Chapter 5: The Shard's Geometry
The Serpent's Scar was not a natural fissure, but a vein of raw, destabilized Aetherium that had cracked the earth millennia ago. It dropped steeply into the beginnings of the Canyonlands, a region where the tectonic plates had been violently shifted by the First Eclipse.
Kael plummeted several dozen feet before he managed to activate a precise, targeted use of the Law of Resistance on his limbs, stiffening them to absorb the impact of the landing. He hit the ash-covered, jagged floor with a teeth-rattling thud, the force shunted away by the fragile Aetheric shield.
He was in total darkness, a silence deeper than the mine, broken only by the ragged, painful sounds of his own breathing. He didn't dare use the Weaver's Aetheric lamp stones—any light was a beacon to the Patternmaster, who was likely injured but not dead, and certainly climbing out of the Scar now.
Kael used his enslaved past instincts to navigate. He felt along the rough, cold walls of the fissure, moving deeper into the complex, branching network of chasms. He was bleeding from multiple lacerations, his skin blistered by the Conflagration Law, and his mind was a terrifyingly calm, but empty, echo chamber of stolen knowledge.
He found a small, hidden alcove—a natural fault line where the stone had fused into a protective arch—and collapsed there.
Survival protocols kicked in. He cleaned his wounds with the little water he had, ate the last of the dried meat, and used strips of his ruined tunic as tight bandages. The internal bleeding from the Compression Law was severe, but his body's Law of Restoration, powered by the core Law of Flesh—the body's own Aetheric pattern—would slowly, painfully heal him.
He was safe, for now, but he was severely weakened. He needed days to recover, and the Crimson Hand would be organizing their search grid within hours.
Kael used the darkness and the relative quiet to perform the most critical task: organizing the terrifying, chaotic mix of Laws he had stolen.
He was a Mistborn, a being whose soul was fractured, and the Eclipsed Shard was a chaotic engine. He had five distinct Laws, each woven into the Void-fracture, each requiring a piece of his identity for fuel:
Law of Time (Regress/Accelerate):Innate to the Shard. Used for high-cost, absolute reality manipulation (Temporal Freeze, Temporal Erosion). The power drain is his very being.
Law of Destabilization (Unmaking):Stolen from Chaos-Loom energy. Used to violently sever an enemy's woven thread. Chaotic, but low soul-cost, as the Law is simple.
Law of Resistance (The Shield):Stolen from Weaver's Journal. Used for defense against physical and Aetheric force. Moderate, continuous soul-cost if maintained.
Law of Impact (Force Amplification):Stolen from Enforcer's attack. Used for physical offense. Low, sharp soul-cost per use.
Law of Unraveling (Reverse Weave):Stolen from Jareth's Binding Pattern. Used to cleanly unmake a complex enemy weave. High, but clean, soul-cost per use.
Law of Chaotic Velocity (Displacement):Stolen from Jareth's Flight Pattern. Used for extreme, temporary bursts of speed/projection. Unpredictable soul-cost.
Kael focused on the architecture of his own soul. He visualized the Void-fracture—the hole in his essence—and saw the Eclipsed Shard as a cold, emerald sun at its center. The stolen Laws were now like different lenses, each focusing the Shard's raw, divine power into a usable function.
He realized the true horror of his condition: Kael Draven was becoming a Patternmaster of his own ruin. He wasn't learning Threadweaving; he was architecting a personalized system of power that was fundamentally anchored in the act of subtraction.
As Kael meditated, the deep silence of the Canyonlands shifted. The air began to vibrate with a low, deep hum. This was not a sound, but a pervasive, powerful sensation—the sound of Aether Threads flowing in massive, uncontrolled volume.
The Canyonlands were a region of immense Aetheric turbulence. Here, the Aether Veil was paper-thin, allowing Kael to perceive the Aether Threads of the world with impossible clarity.
He suddenly saw an entirely new, terrifying reality. The air was not empty; it was a vast, shimmering Loom of interconnected filaments.
He saw the Aether Thread that defined the life of the beetle crawling across the wall. He saw the thick, ancient threads that anchored the basalt walls. He saw the infinite, faint threads extending outward, linking this canyon to the Wastes, to the fortress, and even, sickeningly, to the deep, distant consciousness of Lord Cygnus.
This was the Law of Resonance—the ability to perceive the true structure of the Loom. He hadn't stolen it; he had awakened it. It was a natural consequence of carrying the Shard, which was a fundamental piece of the Loom's origin.
