Night Descent
Festival music bled through the flagstones, drums and chain-song from the Chain Rite above. Down here, the air was cooler, the halls half-lit.
Khalen moved like he knew the gaps. A flick of heat at each corner, just enough to turn a corridor stuffy so the posted Archivist muttered, tugged his collar, and stepped back inside. Path cleared. No glance over his shoulder.
Elyas kept to the shadow of the columns, barefoot for silence. He watched Khalen test wards with the back of his hand, watch for the shimmer, then skirt them clean. Not sloppy. Not lucky. Practiced.
The stairs bent into the old levels. At the bottom sat the door.
Not a door, an absence shaped like one. Two stories tall, carved straight into bedrock, edges fused smooth by heat long dead. No hinges. No seam. Just a slab with a single breathmark the size of a palm, dark as a closed eye.
Khalen stood there a beat, palm hovering, drawn the way iron is drawn.
"Careful," Elyas said, finally stepping out. "She bites."
Khalen didn't start, but his jaw clicked once. He took his hand back. "How long have you been behind me?"
"Long enough to see you bake half the night watch like a soup," Elyas said, easy. "You going to tell me why you always end up here?"
Khalen's eyes didn't leave the stone. "Habit."
Footsteps clattered on the stair above, two, maybe three. Elyas flicked a look back up the well and dropped his voice. "Look, flameboy. Either I'm with you to the end of this or we both get hauled for trespass. Your call."
Khalen weighed it, one heartbeat, two. "Stay close. Don't touch anything. If I say we run, we run."
Elyas's grin flashed quick. "See? We're already communicating."
They slipped off the landing into the side passage while the patrol boots echoed past the Not-Door and faded.
Khalen glanced back once. The breathmark on the slab looked dull and cold.
He exhaled like it cost him to turn away.
**
The side passage dead-ended at metal, old maintenance plating riveted over stone, seams black with age.
"End of the line?" Elyas murmured.
Khalen shook his head. He brought up his right hand, thumb and forefinger brightening until the air wavered. He set them to the seam and dragged slow. Metal sizzled, softened, parted.
Elyas blinked. He didn't know any fifth-years who could cut like that. He'd never say it out loud, but the thought was there: okay then.
They shouldered through and dropped into a crawlspace that opened into a vein of glittering rock, like standing inside a cracked geode. Breath flecks hung in the air like dust motes that refused to settle. The tunnel curved, split, rejoined itself like a looped script.
Khalen crouched, checking for ward lines. "These run under the whole foundation. Old service veins. Archivists sealed most of them, but sealing a maze isn't the same as ending it. This spot was plated, not warded."
Elyas brushed a knuckle along the wall; tiny crystals chimed. "And the big slab upstairs?"
"The only place no tunnel touches," Khalen said. "Every map ends there. Every vein bends away before the last ten paces, like the rock learned a rule we didn't."
He started forward, voice low, like speaking too loud might wake the stone. "Theories change with the professor. Some say it's the Anchor, the lift array that lets Caer' Syllen ride the Breath-winds. Others say Root-Lock, a failsafe that drops us if the wards fail. Harlen thinks it's a Heart-Engine, first light-sink ever built, still humming. My father said it's nothing."
Elyas snorted. "You don't come down here for nothing."
Khalen didn't answer. Ahead, the tunnel narrowed to a throat of glassy stone. A faint tremor ran through it, so quiet Elyas thought he'd imagined it, like a bell heard through a pillow.
He caught up, shoulder to shoulder now. "So what are we actually looking for?"
Khalen tilted his head, listening to something Elyas couldn't hear. "I'll know when we're closer."
They moved on, breathlight dust spinning in their wake. Behind them, the patch of melted metal cooled to a dull, innocent grey.
**
The crescent crack blinked once and split with a wet glass sigh.
"Khalen—" Elyas started.
"Back." Khalen swung an arm across his chest as the seam spat cold dust and glittering shards.
Something slipped out, a palm-sized prism, blue-violet and humming, light folding inside itself like a heartbeat. It jittered, then zipped a fast loop around Khalen's head.
