The Shard Repository had more locks than the Sanctum's front gate.
A Radiant Warden marched the Cohort down a spiral stair and along a short, ward-heavy corridor. The air grew cooler, denser, flavored with metal and something sharper—the clean, hard smell of concentrated Shroud.
At the end of the hall waited a door of black iron, thick as a man's hand. Lines of silver ran through it in a sunburst pattern, intersected by tighter Magus geometry. A small crystal was set at eye level, its core slowly turning.
The Warden rapped the butt of his spear against the floor twice, then pressed his palm to the crystal. Light flared, running along the inlaid sigils in a fast, intricate pattern. The door answered with a deep, slow click.
"Rule one," the Warden said as the door groaned inward. "You do not touch any Shard without authorization. Rule two: if you break rule one, the best possible outcome is that you lose a hand."
"What's the worst possible?" Tess whispered.
"The Shroud decides it likes you," Cassian said.
"Rule three," the Warden added, as if he hadn't heard, "you remember rules one and two."
They filed inside.
The Repository was not large, but it felt heavy. Stone walls, stone floor, stone ceiling—every surface etched with wards. Racks of narrow shelves lined the walls, each bearing small metal boxes with sigils on their lids. Some boxes were dull and inert. Others hummed faintly, their glyphs glowing with caged light.
In the center of the room stood a long table, its surface covered in carefully arranged crystals under glass cloches: different shapes, colors, and intensities. A dozen little nightmares, all pretending to be gemstones.
Varin stood at the far end of the table, hands clasped behind his back. Nero perched on a high stool near the nearest shelf, ledger open on his knee, stylus spinning idly between his fingers.
"Welcome," Varin said, when the Cohort had gathered. "This is the Shard Repository. The Sanctum's pantry, if you like. We keep what the Nightmares cough up here—catalogued, contained, and, when possible, made useful."
"We also keep the records of which idiots tried to lick what," Nero said. "I don't recommend joining those lists."
Tess craned her neck to peer at the Shards under glass.
"What's the point of the glass?" she asked. "They're not going to jump, are they?"
"The glass is for you," Varin said. "Not them."
He motioned to the nearest cloche.
Inside sat a Shard the size of a thumbnail, deep blue shot through with hair-fine white fractures. It spun slowly in place, not physically rotating so much as reorienting its facets in ways that made Cassian's eyes ache.
"Shards," Varin said, "are condensed outcomes. The Shroud takes what happens inside a Nightmare—the fear, the pain, the decisions, the deaths—and compresses that into conceptual crystals. We call those concepts tags."
He tapped the placard at the base of the glass. Script glowed faintly.
"[Water]. [Flow]. [Weight], in this case. That combination might be used to anchor a Path with affinity for currents or pressure. Or it might be broken down further and reforged into a Relic."
"So you just… harvest experiences," Lyra said. "Bottle them. Use them."
"Welcome to Virelion," Nero said, writing as he spoke. "Where trauma is a resource, and nobody wastes anything."
Varin moved along the table.
"Shards vary," he went on. "Common tags—[Fear], [Dark], [Pain]—are easy to find and easy to bind. More specific tags—[Memory], [Time], [Loop]—are rarer and more dangerous. Some Shards are stable: they sit quietly until used. Others…" He paused by a cloche housing a jagged, red-black shard that pulsed irregularly. "…are volatile. These do not like containment. They leak. We try not to keep them here long."
Tess raised her hand. "What happens if a volatile one breaks in here?"
"We rebuild a section of the Repository," Varin said. "And adjust our containment protocols."
"And rewrite several names in the 'deceased' column," Nero added.
Orrin swallowed loudly.
Varin showed them Shards with tags like [Shield], [Light], [Echo]. He explained how ingestion binding worked—swallowing a Shard or its powdered form to fuse its concept into one's Path—and why that was generally a bad idea without preparation.
"You can only carry so many tags in your soul before the pattern destabilizes," he said. "Overbinding leads to fractures. Insanity. Spontaneous combustion. It is messy."
"Is that why you prefer Relics?" Lyra asked.
"In part," Varin said. "Binding a Shard into an object—weapon, armor, tool—externalizes the risk. It also makes it easier to share. A well-crafted Relic can be used by anyone with minimal Path distortion."