With this new vision, Kael saw his own predicament. Lord Cygnus could not track him by scent or sight, but he could track the Eclipsed Shard's massive Aetheric signature. Every time Kael used a Law, even the internal Law of Resistance, the Shard pulsed, and the pulse traveled along the infinite Aether Threads of the Loom.
I am a beacon in the night.
He had to learn to mute the Shard, or the Patternmaster would find him, not by following a trail, but by following a signal.
Kael followed a narrow, twisting path into a section of the canyon where the rock began to change. The basalt was no longer black; it was shimmering with impossible colors: veins of deep sapphire, pulsing crimson, and startling violet. The air here was electric, thrumming with raw Aether.
He recognized the energy signature from the mine. This area was close to the location of a shattered Shard, long ago.
Then, Kael stopped dead.
Ahead of him, where the canyon wall should have been, reality was behaving incorrectly. A section of the wall, about twenty feet high, was not stone, but a liquid, swirling canvas of deep emerald and impossible gold. It was not a physical barrier; it was a sheer, metaphysical membrane.
This was an Eclipse Realm Gate.
The gate was tied to the Law of the Shard that had originally landed nearby, a Shard Kael did not possess. Kael, carrying the Shard of Time, felt a profound, painful discord with the energy radiating from this gate.
The gate was humming with the Law of Shadow—the law of concealment, memory, and the dark space between moments.
As Kael watched, a figure stepped out of the shimmering gate.
It was not a man, or a monster, but a manifestation of Aether: a tall, slender silhouette woven from pure, undulating shadow. It had no face, only two pinpricks of icy blue light where eyes should be.
The Shadow-figure did not see Kael; it was looking up at the gray sky, its movements slow, deliberate, and ancient. It was a Watcher—a fragment of the Law of Shadow manifesting on the Mortal Plane.
Kael's Eclipsed Shard of Time reacted violently to the presence of the Watcher. The emerald coldness in his chest intensified, and the Law of Time surged outward, creating a small, audible tick-tock sound in the canyon.
The Watcher instantly turned its featureless face toward Kael. It had found the anomaly.
Kael knew he couldn't fight it. The Watcher was a being of pure Law; his attacks would be meaningless unless he could impose the Law of Time directly on its essence—a move that would certainly consume the rest of his identity.
He needed to hide his signature.
He used his Law of Resonance to peer into the Watcher's being. He saw that the Watcher was not truly 'alive'; it was held together by an extremely complex, fluid Law of Dispersion, allowing it to dissipate and reform at will.
Kael focused on the Shard of Time in his soul.
He realized the Shard was a perfect geometric shape in his fractured soul—an octahedron of emerald energy. The stolen Laws were minor facets carved onto the surfaces of the octahedron.
To mute the Shard, he didn't need a new Law. He needed to apply an existing Law to the Shard itself.
He chose the Law of Resistance—the shield.
Kael forced the Law of Resistance, not outward onto his skin or sword, but inward onto the emerald octahedron in his chest.
The result was agony. The Shard violently resisted being contained. It was a fragment of the Sun; it refused to be shielded. Kael felt his entire body seize up, muscles locking, blood vessels nearly bursting.
But the Law of Resistance, simple and absolute, slowly began to impose itself. The intense, radiating Aetheric pulse of the Shard was dampened, contained, resisted.
The Watcher, which was advancing slowly, suddenly paused. Its icy blue eyes flickered, unable to track the muted signature.
Kael maintained the agonizing shield on the Shard. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe properly. But he was hidden.
The Watcher searched for a minute, its silhouette weaving through the shimmering Aether. Unable to find the precise signature of the Shard, and sensing the intense turbulence of the Canyonlands Aether, it eventually dissolved back into the shimmering emerald/gold membrane of the Eclipse Realm Gate.
Kael held the shield for another five minutes after the Watcher vanished, ensuring his signature was completely cooled.
When he finally released the Law of Resistance from the Shard, he fell forward, gasping for air, slick with cold sweat. The cost was paid.
The Shard had consumed the Aether Thread governing his Law of Fear.
Kael Draven was now physically capable of understanding danger, but the primal, self-preserving panic that forces a creature to flee was gone. He could calculate risk, but he could no longer feel terror.
He had become the perfect weapon: fearless, unburdened by empathy, devoid of memory, and powered by a divine engine of consumption.
He picked up the journal, the ultimate prize. He needed to learn how to walk the Loom without alerting the gods, and the Patternmaster's journal might hold the key.
He had to reach the deepest, most stable part of the Canyonlands, where the Aether was strongest—a place rumored to be the site of an ancient, abandoned city where the true secrets of Threadweaving were held.