"Hey—hey." He flinched. The thing skimmed his shoulder, buzzed his ear, chimed once like a tiny bell. It nosed the heat in his palm, pleased.
Elyas stared. "Is that… a Breathling?"
"Coreborn," Khalen said, eyes hard. "Small doesn't mean safe."
The prism pivoted, finally clocking Elyas. It drifted closer, circling him slow. Elyas held still without meaning to. Inhale, brighter. Exhale, dim. It matched him like it had been waiting for a rhythm to steal.
"You've got to be kidding me," Khalen muttered. "It's syncing."
Elyas kept his hands up. "Hi. We, uh… didn't mean to blow up your bedroom."
The prism chirped, glass-sweet, and did a quick happy orbit around him, clipping Khalen's scorched coin on the floor and pinging off it unmarked.
"Great," Elyas breathed. "Indestructible pixie."
Above, a ward-bell quivered. Voices bled down the main tunnel.
"Archivists," Khalen said. "We're on a clock."
He didn't wait for agreement. He pinched the warm seam between forefinger and thumb, breathed heat into the edges, and skin-welded the crescent shut in three practiced sweeps. Stone glassed over. From a glance, it would read as bad bedrock.
Elyas blinked. "You do this a lot?"
"Enough." Khalen jerked his chin. "Move."
They slid into the side crawl. The prism followed, too bright.
"Shh," Elyas whispered, feeling stupid, and tapped a slow rhythm on his chest. The shard dimmed, obedient, hovering at his collarbone like a living brooch.
Lantern light combed past the tunnel mouth. A boot paused. "Feel that heat?"
"Eat dinner next time," another voice grunted. Footsteps faded.
Khalen let out air. "You led it."
"Didn't try to." Elyas glanced down at the shard tucked under his collar. "It led me."
The prism did a smug little figure-eight.
Khalen's mouth twitched. "Don't name it."
"Wasn't going to." Beat. "Yet."
"Good." He checked the seal once, quick. "This holds a day. We come back with rope, light, and an excuse."
The prism butted Elyas's sternum, three soft taps, like it understood schedule. Elyas set his palm there and breathed slow. The shard fell into step with him, a small heartbeat against his own.
"Let's go," Khalen said.
They ghosted back through the geode vein, dust soft under their boots. Elyas didn't look at Khalen when he murmured, "Thanks for not roasting it."
"You were in the splash radius."
"Liar."
A beat. "Maybe."
The ward-bell above stilled. The city kept sleeping over its secrets. Under Elyas's shirt, the prism kept time, bright when he forgot to be afraid, dim when he listened, learning how to be quiet in a loud world.
**
Breach Night
They came up out of the crawl into the south cloister, where festival lanterns still burned and paper chains lay trampled like shed skins. Ward-bells trembled somewhere high in the ribs of Caer' Syllen, two quick notes, then a third that didn't know if it should happen.
"Did we—?" Elyas started.
Khalen shook his head once. "Different breach."
The floor buckled.
Stone groaned; a slab heaved; dust spat. Something shouldered out of the flagstones, hunched, slate-skinned, plates grinding past each other like lids. A sideways mouth opened where no mouth should be. Not a true Breathling. A ward-starved leftover.
The cloister broke into motion. Students vaulted benches. Paper chains tore into sparks.
Archivist Karu, the languages tutor, stepped in front of two girls, ink strips snapping into light. "Back!"
The thing swatted him like a curtain. Karu hit a column, slid out of the lantern glow.
"Liren!" Ayame's voice cut through the noise.
She yanked Liren down behind a table. A stone arm scythed the air, the table split clean in two.
Elyas moved.
No plan. A line. He shouldered through bodies, lungs finding the prism's quiet rhythm at his collarbone.
"Khalen!" he threw back.
Khalen didn't answer yet. He was reading breathmarks under the creature's feet, counting distances, how much heat he could lay without turning the cloister into a kiln. He hated the pause. He kept it. Heat bit at his own channels just from thinking too hard about opening them.
The prism heard Elyas first.
It slipped from his collar like a dropped star, sang once, high, eager, and streaked at the slate face. Ping. Chips flew. No mark on the shard.
