They ran with the sun biting at their necks and the Heart of the Twin Oases thumping cool against Amon's ribs like a second, steadier pulse. The dunes fell away to hardpan, then to the twin bowls of blue, ringed in carved stone and thin, singing reeds.
"Line it," Amon snapped.
Bolt threw out a [Living Barriers — Windbreak Dome], and the racing sand died against its curve. Amon strode knee-deep into the left basin, sleeves rolled, glass jackal mask hanging at his hip, gourd's copper bands glinting like held breath. Serayin's aides were already in place, hands moving, voices braiding the air.
"On my mark," Master Serayin called, calm as a still well.
Amon set the Heart on the stone dais, palms braced. The chant climbed. Runes woke across the pool like starlight sinking. A filament of light slid from left oasis to right and touched water with a quiet oh the earth heard.
"Now."
Amon pressed the Heart down; Serayin's aides laced their patterns; the pools flared—deep aquamarine—then settled. For a heartbeat, Eryn saw the faint silhouette of something vast pressing up from below, as if a giant had exhaled under glass. It went as quickly as it came, leaving only ripples and the taste of copper on the tongue.
Serayin let out a breath. "Synchronization holds. The city drinks."
Amon climbed out, water sheeted from his forearms in perfect lines. He didn't smile, but the set of his shoulders loosened.
Bolt slumped against the dais and blew hair off his forehead. "We do this every week, I'm charging extra."
Serayin's eyes flicked to the gourd at Amon's hip. "The vessel hums."
"It bites," Amon said.
"And you keep your fingers," she said, and that was blessing enough.
They left the sanctum before the wind remembered their names.
They walked until the sand went silver with evening. Keystra was a ghost curve of light ahead. The air cooled; the desert found its quieter voice. For a while they said nothing; the crunch of boots and the soft rattle of canteens spoke fine.
Bolt broke first. "So. Your… bubble."
Eryn didn't pretend not to know. "My Eclipsera."
"Right. That. 'Slow down,' 'Hold,' 'Miss'—like the world owes you favors," Bolt said, squinting at him sideways. "Where'd you learn that?"
Eryn watched his breath fog, then fade. "I didn't. It just… came. In the fight. Like I'd practiced it a hundred times somewhere I don't remember."
Amon walked another dozen steps before answering. "Not soulbranding. Not any veilweaving I've seen."
"It felt… right," Eryn admitted. The pendant at his throat warmed as if pleased with his confession. "Like something answered me before I finished asking."
Bolt's grin didn't reach his eyes. "We're going to wring you dry when we have a floor that doesn't move."
Amon nodded once. "After we see my mother, we find a quiet court. We test you. Properly."
"Deal," Eryn said, and tried not to notice the desert listening.
Keystra rose like a city dreaming itself into opulence—terraced walls, blue-glass inlays catching moonlight, gates flanked by carved jackals taller than houses. Passing under Ra'teluun's veil felt like stepping into a breath someone else was holding; the air cooled, sweet with spice and the clean mineral tang of water cut with something darker.
The gate market was alive even at night. Caravan bells chimed. Silk canopies made rivers of color overhead. A trader hawked singing crystals that chimed when you looked at them wrong; a glassblower breathed molten into prayer lamps shaped like amber suns.
"Keystra is a throat," Amon said, guiding them through a knot of spice-sellers. "All east-west trade passes through it. We tax the swallow and the breath."
"And the burp," Bolt added. "Don't forget the burp."
"Merchants complain," Amon said. "Then pay."
Eryn tried to see everything—women with gold hoops stacked up their arms until the moon lived on their skin, sand-baked bread blistering black at the edges, a boy spinning a copper disk on a string until it sang like a bee. Beneath it all, people glanced up at the inner walls the way you check your lungs—reflex, worry, devotion.
They climbed broad steps into cooler shadow. The palace smelled of cardamom and old stone. At the far end of a hall ribbed like a gull's wing, a woman rose from a low seat—white and ember-red robes, a crown of latticed glass that refracted moonlight into quiet stars.
"Mother," Amon said.
"Son," she answered, and the single word held pride, weariness, and calculation in equal parts. Queen Sefira kissed his cheek, let her palm rest too-long over the burn-scars at his wrist, then turned to Bolt. "You look thinner."
"Never," Bolt said, deadpan. "I have an understanding with gravity."
"Keep it," Sefira said, almost-smiling. Her gaze settled on Eryn. Measured. Weighing. "And you are the storm the desert coughed up."
