The bells were still tolling when the first Enforcers stepped out of the mist.
Their armor caught the firelight — black glass gleaming, silver trim pulsing faintly with shardlight. Faceless helms turned as one, their movements so sharp and synchronized they almost didn't seem human. Each step echoed like a heartbeat inside a body made of metal and smoke.
Behind them, the air thickened with the scent of oil and burning pitch.
Veyra stood tense beside me, every inch of her a mask — shoulders stiff, face unreadable, hands clenched tight inside her gloves.
Jarek, of course, had no such restraint.
"Perfect," he muttered, half under his breath. "Shiny death puppets. Just what I needed tonight."
The rebels lining the street were the opposite of that cold precision. They were chaos wrapped in flesh — bottles slick with pitch, makeshift blades scavenged from workshops, slings strung with glass and rage.
The air between the two sides vibrated with tension.
The street wasn't a street anymore.
It was a fuse.
And I could feel the spark crawling toward me.
Kael's voice rose above the noise, deep and raw with conviction. "Do you see them?" he shouted, pointing toward the advancing soldiers. "Even now, they come to cage her. To cage us!"
The crowd roared back — a thousand voices burning at once.
Flames swung through the air, torches painting arcs of fire against the night.
The Enforcers lifted their shields in perfect unison. That sound — the click of metal sliding into place — was clean, precise… final.
Then chaos struck.
The first bottle shattered against their front line, splattering fire across their armor.
Screams and steel followed, the rhythm of a battle born in an instant.
Jarek grabbed my wrist. "We should move before they—"
He never finished.
One of the Enforcers broke rank.
His head snapped toward me like a predator catching scent.
"Target sighted," he said. The words came out warped through his helm, a voice of distortion and cold. "Directive: retrieval."
He lunged — fast, silent, lethal.
I didn't think.
I didn't choose.
The shards rose on instinct.
The cobblestones beneath my feet shattered, shards of light and stone lifting into the air, fusing mid-flight into a jagged wall of living glass. The Enforcer's pike struck it dead center — the impact split the night open with a shriek of metal against crystal. Sparks rained like molten rain around us.
Gasps rippled through both sides of the battle.
For one breath — one fragile, electric heartbeat — everything stopped.
Rebels froze. Enforcers paused. Even Jarek went still.
Every eye turned toward me.
The shardlight racing along my arms pulsed brighter, alive with something that was both mine and not mine. The air vibrated. It felt like the entire city had inhaled at once.
Kael's expression shifted — fury melting into awe. That dangerous grin of his spread slow across his face.
"Fight with us, Weaver," he called. "Tear them down."
Veyra's voice snapped like a whip. "Aradia! Control it! Don't let them use you!"
Her words hit, but they didn't sink deep enough to stop the rush.
The boy stirred from where Jarek had hidden him behind the crates. His fevered eyes half-opened, and his voice came out thin, trembling.
"...Fracture…"
That word pulled at me — deep, beneath skin and breath and bone.
The shardlight burned hotter.
It wanted out.
Jarek's grip tightened on my shoulder. "Rade. Don't. You'll bring the whole street down."
But the hum inside me was past listening.
It wasn't just sound anymore. It was alive.
It was mine.
And it wanted to burn.
The hum inside me rose until it became a scream.
The shards burst outward — a cyclone of light and glass tearing through the air. The cobblestones split apart beneath my boots, shards rising like a storm given form. Every breath was electric. Every heartbeat, a command.
The Enforcers reeled as the street itself rebelled against them. Shields slammed together, forming a black wall of steel and shadow. Sparks flared as the shards collided with armor, shrieking like banshees.
Someone shouted my name — Jarek, I think — but it was swallowed by the roar.
The world around me fractured.
The night blurred into flashes — fire, glass, screams, light.
Each pulse from the Vein inside me twisted reality a little further.
Kael's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and hungry.
"Now! Strike! The Weaver chooses!"
His words were a spark on dry tinder.
The rebels surged forward, wild and unstoppable. Blades flashed. Bottles flew. The heat hit like a wave, choking the air with smoke and fury.
I lifted my hands higher, fingers trembling as the shards obeyed. They spun around me in a circle of light, cutting the air with a song sharp enough to bleed. Every motion I made rippled outward — walls forming, spikes rising, the ground itself reshaping beneath their feet.
I could feel it all — the hum in the glass veins under the city, the pulse of every living being caught in the chaos.
The fracture was alive, answering me.
And it was beautiful.
And it was terrifying.
The boy in Jarek's arms stirred again, his faint glow matching mine, pulsing in rhythm — heartbeat for heartbeat. His eyes opened, wide and knowing. He didn't look afraid. He looked like he understood something I didn't.
Jarek was shouting again, voice raw. "Rade! Control it! You're gonna kill everyone if you—"
I couldn't stop.
The shards didn't want to stop.
They sang.
The air filled with their song — a high, crystalline chorus that drowned out the battle's screams. Each note was a cut, each breath a command. The street of glass lived and burned and broke beneath me.
Enforcers stumbled, their perfect formation cracking apart.