He gestured, and an assistant lifted a glass dome from one corner of the table.
Under it lay a lantern.
It looked ordinary enough—metal frame, glass panels, hinged door. But sigils crawled along its edges, and the light inside the glass shifted without flame, changing from pale white to deep blue as Varin rotated it.
"Pathless lantern," he said. "Shard tags [Light], [Shroud], [Reveal]. In a Nightmare, it shows where the Shroud is thinnest. Useful for finding exits. Also useful for spotting seep in the city."
He set it down and motioned to another cloche.
A knife rested there, its blade dull gray, its edge oddly uneven, as if chunks had been taken out of it and then smoothed over.
"Echo-drinker," Varin said. "Shard tags [Echo], [Silence], [Bind]. Wounds made by this blade are harder for the Shroud to… rewrite. It stabilizes physical reality around the cut. Handy when your opponent keeps refusing to stay dead."
Tess was practically vibrating now. "Do we get to touch any of those?" she asked.
"Not today," Varin said. "Today, you get this."
He lifted a small metal box from the table's end and flipped its lid open.
Inside, nestled in a bit of cloth, lay a modest Shard.
It was clear at first glance, almost glass-like, but as Cassian watched, fine lines appeared under its surface, spiderwebbing outward, then fading. It pulsed faintly in time with… something. Stress, maybe. Pressure.
"Low-tier," Varin said. "Tags: [Stress]. [Fracture]. [Creep]. In the right hands, it can tell you where something is about to break. In the wrong ones, it will encourage things to break around you."
His gaze flicked to Cassian as he said it.
"Each of you will be issued a Shard for a practical exercise," Varin continued. "You will use it once, in a controlled micro-Nightmare. We will observe how you bind, how you apply, and how you… cope."
"What happens if we can't bind it?" Orrin asked.
"Then we know you are not suited for certain kinds of work," Varin said. "And the Shard returns to its box."
Nero hopped off his stool. "Form an orderly line," he said. "Or any line at all. Chaos is a kind of data too."
They filed past the table.
Tess received a small, bright Shard that crackled faintly—[Spark], [Impulse]. She grinned like someone had handed her a festival firework.
Harun got something reddish tagged [Impact], [Force]. Sade's Shard was dull gray with a deep core—[Endure], [Weight].
Lyra's assignment caught Cassian's eye.
The Shard she accepted was slender and faintly translucent. Voices whispered inside it, too soft to make out. The tag on the card read [Echo]. [Whisper]. [Listen].
"Oh, good," Lyra muttered. "Because I definitely want the world's worst secrets piped directly into my skull."
Then it was Cassian's turn.
Varin held out the small metal box.
Inside lay the [Stress]/[Fracture] Shard.
Up close, it looked almost plain. No showy colors, no obvious glow. Just a clear crystal with those faint, shifting hairline cracks under its skin. It reminded him of the building he had toppled onto the giant in the Nightmare—weight pressing on a single fracture until everything gave way.
He picked it up.
Cold, at first. Then the temperature flattened, becoming… neutral. Like touching stone that had forgotten what warmth was.
As his skin met the Shard, it tugged at his Path.
The ember in his chest flared, cautious. The Loop-Shard ground once, as if evaluating the newcomer.
The [Stress] tag settled against his Ruin-Sight with a kind of click. Of course. Compatible.
"Feel anything?" Nero asked.
"Yes," Cassian said.
He did not elaborate.
Varin closed the box lid with a soft snap.
"Do not bind it fully yet," he said. "You will do that in the exercise chamber. Partial contact only. Think of it as… acquaintance, not commitment."
"Like a first date," Lyra murmured.
Tess snorted.
They were led out of the Repository through a different door, this one opening into a short corridor that tasted of chalk and old fear. Faded scuff marks lined the walls at knee and shoulder height. At the end of the hall waited another door, this one lighter but covered in climbing sigils.
"Micro-Nightmare chamber," the Warden said. "Low-intensity. Contained. Usually."
"Usually?" Orrin squeaked.
"Stand in the circle when you go in," the Warden said. "Listen to your instructors. Don't panic. Or do. Just survive."
