The ice chamber didn't just feel cold; it felt heavy, as if the air itself were weighted with the gravity of a thousand years of grief. It was a suffocating atmosphere that made every inhalation feel like swallowing shards of glass. The black frost continued to crawl up the entrance, sealing the jagged edges of the tunnel with a crystalline finality until the only light remaining was the sickly violet glow of the memory-pool and the guttering, frantic amber of Severin's Crownfire.
Marienne stood by the silver water, her fingers still dancing through the glowing threads. Her eyes remained fixed on Severin, but the expression on her face was a terrifying mask of neutrality. She wasn't Marienne the scout anymore; she was a vessel being filled with a tide of history that was too large for a single soul to contain. Her skin was pulled taut over her cheekbones, and a faint, violet luminescence was beginning to leak from her tear ducts, staining her face like ethereal bruises.
"You want to know about the brother you lost," Marienne, or the voice of the First Anchor, intoned. The sound was layered, a chorus of voices ranging from the whispers of children to the gravelly bass of the elderly. "But to understand the branch, you must look at the root. A King does not trade a name for nothing, Severin of Solis. There is no light without a shadow to cast it."
Before Severin could respond, Marienne's hand plunged into the pool. She didn't pull out a thread; she rippled the surface. The silver water shimmered, and suddenly, the chamber didn't just hold the group; it projected a world around them, bleeding through the ice walls like a stain on silk.
The walls of the cavern became translucent, showing a scene from twenty years ago. It was the Royal Solarium in the heart of the capital. The sun was shining, not the sickly, soot-filtered sun of the present, but a brilliant, gold-white orb that made the marble floors gleam with the promise of an eternal summer. It was a vision of a kingdom that still breathed, a time before the High Pass had become a graveyard.
A younger version of the King, Severin's father, stood by a gilded cradle. He looked strong, his beard still dark and his posture unbent, but his hands were shaking as they rested on the mahogany rail. Beside him stood a figure draped in the heavy, slate-gray robes of the Veiled Eye, its face obscured by a mask of polished obsidian.
"The lineage is failing," the gray figure whispered, the voice echoing in the ice chamber with a chilling clarity. "The Crownfire is a parasite, Your Majesty. It eats the life of the land to sustain the heat of the King. It is the sun that burns the world to keep itself bright. If you do not feed it, the sun will go out, and the High Pass will freeze every hearth in the kingdom. Solis will become a tomb of ice before the winter is out."
The King looked down at the cradle. Inside were two infants, wrapped in silks of crimson and gold. One burned with a faint, steady gold, a quiet ember of a child. The other, the first-born, glowed with a violent, uncontrollable white light that seemed to agitate the very air around him.
"What is the price?" the King asked, his voice cracking like dry timber.
"One must stay to rule," the Eye replied, the voice devoid of pity. "The other must be the Anchor. He will be unspun. His name, his history, and his soul will be fed into the mountain to ground the Crownfire's debt. He will be the fuel that keeps the sun alive for another generation. One son for a kingdom's light. It is a simple equation of survival."
The King's face contorted in an agony that Severin had never seen on the cold, distant monarch he knew. The man who had raised Severin was a statue of ice; this man was a father being torn apart. He reached out, his hand hovering over the first-born—Valerius, whose tiny hand reached up to grab at the light.
"I cannot," the King whispered, a sob breaking through his royal composure.
"Then the kingdom dies," the Eye said, turning to leave. "The boy will not be dead. He will be... elsewhere. A secret kept by the stone. A ghost that keeps the fires burning."
The vision shifted violently. The beautiful Solarium dissolved into a darker, more claustrophobic room, the very chamber they were standing in now. They saw the High Priest of the Eye holding a dark glass chisel. They saw the moment the name Valerius was carved away from the world's memory, the infant's cry being swallowed by the violet glow of the pool. The air in the chamber grew cold, the scent of ozone and burnt hair filling the group's nostrils as they watched the first "unweaving."
Severin watched, his face as pale as the ice. He saw his father turn away as the firstborn infant was carried into the dark by the masked men. He saw the "ledger" being signed in blood and soot on a scroll of human skin.
"He wasn't erased because he was a threat," Severin whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow to the gut. He stumbled back, his hand catching on a pillar of ice to keep from collapsing. "He was erased because he was the payment. My father sold my brother to keep the fire in my veins. My whole life is a lie built on a debt I never asked for."
Aelindra stepped forward, her hand reaching out toward the shimmering, fading image of the infants. Her eyes were wide with a mixture of horror and a terrible, blooming understanding. "They didn't just hide him, Severin. They used him as a battery for the kingdom's fire. That's why the mountain is unweaving everyone else now... the 'payment' of one Prince isn't enough anymore. The debt is growing because the land is exhausted. The mountain is starting to take everything, the villagers, the scouts, the memories, just to keep the engine turning."
The vision faded, leaving them in the dim, oppressive violet light of the chamber. Marienne's body jerked, her spine arching at an impossible angle as she gasped for air. The threads she had been weaving began to fray, snapping with the sound of breaking glass and releasing small, jagged sparks of energy that hissed against the ice.
"Marienne!" Caelan shouted, his voice echoing with desperation. He lunged forward again, his hand outstretched, but this time the barrier of air hummed with a lethal, crackling energy that sent a shock through his arm, forcing him back.
"She's the ground!" Arveth cried out, his voice a ragged, wet wheeze. He was slumped against the far wall, his skin now looking more like gray stone than flesh. The grayness was spreading up his neck, a literal petrification born of his distance from the Sanctuary and the strain of the mountain's power. "She's the conduit for the Anchor's memory. The mountain is using her like a wire to transmit this truth to us. If we don't break the connection, it will drain her until there's nothing left but silver sand. It's using her to tell us this because it wants the ledger closed!"
Severin looked from the catatonic Marienne to the dying Arveth. He looked at the threads of light, thousands of lives being processed by the mountain's engine. He realized then that his father hadn't just saved the kingdom; he had turned his sons into the very thing that would eventually destroy it.
"The Ledger isn't finished," the chorus spoke through Marienne, her voice now a strained, unnatural rasp that vibrated in Severin's teeth. "The account is still short. To free the medium, a Prince must sign. Or the Anchor will take the Healer instead. The mountain demands a name of equal weight."
Severin's Crownfire flared, the golden light turning a jagged, angry purple at the edges. He looked at Aelindra, who was staring at Marienne with a mixture of terror and selfless pity. She moved as if to step toward the pool, her hands glowing with her own soft, anchoring light.
"No," Severin said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, royal growl. He stepped in front of her, his silhouette tall and dark against the violet glow. "I won't let you take her. I am the one with the debt. I am the one who was supposed to be the payment."
The chamber began to vibrate, the rhythmic heartbeat of the mountain reaching a deafening crescendo that shook the very foundations of the Spire. The "First Anchor", the presence within the glass and the water, was waiting. It didn't care about the morality of kings or the love of scouts. It only cared about the balance of the scales.
"Severin, don't," Aelindra whispered, her hand catching the sleeve of his tunic. "There has to be another way. Arveth, he said, the fire is a trap."
"It's the only way to save her," Severin replied, not looking back. "And maybe it's the only way to find out where they took him."
As he stepped toward the silver water, the threads began to swirl around him, sensing the proximity of the light they had been seeking for twenty years. The trap was set, and the Prince was walking right into the center of the engine.