The figure did not move after asking her question. She stood with the light-green staff planted in the cracked stone. Its base glowed with a fierce violet light that seemed to mark a second heartbeat.
Kael kept his jaw set and his breathing shallow. Giving his name might provide leverage, or it might earn him a death sentence. He studied the staff's intricate metalwork through the thinning fog. A sharp throb struck behind his temples, the familiar pressure of Marcus Reed's bleeding memories.
A vision surfaced: a white-haired figure with a glowing staff standing among luminous vines. The light had been violet, and white hair showed beneath her hood. This entity knew the man whose body he inhabited.
"Your sigil," Taryn murmured behind him. "I know that spiral pattern."
The figure's gaze moved from the blue rune in Kael's palm to Taryn's face. It settled on the red sigil glowing at the base of the alchemist's neck.
"Lysara," Taryn whispered.
The name sank into the ruin like a stone into still water. Kael remembered Taryn telling him that she and Lysara had watched him fall into the Sea of Frozen Voices.
Lysara went still. Two slender, black hands pushed back the hood.
Her face matched Taryn's description. Her skin shone like moonlit waves, and short white hair framed her features. A spiral sigil marked her forearm. She stared at Taryn in raw shock.
"Taryn!" Lysara called. She raised the staff a fraction. "What are you doing on the Shattered Threshold? You should be on the upper floors."
Shattered Threshold. Another place to investigate.
"What does she mean by the Shattered Threshold?" Kael rasped, feigning bewilderment.
Lysara leaned toward Taryn. "Who is this?"
Taryn bit her lip. Pity touched her face. "That's Floor One, the Spire's base."
Kael stared at the ground. Floor One pressed on him with the weight of a clue. The name was either a location or a warning; missing its meaning could get them killed. Memories of past failures stirred, and the name found every old fracture in him.
Taryn faced Lysara without lowering her guard. "Why are you here?"
Lysara met her gaze. Her staff gave off a soft glow. "I could ask you the same. And who is this?"
"Can't you recognize him by his face?"
Lysara examined Kael for familiarity and found none. Her attention dropped to his shattering-sigil. She released the staff, covered her mouth as her palms shook, and reached for Kael's hand.
"It can't be," she said. Her fingers touched the edge of the mark. "How is Marcus Reed alive?"
Kael studied her, and more of Marcus Reed's fractured memories returned.
"Marcus, meet Lysara," Taryn said. She stepped between them, but her hands shook. "She's a Rift-Warden, a protector from Ecliptis."
The floor remained quiet except for the distant howls of Shadowborn Hounds.
Kael frowned. Rift-Warden belonged to a history he did not know. Ecliptis. Another place to investigate.
Lysara retrieved her staff from the crumbled stone. "Taryn, how is Marcus alive? We both saw him fall on Floor Fifty."
Taryn shrugged, confusion crossing her face. "I found him surrounded by dead Shadowborn Hounds. I nearly blasted him with a vial. He had no allies."
Lysara stepped closer and studied Kael with deliberate care. "Your stance is wrong."
Kael kept his expression neutral. "What do you mean?"
"You always lead with your left shoulder. Now you favor the right. When you drew the daggers, you corrected yourself by instinct. Did the fall disrupt your nervous system?"
Kael wiped his brow and tightened his grip on a dagger. "It's the memory loss. Perhaps the Spire altered me."
Taryn shifted her attention to Lysara. "You may be onto something, Marcus."
"Do you remember the lore?" Taryn asked.
Kael let confusion cross his face.
"In Aetheris, climbers who die are said to return with their memories stripped away," Taryn explained.
"Meaning?" Lysara asked.
The lore held that dead climbers could return as eerie beings. Some believed the Shadowborn Hounds were among those forms, along with things far worse. Marcus might have surrendered, then been returned by a mysterious force or higher power.
Kael listened. The Shadowborn Hounds he had defeated were once human, lives reduced to hunting shapes. What kind of power created that fate?
Lysara considered Taryn's theory and looked back at him.
The gray fog thickened until left and right lost meaning. They were trapped. Cracks beneath the ruined plaza glowed softly, and the hounds' cries drew nearer.
They moved past toppled statues of robed figures. Their once-majestic forms were now a procession of broken stone. Kael studied them and wondered what calamity had brought them down.
"The fog is moving," Taryn said.
She snapped a swirling vial from her leather bandolier. The gray shroud crept closer with deliberate purpose, circling the rift-glow flickering through the plaza's cracks. Shadows shifted inside it.
Dozens of familiar ember-eyes opened in the murk. One, two, three… six points burned through the fog while claws scraped the ruined stone. Their only other light came from the sigils on the three climbers: blue, red, and violet.
Lysara raised her staff. Violet light gathered along its length. Taryn pulled three vials from her pouch, each filled with a different alchemical color. Their glass struck together in a frantic chime.
Kael kept his face neutral while his hands shook. He drew the twin runic daggers. The blades slid free with a metallic hiss. Their cool weight settled into his palms, and their runes caught the dim light.
Taryn's warning returned as the ember-eyes multiplied. Climbers who died became Shadowborn Hounds.
Lysara watched him, searching for traces of Marcus Reed. Taryn tapped his shoulder, jolting him from the thought.
He glanced at the two women beside him. The possibility that he was not Marcus Reed had become a certainty he could not afford to reveal. More ember-eyes surfaced until the fog became a field of burning points.