Inside, the chamber was bare.
Round, stone-walled, maybe eight paces across. The center of the floor was a large circle inscribed with sigils: outer ring of Church script, inner ring of tight Magus geometry. The air hummed.
Varin and Nero moved to a small observation alcove behind a thick glass panel, where controls and secondary sigils waited. Sister Elane stood near the door, fingers worrying the chain of her sunburst.
"Listen carefully," Varin's voice came through a wall-mounted speaker. "This is a guided Nightmare. It will present a simple scenario—small space, limited threats. Your task is to clear the environment of hostile entities with minimal damage to yourself or the structure. You will each activate your Shard once. We will be watching how."
"Who goes first?" Lyra asked.
"All of you," Nero said cheerfully. "Together. We value team dynamics. And chaos. Did I mention chaos?"
Cassian stepped into the circle.
The sigils underfoot warmed.
Lyra took a position on his right. Harun on his left. Tess near the back, clutching her [Spark] Shard like a small, dangerous candy.
"On my mark," Varin said, voice calm. "One: breathe. Two: touch the Shard and let it resonate with your Mark. Three: do not fight it blindly. Observe. Four: don't die. Begin."
The world blinked.
For a heartbeat, Cassian felt the now-familiar lurch: not quite falling, not quite being pulled. The chamber's stone walls stretched, then snapped into a different shape.
They stood in a short alley.
Not his Ward's, but similar. Stone walls on either side, damp underfoot. At the far end, shadows crawled.
Shapes moved within them.
Small ones.
Rats, at first glance. But when one crept into the light, Cassian saw that its eyes were empty pits, its fur tattered into strands that floated slightly above its body. Its legs bent wrong. Its jaw gaped farther than it should, teeth too many and too thin.
Three of them. No more. Low-tier.
He could feel the edges of the illusion. The chamber's boundaries still hummed under the overlay. The Nightmare skin was thin here, stretched over stone and sigil.
He reached into his coat and brought out the Shard.
It gleamed softly in his palm.
"Bind," Varin's voice said. "Lightly. Think of a door opening between the Shard and your Path. Not a merging, yet. A handshake."
Cassian let the Shard's cold seep into his skin.
He did not swallow it. Instead, he focused on the ember in his chest, the Path-core, and imagined a line running from it down his arm to his hand. He invited the Shard to sit along that line.
Something clicked.
A usefulness settled behind his eyes.
The world sharpened.
He saw stress.
Not as color or glow—more as knowledge layered over vision. The alley's left wall had a hairline crack running from the ground up three stones. Harun's shin bones carried an old fracture that had never fully knit. Tess's bracer had a weak joint at one hinge.
Even the rats had it.
Their bodies were patchworks of filler—Shroud-stuff approximating flesh. Stress lines ran across their spines where they'd been forced into shapes the Nightmare liked.
Ruin-Sight had shown him weaknesses before. The Shard took that and magnified it, expanding his perception beyond big obvious cracks to the tiny places where pressure twisted.
One of the rats sprang forward with a blur of motion.
Harun yelped and swung his practice sword too wide, slamming it into the alley wall. Stone flakes fell. The rat darted under the blow and lunged for his leg.
Cassian moved.
He didn't have to think about where to strike.
The stress lines told him.
He stepped into the rat's path and brought his wooden sword down in a short, controlled arc—not at its head, not at its back, but at the exact point where two lines crossed along its spine.
The blade impacted with a terrible, satisfying crunch.
The rat split, dissolving into a smear of gray fog that evaporated quickly.
"Economical," Nero's voice drifted from the wall. "One strike, minimal flailing. I like him."
The other two rats scrambled, skittering along the walls. One went high, claws digging into brick. Another veered behind Tess, aiming for her calves.
"Shard!" Varin called. "Use them."
Tess flinched, then slammed her Shard into the little metal plate on her bracer. It flared bright yellow-white.
Lightning spat from her hand.
It was supposed to be a tight bolt. It came out as a wild arc, hitting the rat, the wall, and making everyone's hair stand on end. The creature shrieked silently and burst. Stone blackened where the bolt had touched it.
"Overdraw," Varin muttered.
Lyra pressed her Shard to her own Mark.
