The library was quiet in a way that unnerved Lyra. It was not the comforting silence of pages turned and quills scratching but a silence stretched too thin, brittle as old bone. Lanterns cast long shadows across the vaulted ceiling, their flames twitching at the faintest draft.
Lyra sat at one of the reading tables in the hidden chamber, the Codex of the Veil resting open before her. Its ink shifted with a steady rhythm tonight, curling and uncurling as though keeping time with her pulse. Yet another rhythm intruded, faint but persistent — a glow that pulsed from across the table.
Rienne Solas's glass arm rested on the wood, fingers curled slightly, the crystalline facets breathing with light.
Lyra leaned closer, studying it without shame now. She had seen it glow before, but tonight was different. The pulses were stronger, more insistent, and each flicker of radiance seemed to ripple across the Codex's pages.
"Does it always do that?" Lyra asked.
Rienne lifted her gaze from the book, her expression tightening. "Not always. Only when it's near something… alive. Or something it recognizes."
Lyra frowned. "Recognizes?"
Rienne extended the arm slowly, laying the crystalline palm nearer to the Codex. At once, the ink bled outward, glyphs elongating, spirals curling tighter. The glow inside the glass intensified, filling its veins until it seemed as though molten light coursed through a body of ice.
Kael, leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed, straightened. His armor flickered once across his chest, then dimmed, as though in response.
Lyra felt the air tighten. The Codex and the glass were in dialogue.
"You said it was an accident," Lyra murmured, eyes never leaving the arm. "That the Resonator fused this to you. But it doesn't look like an injury."
Rienne pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulder, though it did nothing to hide the arm. Her voice dropped, softer than Lyra had ever heard it.
"It isn't prosthetic, not really. Not anymore."
The light in the arm dimmed, then flared again, as though disagreeing with her hesitation.
Lyra's throat dried. "Then what is it?"
Rienne's jaw clenched. "Living glass. Not from here. It belongs to another layer of reality, a stratum that the Resonator dragged into ours when I… when it failed. It grafted itself to me before the Council could shut the machine down. I should have died, Lyra. The Resonator should have torn me apart. Instead, this—" she lifted the crystalline hand, the facets catching the lamplight like jewels — "chose to bind itself to me."
The words sat heavy in the chamber.
Kael's voice rumbled from the shadows. "You mean you carry another world in your flesh."
Rienne's gaze flickered toward him. "Yes. And I fear it isn't content to remain only in my flesh."
She flexed her fingers, and Lyra noticed how the light inside them no longer simply pulsed — it spread. Faint crystalline threads now crept toward her elbow, veins of pale fire embedded in skin.
"It's changing you," Lyra whispered.
Rienne's lips pressed tight. "Every month it creeps further. At first it was only my hand. Now it has taken the forearm. Sometimes, when I dream, I see through it — places that don't exist here. Towers of glass under a sky of fractured stars. Voices echoing in languages my mouth cannot shape."
The Codex shivered, pages fluttering though no wind stirred. New ink bled across the parchment, letters trembling into place:
"The vessel becomes the bridge."
Lyra shivered. "It's talking about you."
Rienne's shoulders hunched, her breath uneven. "That's what I fear. That I'm no longer myself, but a passage. A doorway. And if I keep working with you, if I keep touching the Codex, I may invite whatever lurks on the other side into this world."
For a long moment, only the lantern hissed.
Lyra wanted to deny it, to insist that Rienne was still who she had always been — brilliant, stubborn, human. But as she looked at the crystalline veins creeping beneath her sleeve, she wondered. Was she watching her companion become something else, one heartbeat at a time?
Kael broke the silence first, his voice like stone cracking. "If this thing is a danger, it must be cut away."
Rienne's head snapped up, eyes blazing. "Do you think I haven't tried? The Council's surgeons burned me with acid, carved with iron, prayed over it with rites I don't believe in. Nothing changed. The glass heals itself faster than flesh. If you cut off my arm, it would only return. And perhaps… spread faster."
Kael's jaw worked, but he said nothing.
Lyra reached across the table before she could stop herself, her hand brushing the back of Rienne's crystalline fingers. The glass was warm — not cold as she expected — and the light inside seemed to pause, as if listening.
"You're still you," Lyra said softly. "The Veil may have touched you, but it hasn't taken you. Not yet."
Rienne stared at her, the fury fading into exhaustion. "Not yet. That's what I live with every morning. That one day, I will wake, and the glass will not stop at my shoulder. That I will speak with a voice that isn't mine."
Lyra's fingers tightened on hers. "Then we'll fight to stop that day. Together."
The Codex stirred again, spilling another line:
"Glass remembers what flesh forgets."
Lyra read it aloud, the words tasting bitter.
Rienne drew her hand back, covering it with the shawl again. "Perhaps it means memory lives inside this arm. That some part of the other reality is preserved here. But if it remembers, then it also waits."
Her eyes glistened. "And I do not know if I am its bearer… or its prisoner."
Kael stepped closer, his scarred face grim. "If you fall to it, Rienne, I will do what must be done. Do not doubt that."
She met his gaze without flinching. "And if I hold it back? If I learn to wield it instead of letting it consume me? Then perhaps the Veil has given us a weapon, not just a wound."
Lyra looked between them, the knight and the scientist, the relic of a kingdom that never was and the woman fused with living glass. She felt the weight of the Codex in her lap, its ink whispering promises and warnings both.
"The Veil is thinning faster than we can stop it," Lyra said finally. "If your arm is truly from another layer, then maybe it's not just a curse. Maybe it's the key. But we have to be careful. We can't let it decide for us."
Rienne's mouth trembled into something almost like a smile. "You sound like an archivist who just agreed to experiment."
Lyra managed a weak laugh. "Archivists don't experiment. We… document mistakes."
Kael looked away, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his mouth. "Then keep your quill sharp, Lyra. We'll need someone to remember what happens when we lose ourselves."
The lantern sputtered again, and the Codex snapped shut of its own accord. Lyra flinched at the sound, as though the book itself had declared the conversation finished.
In the silence that followed, Rienne stood, wrapping the shawl tight, hiding the glow beneath folds of dark fabric. "Tomorrow, I'll show you something. A place I've kept hidden since the Resonator failed. If there are answers about what this arm has become… they'll be there."
Lyra watched her go, the crystalline pulse faint beneath the cloth.
When the door shut and footsteps faded, Kael spoke quietly. "Do you trust her?"
Lyra stared at the Codex, her reflection warping across its dark cover. "I have to. Because if she isn't our ally… then she's already our doom."