"Eryn," he said, bowing because it felt like the right shape for his body. The pendant throbbed once against his sternum, a quiet yes.
Councilors gathered like moths in soft shoes—merchants with soft rings, generals with soft eyes, scholars with soft hands. Congratulations slid between questions like knives wrapped in silk.
"…the barrier's drawn deeper of late—" someone murmured.
"Old walls creak," a noble sniffed. "You hear what you fear."
An elder paused by the gourd at Amon's waist. "Has the Flame of Yataari begun to answer you, Warden?"
Amon went still. "Sometimes."
"Gently," the elder advised, and moved on, as if recommending a tea.
Sefira's hand settled lightly on Eryn's shoulder. Her voice was warm for the room and cool for the boy. "Rest. Eat. Smile at the festival so my people believe right now is enough."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Eryn said, and felt appraised like a blade.
When they left the court, he found his breath had acquired weight.
Keystra remade itself after dark. Silk alleys bloomed with lanterns—spheres of red and gold and river-blue swaying like captive stars. Drummers found the city's second heartbeat. Girls painted their cheeks with powdered sun. The festival smelled like cinnamon, roasted lamb, and the crisp sweetness of glass cooling too fast.
Bolt ate like a siege and insisted Eryn try one of everything. Amon allowed himself two mouthfuls of something that fought back and then stood quiet, watching a troupe spin ribbons of fire across a plaza so the flames wrote poetry the wind read.
Eryn's awe kept catching on grief like silk on a nail. Beauty didn't erase ashes; it only made them talk.
A crash yanked his head sideways—down a tavern alley, a man big as a gate bounced off a table and found the floor. Another man—tall, fair-braided, coat thrown open over leather—shook splinters from his knuckles, dropped a coin to the barkeep without looking, and said in a voice that smiled at its own trouble, "Keystra's got cracks. You just have to know where to look."
"Vidar," Bolt muttered, half-grinning. "Storm boy."
By the time Eryn looked back, the northerner had dissolved into festival shadow like a promise to return.
Lantern light silvered Amon's jaw. "Come," he said, quieter now. "There's someone you should meet."
They turned off the bright roads into a lane with sleeping doors and a single lantern swaying like it was nervous. A lanky figure stepped out of a doorway clutching a bundle of scrolls like a shield.
"This is Vaelor," Amon said. "He taught us to survive our bad ideas."
"Advised," Vaelor corrected, eyes darting to rooftops, eaves, shadows, the thin space under a cart. "I advised you to avoid the bad ideas. You refused. I survived the advising." He looked Eryn up, then down, then up again. "You're the boy with the… ah… domain. Very impressive. Very dangerous. Very—" he flinched at a cat sneezing— "loud."
Bolt clapped his shoulder hard enough to make him levitate. "He's a genius," he told Eryn. "Also afraid of his own shadow."
"Not mine," Vaelor said, offended. "My shadow knows better than to startle me."
Amon rolled his eyes. "At dawn," he told them. "Lantern Court. We test Eryn. Proper patterns. No one dies."
"I do prefer that last part," Vaelor said, gathering his scrolls like he could armor himself with paper.
They slept at an inn above a glassworker's yard, the air warm with the memory of fire. The city hummed under Ra'teluun like a hive. At some hour without a name, the dome pulsed—just once—and a long shiver moved through the beams of the old house. Eryn woke with his heart miscounting, the pendant hot. The hum faded. The whisper didn't. Open, it breathed, patient as tide.
He did not.
Dawn softened Keystra's edges. The Lantern Court was a square of sun-warmed stone tucked between temples and a spice warehouse, strings of festival lanterns still hanging like spent constellations. Vaelor had chalk and an alarming number of talismans tied under his robe like a frightened tree.
"If you explode," he told Eryn cheerfully, "try to explode in the circle. Easier cleanup."
"Helpful," Eryn said.
"Always," Vaelor said, and drew a crude ring on the flagstones. "Show me the… thing."
Eryn stepped in and let the Eclipsera breathe. The air inside the chalk ring wavered—not a wall so much as a decision. Amon flicked a thumb-sized glass shard into the circle; it slowed midair, drifted like a leaf, and clicked to the ground with an embarrassed sound.
Vaelor whistled low despite himself. "Not veilweaving. Or not only. And not any soulbrand I've catalogued." He hopped back out as if the chalk were hot. "Proceed."
"Command," Amon said.
Eryn wet his lips. "Slow down."
Bolt—grinning, foolish—strolled into the ring. The grin became effort. His stride shortened like the air had thickened to syrup.