Whispers flooded the alley.
Half-spoken words, scraps of phrases from other people's fears. One of the remaining rats froze mid-lunge, its head cocked as if listening. Its movements slowed, stuttering, as if someone were hitting its mind with echoes of itself.
Lyra stepped in and cracked it across the skull with her baton. It popped like a soap bubble.
The Shards' effects faded with the kills.
Cassian felt the [Stress] resonance recede, the extra sharpness narrowing back to his usual Ruin-Sight. The Shard cooled in his palm, sated for the moment.
The alley flickered.
The walls shuddered, then dissolved, leaving them once again standing in the round stone chamber. The sigils underfoot glowed steady gold.
"Not terrible," Varin said through the speaker. "Nobody lost a limb. Only a minor scorch mark. The wall will forgive you, Tess."
Tess winced. "I aimed," she protested. "The Shard just… wanted more."
"Shards often do," Varin said. "That's why you do not give them everything they ask for."
He stepped into the chamber proper, Nero at his shoulder.
"Debrief," Varin said. "Harun."
Harun swallowed. "I swung too wide," he said. "Didn't… anchor my feet. I let it get inside my reach."
"And when your blow hit the wall instead?" Varin asked.
"I panicked," Harun admitted. "I lost track of the others."
"Good," Varin said. "You noticed. Fix it next time. Tess."
She grimaced. "Too much juice."
"Yes," Varin said. "You have affinity. You lack control. We'll work on that before we let you near anything flammable."
Nero added quietly, "Or anyone we want to keep."
"And you," Varin said, turning to Lyra. "Your Shard?"
"It made things loud," Lyra said. "Voices. But… not random. It was like I could feel where their… attention snagged." She shrugged. "Helped me time the hit."
Varin nodded slowly. "Echo affinity confirmed. We'll use that."
Then his gaze settled on Cassian.
"Your impression?" he asked.
Cassian rolled the [Stress] Shard between his fingers.
"It sharpened my existing sense of where things break," he said. "Extended it beyond obvious cracks. I could see… structural strain. In stone. In bone."
"In people," Varin said.
"Yes," Cassian said.
"What did you do with that information?" Varin asked.
"I used the minimum force needed to remove the threat without destabilizing the chamber," Cassian said.
Nero smiled faintly. "You also noticed the containment sigils' weak spots, didn't you?"
Cassian met his eyes. "I noticed a lot of things."
"Will you share them?" Nero asked.
"Not today," Cassian said.
Varin's expression didn't change, but his eyes went colder. "In this facility," he said mildly, "information is not something you hoard without cost."
"In this facility," Cassian said, "I am under observation because I am… unstable. You don't want me poking at your weak wards, Instructor. Not yet."
There was a small pause.
Then Nero laughed.
"Oh, I like you," he said. "You know you're a problem and you're trying, in your own way, not to make it mine too fast."
Varin's shoulders eased a fraction.
"We will log the observation," he said. "For now, do not test the chamber seals. We built them to contain nightmares, not anomalies with opinions."
Cassian inclined his head.
They returned the Shards to their boxes once the exercise was done. The [Stress] crystal left his hand reluctantly, clinging to his skin for a heartbeat longer than was comfortable.
Varin's assistant snapped the lid shut quickly.
On the way out, Cassian let the others drift ahead.
He paused near a wall where a diagram had been etched—circles and arrows showing how Shards, Echoes, Nightmares, and Paths fed into each other. A neat little loop of exploitation.
"If the Shroud refines experiences into Shards," he said quietly, "to tune people into Paths it likes… what happens if someone starts tuning the Shroud instead?"
He hadn't meant to say it aloud.
Varin heard anyway.
The instructor stopped beside him, looking at the diagram, not at Cassian.
"Historically," Varin said, "people who try to 'tune the Shroud' die. Quickly, if they are foolish. Slowly, if they are clever. If they are very unlucky, they become something that doesn't fit on diagrams."
"And if they're very lucky?" Cassian asked.
"There is no 'very lucky' in that direction," Varin said. "There is only 'interesting' and 'catastrophic.' I would prefer not to catalog either while I'm assigned here."
"Noted," Cassian said.
