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“…useless to her without one of ours…”

“…just as we thought…”

“…then the wraith was his doing after all…”

Each phrase felt like a blade carefully slid between her ribs.

To her surprise, Master Orell arrived the following afternoon. She had never expected to feel relief at the sight of him.

“Master Orell,” she sighed.

He stood at the foot of her cot, hands clasped behind his back, his lined face drawn tight with exhaustion rather than cruelty. Relief also flickered briefly across his features when he saw her awake and talking.

“Maia,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”

She almost laughed. Us?

As though he stood on the same side as the people who had watched her bleed through a pane of grey glass and called it observation. As though sanctioning the test and surviving its outcome made him a fellow victim of it, rather than one of its architects.

“You,” she said instead. “You were a part of this?”

His brow furrowed. “Approved further shard assessment, yes. You consented. This was part of your reassignment.”

“To study the shards. With a different partner,” she shot back. “Not to be thrown to slaughter.”

Something unreadable passed behind his eyes. “The Umbralyn have assured me all protocols were followed,” he said carefully. “The outcome, while unfortunate, has yielded clarity.”

He continued, voice carefully measured. “Your actions during the Hollow Wraith incident raised questions. Necessary ones. We now know the shards will answer to a human hand, but not strongly enough to stand against what comes out of the Fracture. Certainly not without one of them assisting you.”

Maia stared at him. “That’s not what happened,” she said hoarsely. “They escalated it. They isolated me. And they waited and watched. They watched me to see exactly how much I could take before there was nothing else to take. I felt them deciding, in real time, how far was far enough.”

Orell hesitated. And in that hesitation, she knew. He didn’t fully believe her. Or worse: he didn’t want to.

“Maia— I, on behalf of the other Elders, am sincerely sorry for the pain that this test caused you. But you must understand what we are up against. In fact, I believed you understood that.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“And that now, the city cannot afford uncertainty,” he said finally. “Nor can it afford another incident like the one that nearly claimed Julen’s life.”

Her chest tightened at the name, fury rising in her. What about her life?

“As of now,” Orell continued, “all shards and fragments will be withdrawn from human circulation. Their use will fall under Umbralyn authority alone. Additionally—”

The ward’s curtains stirred as more figures gathered. Orell turned back but continued.

“—the Umbralyn council has asked for their chains to be struck off. All of them. In case the Fracture must be sealed by force.”

Unchained. All of them.

“And you believe that. You’re giving them everything,” she whispered. “You’re giving them more than power.”

There was something like regret in Orell’s eyes. “I am trying to prevent catastrophe. I thought you, of all people, Maia, would understand that.” He said it plainly, without irony. As if he believed every word of it, that somewhere in his own accounting, what had been done to her balanced fairly against what it might save. “You worked so… closely with your previous Umbralyn. I thought you’d be more pleased.”

“Pleased,” she responded, blankly. Dismayed would have been far more accurate.

As he turned away, Maia understood that the real catastrophe they were trying to prevent was now the one they were walking straight into.

***