"Here," Elyas said through his teeth. The prism curled back, pulsing with his Breath.
He pointed. "Go."
It went, not straight, but a neat curve under a swinging arm to smack the knuckle seam. Ping. Second joint, ping. Third, harder. The blow went wide; shards hissed over tile instead of skulls.
"Left knee," Khalen called, voice flat now. Decision made. "Where the plates gap."
Elyas jabbed. The shard dove. Ping-ping. PING. Hairline crack.
Khalen slid heat through the floor in a thin ribbon. Breathmarks flared slick under the creature's heel. The stone answered back up his shins like hot wire; the smell of scorched limestone rose. He gritted, took the bite. It stepped, skidded, caught itself on a pillar with a teeth-aching scrape.
Ayame hauled Liren toward the stair. A student lunged with a ward-stick; the backhand erased light and sent him tumbling.
Elyas didn't think, he cut across the beast's path and yelled, "Hey! Over here!"
It turned.
He threw his hand like he was flicking a coin. The shard shot past his ear, hammered the soft seam of the jaw. Ping. The head cocked. Ping again. Something hummed off-note inside the plates.
"Khalen—now!"
Khalen's heat line flared from amber to white. The world narrowed; iron bled into his mouth. A thin nosebleed ticked warm over his lip as he forced more power than he should. Breathmarks popped, small detonations to unseat, not kill. The leg buckled. The thing dropped to one knee, landslide caught halfway. His fingers trembled and wouldn't stop.
Elyas dragged Liren the last steps; Ayame shoved from the other side. The shard spun around them in tight figure-eights, batting debris out of the air. Bell-notes. Precise. Furious.
"Keep talking to it," Khalen said, stepping in. His voice had a rasp now; he was riding the edge.
"I'm not—" Elyas started, then realized he was. "Left. Drop. Cut."
He lifted both hands, wrists loose, fingers scribing air. The shard obeyed like it ran on strings only he could see. Tap, ankle plate. Ping, elbow seam. Whip-curve at the knee. Each strike opened a seam; each seam gave Khalen a place to pour silent fire.
The construct staggered, wrong-legged, furious. It lurched for Ayame and Liren.
Elyas snapped the tempo, sharp-sharp-draw. The shard became a comet on a leash, carving a clean marionette pattern across its chest. Cracks spidered. Khalen flooded the widest with heat; the line went red, then black. Skin at the base of his thumbs blistered under the push; he bit down on the sound and kept his hands up.
The backhand came blind and wild.
Khalen stepped into it, two palms out, and burned the air itself. Heat without flame; a hard wall. The blow hit, lost shape, collapsed to sand. The impact drove him a half-step back anyway; white floated at the edges of his sight. He blinked it clear.
"Hold still," Ayame told Karu, already kneeling. Her hands were steady, Breath steadier. "Ribs two, three—maybe four." She ran a clean thread of power along the bruised ladder, cooling what shouldn't burn, knitting what would tear. Karu hissed a curse in three tongues, then, softer: "—thank you."
The creature slammed both hands into the floor like a tantruming child and sank through its own broken gate. Plates whispered shut. Ward-bells quivered, then steadied.
Silence arrived in pieces.
Elyas's hands were on Liren's shoulders before he noticed. "You okay?"
She nodded too fast. "Think so."
Ayame stroked Karu's sternum once, checking the knit. "Breath smooth. Shallow for a day."
Karu grunted, pale but present. "I've been ordered worse."
Elyas realized he was still touching Liren; he let go like it burned. "You're safe," he said, suddenly seventeen again.
She looked at him, new, measuring. "You went straight in."
"Bad plan," he said, and grinned because he had to.
The shard peeked from his collar, caught the grin, and, unprompted, danced. A small, ridiculous flourish: spiral, bow, still. Elyas rolled one wrist; it answered with a quiet loop, like both were testing how fine the thread between them could be.
Khalen's gaze ticked from blue glow to Elyas's hands and back. He didn't comment. He wiped the smear of blood from under his nose with the heel of a blistered palm and kept his hand turned so no one would see. The tremor in his fingers hadn't quit. Breath-debt hooked behind his eyes, dull and mean.