They left the Repository and climbed back toward the surface.
On the training yard level, Cassian peeled off from the Cohort for a moment, drawn by a bright flare of light from one of the side yards.
He found Maeric there.
The Radiant was in lighter armor now, breastplate gleaming, Mark bared. He stood with three other trainees in a rough triangle, a Radiant Warden barking corrections at them as they held shields up against an assault of dazzling strikes.
Maeric's shield shone with a pale, controlled brilliance, light spilling over its edge to blur his outline. When the Warden's practice hammer slammed into it, the impact flared bright and then diffused, energy bleeding harmlessly away instead of snapping the man's arm.
"Better," the Warden said. "But you're still flaring too much. Control. Your light is not decoration. It is reinforcement."
Maeric nodded, sweat dripping down his temple.
He saw Cassian watching and raised his chin in a brief greeting as the drill paused.
"Shard playtime?" he called, breathing hard.
"Something like that," Cassian said.
"They teaching you to break things more precisely?" Maeric asked.
"They're trying," Cassian said.
Maeric's mouth twitched. "Radiants today. Concord tomorrow. They're pulling me double." He rolled his shoulder, winced slightly. "Apparently, surviving one Nightmare makes you everyone's favorite draft choice."
"Radiants need someone who can do math," Cassian said.
"And Sanctum needs someone who isn't afraid to stand between you and a bad idea," Maeric shot back.
The Warden snapped at him to focus.
Maeric raised his shield again.
Cassian watched one more exchange, noting the way Maeric shifted his weight to absorb the blow, how the light around the shield thickened at the exact point of impact.
He liked the economy of it.
Maeric, for all his moral fuss, was learning to be efficient in his own way.
By the time evening settled over the tower, painting the Sanctum's high halls in long shadows, Cassian was back in the dorm.
Orrin was already there, hunched over the small table under the window, muttering doctrine passages under his breath as he copied them onto a slate. Tess lay sprawled on her bed, arm flung over her eyes, bracer ticking as tiny remnant sparks snapped and died.
Lyra sat on her mattress, knees drawn up, her [Echo] Shard in her hand. She watched it warily, as if expecting it to offer unsolicited advice.
"What did it say?" Cassian asked.
"Too much," she said. "Not words. Just… impressions. It's like having a crowd in your skull. I hate it." She paused. "I also kind of want to do it again."
"That's how it gets you," Tess said from the bed. "You get used to the buzz."
Cassian lay on his back and closed his eyes.
He let the memory of the micro-Nightmare rise.
Alley. Rats. The echo of Varin's voice. The feel of the Shard's cold against his palm.
He focused on the moment he'd activated the [Stress] Shard.
Marked it.
In his mind, he replayed the scene.
This time, he slowed it.
The rat's leap stretched, the arc of its body traced in fine detail. He watched his own foot pivot, his weight shift, his sword descend. He saw the precise point where his blade intersected the creature's spine, the tiny stress lines spiderwebbing from the impact.
He could have struck a hair to the left and still killed it. A hair to the right, and the blow would have glanced, leaving it writhing.
He catalogued that margin.
Then he let the scene run again at normal speed.
He didn't know if anyone else could do this—rewind his own experience with such clarity. Maybe other Paths had similar tricks. Maybe the Sanctum would call it a side effect of Echo exposure.
Whatever it was, it was getting easier.
The Loop-Shard in his chest ground softly, as if approving of the extra data. The ember of his Path burned steady.
Pieces were stacking.
Shards. Echoes. Relics. Paths. Fear. Loops.
The Sanctum was giving him tools.
The Shroud had given him purpose, even if that purpose was to be sand in its gears.
He had every intention of using both.
Outside, somewhere in the tower, that dissonant hum started up again—faint, persistent, like someone trying to sing a song that never quite landed on a key.
Cassian opened his eyes.
"Do either of you hear that?" he asked.
Lyra tilted her head. "The awful humming? Yeah. Thought it was pipes. Or a cursed apprentice."
Tess shuddered. "Makes my bracer itch. I hate it."
Cassian stared at the ceiling.
The Engine and the Choir.
Systems and static.
He was in the middle of both now.
And he was starting, very carefully, to learn their songs.