The shards pierced through gaps in their armor, exploding in flares of light. One fell. Then another. The air stank of scorched metal and smoke.
Kael's laughter echoed over the din. He was covered in ash and blood, eyes burning like coals. "Look at her! The Weaver fights with us! The city bleeds for her!"
He raised his sword to the sky, and the rebels roared.
"Weaver! Weaver! Weaver!"
Their chant wasn't devotion anymore. It was war.
Their voices shook the air, feeding the storm that had once been a girl.
I turned slowly, my vision pulsing with the same rhythm that shook the ground. The city's veins — those threads of glowing glass running under the cobbles — were awake. They spread outward, branching and pulsing with the same heartbeat as mine.
The fracture wasn't just inside me now. It was everywhere.
Each step I took sent ripples through the ground, walls of light rising and collapsing, shaping and reshaping in rhythm with the crowd's fury.
The shards didn't care who they struck anymore — Enforcer, rebel, wall, torch. They wanted to move. To cut. To create.
To be.
I could barely breathe under the weight of it. My body trembled, but the power refused to fade.
It was ecstasy and terror tangled into one breath.
Somewhere behind me, Veyra was shouting orders, her voice barely audible through the chaos. Her words didn't reach me. They sounded like something from another life.
Because in that moment, the city wasn't just fighting.
It was singing.
And I was its voice.
The storm broke all at once.
The shards hung suspended in the air — frozen in that impossible stillness — their light flickering against the walls, against the faces, against the smoke curling skyward.
Then, slowly, like rain giving up the fight, they began to fall.
Each fragment clinked against the ground with a delicate, haunting sound. Tink. Tink. Tink.
The street that had been alive moments ago now lay shattered — glass and ash and silence woven together. The smell of scorched oil lingered, thick as grief.
My knees nearly gave out. I pressed a hand against the cracked wall beside me, shards still glowing faintly beneath my skin. The hum hadn't left — it had only gone deeper, curling somewhere quiet inside my chest, pulsing like a second heart.
Around me, the rebels stared. Some knelt, as if before a god they didn't understand. Others backed away, eyes wide, terrified.
The Enforcers who still stood were retreating, their dark shapes fading into the smoke.
Kael was the only one who didn't move.
He stood amid the wreckage, sword in hand, light catching on the streak of blood down his cheek. The fire reflected in his eyes made him look almost holy — or damned. I couldn't tell which.
When he finally spoke, his voice was softer, almost reverent.
"You are dangerous," he said. "More than even I imagined."
His words cut through the quiet like a blade.
He took a step closer, the glass crunching beneath his boots. "The Council will come for you now. So will the streets. Everyone will want to claim you — or kill you."
His gaze met mine — unwavering, knowing. "But remember this, Shardweaver… you can't stay between them forever."
He turned and walked into the smoke, vanishing into the chaos he had helped create.
You can't stay between them forever.
The words burned in my chest long after he was gone.
Jarek stumbled toward me, coughing, eyes wide with something between awe and fear. His hands shook as he reached for mine. "Rade… you… you did it."
Did I?
The street around us looked like a dream after the fever breaks — still glowing in places, but drained, hollowed out. The Vein had taken what it wanted and left behind only echoes.
I looked down at my palms. They were cut, bleeding lightly, but even the blood shimmered faintly with light. The shards under my skin shifted, soft glows moving like embers under flesh.
The boy — pale, trembling — was still in Veyra's arms now. His eyes fluttered open. When he saw me, a faint smile ghosted across his face, almost knowing.
He whispered one word, voice fragile as smoke.
"Alive."
Then he went still again, resting.
I turned back toward the ruined street. The smoke had started to clear, revealing what we had made — or unmade. The cobblestones glistened with embedded glass. Fires smoldered. The banners of both sides lay in tatters, melted together into one unrecognizable pattern.
The city felt... different.
Awake.
It was subtle — a low vibration underfoot, a breath beneath the noise. Like the city itself had opened its eyes for the first time and was watching me.
And waiting.
I looked up. The sky above the rooftops was cracked — glowing faintly, veins of molten light spreading further than before. They pulsed once, twice, in rhythm with my heartbeat.
My power hadn't just broken the street.
It had touched the sky.
Jarek squeezed my shoulder, voice low. "What happens now?"
I didn't answer.
Because in that quiet moment, I finally understood.
This wasn't victory. It wasn't even survival.
It was becoming.
The title rang in my head — Shardweaver. Not queen. Not savior. Not ruin.
Something in between.
The Vein throbbed beneath the street again, faint but sure, matching my pulse. The city's rhythm had changed — and it had changed with me.
The chant began again, faintly at first.
Weaver... Weaver... Weaver...
It rippled through the survivors, rising and falling, no longer worship, no longer war — something stranger. A prayer. A warning. A heartbeat.
I tilted my face toward the fractured sky, feeling its light against my skin.
For the first time, I didn't resist the hum.
I let it breathe.
And the city breathed with me.
The world wasn't whole anymore — but maybe it never had been.
The Weaver had awakened.
And the war was only beginning.