The rain began before dawn, fine as silk and near-silent. It slid down the terraces in slow rivulets, carrying fragments of lantern ash and the faint scent of copper. By the time Wenrel woke, the city already felt muted, as if Sunspire itself was holding its breath.
He walked the empty corridors of the eastern hall. Every few steps, he brushed his fingers along the carved sigils in the wall — not to read them, but to remind himself they still held. The wards pulsed faintly, steady but strained.
Elaris joined him at the balcony. She looked tired, her eyes red at the edges, but her voice was steady. "The apprentice confessed more during the night. Kael's network isn't just local. He has sympathizers in the southern courts — nobles, artisans, even some who study under the Veilcraft's minor sects. They think they're following a philosophy. They don't understand what they're building."
Wenrel watched the streets below. The rain caught in the ropes and glimmered like a thousand threads. "Philosophy doesn't bend light," he said quietly.
"Belief does," Elaris replied. "Enough people believing in the wrong cadence, and the city's rhythm shifts. The world listens when conviction hums loud enough."
He didn't answer. She was right, and that frightened him more than Kael's precision ever could.
By midday, Lysara convened the Court. The central chamber glowed dimly; sigils rotated faintly in the air like fragments of forgotten stars. Tavren leaned on his spear, Jorveth adjusted his instruments, and a low hum filled the space — the resonance of a city under strain.
Lysara's tone left no room for softness. "Kael is not the disease. He is the proof of one. Something older is teaching through him — shaping the doctrine that drives these distortions. Elaris's research suggests the tremors extend beyond the city's outer rings. We've traced faint harmonic shifts in the Titan Trees."
At that, the room fell silent. Even the instruments dimmed. The Titan Trees were ancient — older than Sunspire, older than written time. If their resonance wavered, it meant something vast had touched the world's understructure.
Wenrel's pulse quickened. "Could Kael reach that far?"
Lysara met his eyes. "No. But he might have heard something that could."
The meeting ended in quiet urgency. Plans whispered, patrols reassigned, sigils redrawn. Wenrel stayed behind, staring at the fading echo of the Court's hum. Something in it was off — a minor dissonance, almost imperceptible. He followed it through the corridors, down to the old vaults below the hall.
The vault was dark, save for the faint light of suspended threads — archive resonances storing echoes of past events. Wenrel placed his hand against one, and for a heartbeat, felt not memory but attention. Something else was listening from the other side of the veil, its curiosity sharp and cold.
He withdrew his hand quickly. The thread dimmed, but the sense of being observed lingered, like breath on glass.
Later, when night came, Wenrel stood on the northern terrace. The rain had stopped, but the air still tasted of iron. He closed his eyes and reached into the cadence of the city. What he felt was neither chaos nor harmony, but a quiet recalibration — as though the world was rewriting its own rhythm to accommodate something new.
And far above the mist, past the unseen canopy of the Titan Trees, a single thread quivered — thin, bright, impossibly distant. It was not of Sunspire. It was not of Aevum.
Wenrel opened his eyes, realizing he could feel it.
The world had grown larger overnight.