Lanterns relit. Laughter too loud. Crying for the same reason.
Ayame squeezed Liren's fingers. "We're going. Now."
Elyas nodded. The shard tucked warm under his collarbone, pulse matched to his.
Khalen came last, sealing thin lines of heat across the worst cracks, no flourish, just habit. Each touch drew a flinch he refused to show; his palms were raw crescents where the heat-wall had kissed skin. The city stitched itself behind them, pretending it hadn't watched one of its bones try to stand.
Above, the big door that never opened stayed closed.
But warmer than it had been.
Interlude What Doesn't Close Around Your Hand
After the cloister emptied, Khalen stood in the stair's shadow and let his palms speak. Blistered half-moons throbbed where the heat-wall had kissed skin. He turned a spent copper cap with his thumb, feeling the little warble the metal kept from when it sang.
Out in the lantern wash, Elyas laughed, too loud, the way the living do, while the blue shard peeked from his collar and circled his ear like it owned the orbit. They moved together without thinking. Wrist, light. Breath, pulse. A dance.
Jealousy came small and bright and mean. It sat under Khalen's ribs and tried on a few words: mine, first, deserved.
Weeks of mapping veins. Nights counting wardlines. Coins ground. Hands burned. And in the end, the stone opened, for him.
He let the thought live one Breath.
Then he set it down.
His father's voice arrived the way old prayers do, half memory, half muscle:
If a thing won't close around your hand after honest work, boy, it isn't your work. Bless the one it fits. Find the next task that needs you.
Another of the quiet sayings followed:
Knots hold where they belong. Tug the thread that isn't yours and you fray the whole cloth.
Maybe the shard would have bucked under him. Maybe he'd have forced the beat and lost it, and they'd be scraping students off tile. Elyas led it like music. Naming that didn't make Khalen smaller.
He slid the coin into his pocket. The dull hook of Breath-debt eased behind his eyes.
Across the way, Ayame checked Liren's hands, voice low and steady. Elyas hovered, trying not to look like he was hovering. Khalen's mouth tugged, not quite a smile.
Maybe that was the door that opened instead, the one into something like a crew. Trust the person the world chose for the tool you wanted.
He flexed his raw fingers. The sting answered. Good. He preferred costs he could name.
And if, before sleep, Ayame wrapped these burns in cool salve and steadied them with that sure touch, well, that would be prize enough for tonight.
There would be other doors.
--------------------
History of Religion Lecture – Professor Harlen
Setting: Caer' Syllen, The Concord Forum – Late Second Term - 2nd Year
-----
The Concord Forum always felt awake, even when the students weren't.
Light filtered through the stained crystal overhead and broke into drifting bands of amber and aquamarine across the stepped cushions. Scrolls fluttered in soft currents from the open-air dome. Ink pots clicked as if they were nervous, too. A few first-years down front were still trying to look like they belonged in a place built to make you feel small.
Khalen sat mid-row where he could see the dais and the exits. Old habit, quiet as breathing. His palms rested flat on his knees, steady, as if the stone under him was something he had to negotiate with.
Elyas lounged beside him like the Forum had been built for his posture. Arms crossed, ankle hooked over knee, a half-smirk that said he understood the game and was choosing not to play too hard.
Then Professor Harlen stepped into the circle and the room did what it always did.
It went still.
Harlen moved with a deliberate pace that suggested age, but his eyes stayed sharp, bright with the particular mischief of a man who liked being underestimated. His robes were layered forest green and dusk-grey; a thin thread of Breath-woven gold cinched his beard in a knot that looked intentionally careless.
He didn't raise his voice.
He didn't need to.
"History," he said, and the word landed clean, "isn't written by victors. It's rewritten by survivors, Breath by battered Breath."
A few students shifted, the way you do when someone pins you without touching you.
Harlen let the silence take one more step, then lifted his hand. Behind him, an illusion assembled itself: a flame hovering in the cradle of a translucent palm, woven light and living heat. It pulsed as if it had a heartbeat; the glow made the crystalglass above them look colder by comparison.
