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Selinne’s hand found her arm, but her grip was firmer than before. “He knows. He’ll be careful,” she said softly, but her voice carried a sharp edge. “Just… whatever happens, Maia, don’t underestimate what’s going on down there. You wouldn’t forgive yourself if you did.”

Maia shook her head, heat rising to her cheeks. “Careful doesn’t fix it,” she whispered. “He shouldn’t be there like that. Something is seriously wrong, I can feel it.”

Selinne’s expression softened. “Then all you can do is wait. Watch. Protect what you can.”

Maia let out a sigh. But it did little to ease the tension coiling in her chest. She glanced toward the lower corridors, toward the heavy footsteps. Her fists curled at her sides, nails pressing into palms. She imagined him somewhere in the dark, carrying something she couldn’t reach, that someone - someone cruel - was testing him. She would find a way to get to him. Somehow.

The Fracture pulsed beneath the city, restless and patient. And somewhere above it, Maia understood now, so was someone else - watching, waiting to see exactly how much she’d give away, and to whom.

27

Under their Observation

Reassignment did not mean solitude.

She could feel Nuada behind her at every movement. In fact, she’d spent more hours with him alone than she ever had with Caelith in a single stretch.

She continued her study in the lower tiers, closer to the ruins and out of plain sight. They turned off the main corridor into a narrower passage, the air cooler and quieter. The markings on the walls here seemed different, as if coded and not meant for general access.

Maia slowed, conscious of the last time she’d ended up here. “This isn’t part of the standard route.”

“It is today,” Nuada replied, as he keyed the door without further explanation.

Inside, the room was stark and deliberate. Fragments rested on individual stands across the chamber, each one isolated within a thin field of containment. Some were no larger than a shard of glass; others twisted in ways that made the eye hesitate, as if they refused to settle into a single shape.

Maia stopped in her tracks. These hadn’t been processed yet. They were fresh from the Fracture.

She stepped closer, stopping just short of the nearest fragment, her gaze sharpening as she took in the subtle distortions around it.

“These aren’t ready, Nuada,” she said quietly. “What exactly are we meant to do with them?”

“You are meant to read them, Scribe. Have you forgotten your role here?”

“Then how am I meant to read them when they’re—” she paused, “—still deciding what they are?”

“Do not touch,” Nuada said, watching her too closely.

“I don’t need to,” she quipped.

Even at a distance, she could feel it: the uneven pressure each fragment carried. They were alive in a way the catalogued pieces never were, an eerie brightness that was hard to look away from.

“You have reviewed the sector parameters,” Nuada said after a moment. “Observation only.”

Maia glanced at him. “Then why bring me here?”

He paused. “To see whether your… sensitivity has use beyond controlled environments.”

“Right. And if it does?”

“Then you will be placed where that use is required.”

Something in his tone made her feel uneasy, but she decided it wasn’t the right setting for further questions. She turned back to the fragments, forcing herself to focus.

“They’re unstable,” she said after a moment. “They’re not like the others. The pressure isn’t dispersing, it’s folding in on itself.”

Nuada watched her carefully. “Go on.”

“They haven’t settled into a fixed state yet. If you try to catalogue them now, you’ll record something that could just change in time.”