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To No Longer Exist

Maia remained in the healers’ wing and learned that rumours had already taken root. Everyone wanted to know what really happened in the chamber. It wasn’t out of sympathy, not really, but with a careful, clinical curiosity that made her skin prickle. Healers lingered too long by her cot, scribes pretended to be updating records while watching her hands. Even Umbralyn asked their questions, with expressions already trained to accept whatever answer she gave.

What went wrong?

Do the fragments contain power?

Did you let another creature in?

Maia simply answered with the words she had been given. “I pushed ancient fragments too far,” she said evenly. “I thought I could stabilise some kind of power from the Fracture alone. I was wrong.”

The phrasing felt foreign in her mouth. It was bloodless. It was rehearsed. There was no mention of the horror, the reaper, the deliberate delay in tending to her when she was hurt. No mention of a group watching her as she fought, helpless. Just her, her ambition, and her error. “I’m lucky to have survived,” she always ended with.

She was released two days later under strict instruction to avoid fragment and shard exposure, strenuous movement, and unsanctioned inquiry. Master Orell himself had overseen the discharge. He had waited until they were alone.

“I know what you’re thinking, Maia, and the city does not need fear right now,” he had said quietly, not unkindly. “Nor speculation. What occurred in the chamber will be recorded as a power collapse due to overextension.”

Maia had stared at him. “You’re playing with fire,” she said without care for authority. “This is the wrong move. For us. For the people of Eryssan. What if I speak out?”

Orell had met her gaze, expression heavy with something that might once have been conscience. She thought he might let it go.

“Then the Umbralyn council will be forced to reassess everyone involved,” he said. “Including the one whose… interest in you has already raised concerns.”

He didn’t look away as he said it, but something in his jaw worked, as though he’d rehearsed the sentence but had to force it out. It still did not stop him saying it.

Heat flooded her face. Embarrassment, yes, but mostly fury. Because she understood, coldly, that the truth would not save anyone.

It would only decide who died first.

So, she lied. She lied to the healers. She lied to the scribes. She lied to the city. And every time she did, she felt the absence of Caelith more sharply. A shape cut out of the day, exactly his size, that nothing else fit into.

The city felt false when she eventually stepped back into it. As if something fundamental had shifted and no one was saying it aloud. Umbralyn patrols moved openly now, unmasked, chains gone. Their presence pressed against the streets with a heavy, threatening weight.

As soon as she could walk without assistance, she went looking for him.

She checked assignment registries, but there was nothing. Patrol rotations, nothing. Containment deployments. Fracture-response logs. Internal notices.

But Caelith did not exist anymore. Not on paper. Not anywhere they controlled.

Where his name had been on the rotation ledger, someone had scraped the vellum so cleanly that the page was thinner there. She held it to a lamp and the light came through the place he had been.

He wasn’t even listed as reassigned, nor marked inactive. He hadn’t even been announced deceased, thankfully. Instead, it seemed, he had been simply erased. They hadn’t just punished him, they had removed him from the narrative.

***

That evening, she sought Master Orell after sundown in his scriptory, careful not to be seen doing it.

“Where is he?” she asked, walking through the door without preamble.

He looked tired. “Reassigned,” he said smoothly, frowning at the same time. “Again. Somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“That information is restricted, of which I am sure you are most aware.”

“I know he was confined the morning I was injured.”