk into horrors no sane person would approach, and come back with more than you left with."
Nero smiled faintly. "Sometimes even with your own minds."
Lyra groaned under her breath. "This is where they call it an honor, isn't it?"
Serane's lips curved. "It is dangerous," she said. "It is unpleasant. It is necessary. And it is a better chance than most city-dwellers ever get."
She began naming.
"Hara. Jun. Torven." The older woman, the quiet girl, the scar-knuckled man. "You will be released with certain obligations. You will be called again. Use your time."
They looked equal parts relieved and disappointed.
"Sade," Serane said. "You are wasted in the slums. The Shackled King Orders can always use a butcher who knows when to cut. We'll find a place for you."
Sade grunted. "As long as the pay's better than chopping pigs."
"Lyra Senn," Serane continued. "Your Echo responses in the Trial were… notable. The Sanctum will be interested. You are offered a place in the Nightmare Cohort."
Lyra blinked. "That sounds like a terrible idea," she said.
"Decline if you like," Nero said. "They'll just send you back into the Shroud with fewer tutors."
She winced. "Then I humbly accept this surely safe and absolutely reasonable honor."
Maeric snorted.
"Maeric Thorn," Serane said. "You already have a path. The Radiant Wardens have expressed interest. You'll train under them—however, as you have also shown adaptability under Nightmare conditions, you will be seconded to Concord for certain operations. Consider yourself… shared custody."
Maeric bowed his head. "I'll serve where I'm needed."
"And," Serane said, turning back to Cassian, "Cassian Rael. Resonance unstable. Shroud anomaly. Pattern breaker."
The titles rolled off her tongue like inventory.
"You," she said, "are not going back to the Outer Wards."
Cassian held her gaze. "No?"
"No," she said. "We would just have to retrieve you again when something worse than this comes knocking, and I dislike repeating work."
Nero coughed to hide a laugh.
"You are offered a place in the Sanctum of Concord's Nightmare Cohort," Serane said. "With conditions."
Of course there were conditions. There were always conditions.
"What kind?" Cassian asked.
"You will be observed," Serane said simply. "Your Mark, your Shards, your decisions. You will walk into Nightmare Zones so others do not have to. You will bring back what you find. You will not leave the city without permission. You will not attempt to tamper with major city wards or Shroud boundaries."
"And if I decline?" Cassian asked.
"Then your Mark goes on a list," she said. "At the next Shroudfall, your Ward quota goes up, not down. The Draft will remember your name. The Engine will find you anyway. The difference is how much use we get out of you before it does."
She didn't say it cruelly. Just practically.
Cassian thought of Mara. Of Jonn. Of the cracked ward over the alleyway that had almost failed earlier. Of the way the Nightmare had felt when it realized he wasn't playing along.
"If I accept," he said, "do my obligations extend to anyone else?"
Serane's eyes flicked, just once, toward the notion of "others."
"We can ensure," she said, "that the Wards you came from are… given a little more time between Drafts. No promises beyond that. The Shroud takes as it will. But the Church can shape where it looks first."
Leash identified.
Cassian nodded slowly. "Then I accept."
Lyra nudged him with her elbow. "Welcome to the gilded cage," she muttered.
"At least this one has locks on the outside and inside," he said.
Serane gave him a long, measuring look, then inclined her head.
"Rest," she said. "You have one night to remember you have a body before everyone starts pretending you are tools instead of people."
She turned and strode out of the circle, wardens and priests parting before her.
Nero lingered a moment.
"Sanctum's not so bad," he said conversationally. "Decent food. Warm beds. Horrors beyond human comprehension in the basement. You'll like it."
"I doubt that," Cassian said.
"You'll like the part where you get to poke back," Nero corrected.
He snapped the ledger shut and tucked it under his arm.
"Try not to erase any important memories before we get you there," he added. "We've only just started writing you in."
He left.
The chamber slowly emptied. Healers guided the worst injured out. Priests murmured prayers over the bodies that had come back still. Wardens dragged the Ritual's external focus Shards toward storage.
Eventually, only a few remained.
Maeric approached Cassian, helmet dangling from his fingers.
They studied each other for a moment.
"You told them exactly what you did," Maeric said quietly. "About leaving the survivors."
"Yes," Cassian said.
"You don't regret it," Maeric said.
"No."
Maeric's jaw tightened. "I hate that you're right," he said. "I hate that the Trial was built to punish trying to do the right thing. I hate that the only way out was…" He gestured vaguely toward the space where the fog had been. "…this."
"You could petition for more Trials," Cassian said. "Ask to run The Ones Left Behind again and again until you find a way to save them all."
Maeric shuddered. "I saw some of those other… runs. In the fog. People like us, dying slower." He shook his head. "I won't feed that thing more than I have to."
"Then you already made the same choice I did," Cassian said. "You just did it later."
Maeric let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "You're still an ass."
"Probably," Cassian said.
"But you're an ass who saved our lives," Maeric finished. "And…"
He struggled with the next part. Cassian could see it.
"I'm going to be Radiant," Maeric said. "They want me to stand in front of people like you in the next Trial and preach about holding the line. But I saw you break the floor out from under a monster with a building. I saw you look at that thing and see angles none of us did. I don't trust your morals." He met Cassian's gaze. "I trust your instincts."
"That seems unwise," Cassian said.
"Probably," Maeric echoed. "But there it is."
He extended his hand.
Cassian looked at it. Then he took it.
"Next time," Maeric said, gripping hard, "I'll look for ways to save more than just us."
Cassian said nothing.
He didn't break the handshake until Maeric did.
After Maeric left, Lyra settled on the floor beside Cassian with a slow, careful sigh. Her bandages peeked from under her sleeves. Her hair was damp with sweat and blood.
"For the record," she said, staring up at the dim crystal on the ceiling, "you're still an ass."
"So I've heard," Cassian said.
"But," she continued, "between dying for puppets and living long enough to maybe change something… I'm less mad than I was."
"That's almost a compliment," he said.
"Don't get used to it," she said. "We're going to a place where they put nightmares in jars and call it curriculum. We'll need you annoying and paranoid."
She leaned her head back against the cold stone, eyes half-closing.
"You remember everything in there?" she asked after a moment. "Every detail? Every step?"
Cassian thought of the square. The crack in the building. The timing of the Warden's stutters. The exact shape of Leena's eyes as she let go of his sleeve.
"Yes," he said.
"For how long?" Lyra asked.
"As long as I need to," he answered.
She huffed. "Creepy."
He didn't disagree.
Later, alone in a narrow cell the Church called a "rest chamber," Cassian lay on a thin mattress and stared at the low ceiling.
The ash-place hovered just under his consciousness. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see the rings turning, a fraction out of sync. He could feel the new Shard's teeth in his chest, grinding softly, testing the fit of the world around it.
He replayed the Trial in his mind, moment by moment.
Not out of sentiment.
Out of analysis.
When he focused, the memories sharpened in impossible detail. The way dust motes had spun in the air when the building fell. The exact shape of the Warden's layered silhouette at the moment its chest had ruptured. The hairline cracks on his own Mark when Serane had hovered her hand over it.
He marked certain moments, mentally. Flagged them. If he needed to revisit them, he knew he could. Something in him now allowed for that—the beginnings of a library built from his own life.
He thought of the voice of stone. Correction routines escalating.
He smiled, just a little, at the ceiling.
"If you're going to chase me," he murmured, "you should know I take good notes."
The ember in his chest burned a hair brighter.
Somewhere deep in the city, gears turned in walls no one else could see.
In the morning, they would take him to the Sanctum of Concord.
If Virelion was a machine, he was heading toward its engine room.