"Today we start with the two great myths that shape our world," he said. "And I do mean myths, not to insult your grandmothers' prayers, but to remind you that all power begins as story."
The flame brightened.
"The Church of the Oath teaches that the Oath Maker bound Breath, a wild force of life and untamed potential, to the Core. Stability. Civilization. Magic. Order."
The illusion shifted, threads of light tightening around the flame like a loom.
"Every oath you take, marriage, healing, vengeance, kingship, adds a strand. The Oath Maker strengthens the weave."
Elyas leaned toward Khalen, mouth tucked behind his hand like they were still children and this was still safe.
"Litany of Threads," he murmured. "Line for line. Five embers says he slips into verse before the bell."
Khalen didn't look at him, but one corner of his mouth moved, barely.
Harlen's gaze flicked across the Forum, as if he'd heard anyway. With a small motion of his sleeve, the illusion cracked. The flame split with a sound that wasn't real but still made a few students flinch, and the shape that replaced it was a jagged ring; shadow-lines crawled across the surface like ink trying to remember its first sentence.
"Now," Harlen said, softer, "the Order of the Broken Path calls the Oath Maker a deceiver. A parasite."
The ring darkened, then pulsed once, wrong and hungry.
"They say Breath was not tamed; it was stolen. They say her final scream birthed what we call Breathlings. Not curses. Children."
That word, children, took the air out of the room for a beat.
Khalen felt it in his chest first, a low hum under the ribs, like something old had twitched in recognition and didn't like being noticed. He kept his face still. He didn't give the room anything to read.
Harlen stepped down from the dais into the centre ring, where every student could see him without the illusion doing the work for him.
"So," he said, and the syllable almost smiled, "who is right?"
He let them sit in it.
"The Church, binding you with temples and tapestries of order?"
"Or the Order, whispering freedom from all bonds in places the world pretends do not exist?"
A student raised a hand, too quickly, like panic dressed as confidence.
"Professor, what if both are wrong?"
Harlen looked at them for a long moment; not unkind, but not comforting either.
"Excellent," he said. "Just remember this, doubt isn't the same as clarity."
The illusion above them changed again, unfurling into a map of glowing lines that traced across a darkened world like veins. Junctions flared with symbols: temples, shrines, cracked altars, shattered circles. Each bright point looked too deliberate to be coincidence.
"Religion here isn't merely belief," Harlen said. "It is infrastructure. Wards. Governance. Inheritance. Even the breathmarks in your homes respond to the rituals your parents insist are 'just tradition.'"
Elyas's slate scratched quietly. Khalen caught the motion without turning his head; Elyas wrote fast when he was pretending not to care.
Harlen's voice lowered, almost conversational now, which made it worse.
"So ask yourselves not what is true. Ask what each truth requires of you."
The map dimmed until only two paths remained, one tightening into a chain of light, one breaking into scattered, sharp fragments.
"The Oath Maker demands service."
"The Whisperer offers knowledge."
"Both change you."
He tapped the air once and a single phrase hung above them in silver Breathlight, too clean to feel like a projection and too familiar to feel like invention.
"What is freedom worth, and to whom must it be paid?"
The Forum stayed quiet; even the ink pots stopped clicking.
Then the bell chimed, low and patient, like a reminder rather than a mercy.
Harlen gathered his scrolls as if he hadn't just put a knife on the table.
Only then did he glance toward the back rows.
"Mr. Rasheen. Mr. Elyas."
Khalen's attention snapped a fraction tighter, not outward, inward, the way it did when his name was said in a room full of people.
Harlen's mouth twitched.
"I expect a spirited debate in next week's reflection. Try not to bleed on the paper. The Archivists complain."
Elyas grinned and slapped Khalen's shoulder, light enough to look friendly, firm enough to be real.
"Guess we're partnered now, flameborn."
Khalen looked at the silver phrase still hovering above the Forum, then down at his own hands.
"Guess so," he said, quiet, and for once, not reluctant.
And the strange part was, he didn't mind.
**