"Rude," he said, hauling an arm through molasses.
"Uneven," Amon noted. "It's catching his shoulders more than his hips."
Vaelor nodded hard. "Early-stage inconsistency. Normal. Dangerous. Do not—" he flapped his hands— "do not push past a headache. That's your brain's way of not melting."
"Excellent bedside manner," Bolt said, dragging himself free. He shook his arms out and flexed his ring hand. "Again. Harder."
They layered next: Amon set [Mirror Gate] at three angles; Eryn pinged [Static Ricochet] into the glass, building a clattery web of light; Bolt unfolded [Corridor Logic] to funnel the scatter into a single bite. A mirror cracked at the edge.
Vaelor eeped and dove behind a dummy. Bolt sighed and [Living Barriers — Flicker Panel] popped in front of him just in time to catch the stray spark.
"See?" Vaelor called from the floor, remarkably confident from ground level. "Soulbranding builds a shape in the world. Veilweaving cuts or tunes those shapes. Most people do one well, fumble the other, and call that a life. You three are going to insist on doing both, so. We will try not to die."
"Reassuring," Eryn said.
"Never," Vaelor said. He dusted himself off and became, abruptly, professor: "The Pillars are how resonance leans—Endurance, Astronomy, Memory, Craft, Breath, Kinship—six we name, one we don't because names invite company. Your ring, Bolt, sings to Endurance. Amon's mask bows to Craft; his flame… mmm… complicated. And you—" He frowned at Eryn's domain, head tilted. "You lean funny."
"That a technical term?" Bolt asked.
"A warning label," Vaelor said brightly.
They ran a mock fight. Vaelor animated three wooden training dummies with a shiver of resonance—nothing that thought, merely things that wanted to move. "If they kill me," he told Amon, "tell people I went down bravely. Then be vague."
Amon lifted [Sun-Tempered Aegis] and took point. Eryn widened his domain to the chalk's edge. "Hold," he murmured, and one dummy's stride caught, knee stuck half-bent like the idea of walking had misfired.
Bolt split the field with [Partition Shield], penned two dummies for Amon, and let the third shove at him until it overcommitted; then [Ram's Horn] clamps snapped on its arms and made it remember it was wood.
"Miss," Eryn said, thin and mean; Amon slid inside a dummy's off-angle and tapped its throat with a [Glasscraft — Twin Scimitars] edge that would have cut a man to silence. The dummy sagged obligingly.
"Cut Seal," Eryn layered when one of Vaelor's simple animating glyphs got ambitious; the glyph snipped clean, and the wood went slack.
They reset. Sweat turned the chalk to paste under Eryn's boot. His fingers trembled; the Eclipsera tugged against his edges like a kite wanting a larger sky.
"Enough," Amon said, seeing the drop before Eryn admitted it.
"I can—" Eryn began.
"You can fall over," Vaelor said briskly. "Later. When you're not near sharp things."
They sat on the warm stone with their backs to a wall, passing a water skin and a pouch of dates like a sacrament. The city stretched awake beyond the court—vendors setting out copper bowls, a glassworker testing a flame's mood, doves arguing about being doves.
"Basics," Vaelor said, calmer now that no one was exploding. He ticked points off on his fingers. "Soulbranding: you choose—or inherit—a vessel that matters to you. You pour resonance into it, not at it. It remembers you and wakes. It grows with you and grows moods of its own. Push too hard, it bites. Veilweaving: you feel the invisible net that everything pulls on. You tune it, mute it, cut it, or make it hum your song. Together, they're… rude. Effective. Dangerous if you forget you're human."
"And the Pillars?" Eryn asked.
"Six we court, one we don't," Vaelor said fast, then faster: "No more today. My heart does not like lectures before breakfast."
Bolt nudged his shoulder with a grin. "He says that about everything."
"Because everything is trying to kill me," Vaelor said. "As an expert, I would know."
They packed the chalk, stretched the ache out of their legs, stood. Vaelor bent to collect a talisman and froze, eyes pinning Eryn's domain like an insect on glass.
"Amon," he said, very quietly.
Amon's brows rose a hair. "Mm?"
"The way his resonance moves," Vaelor murmured, not looking away. "It overwrites. Not just pushes. Old. Wrong-old. Watch him."
Eryn pretended to not hear and failed. Heat crept under his skin, not all of it from the sun. Amon's hand touched his shoulder, quick and anchor-steady.
"We are," Amon said.
By afternoon the city was all color again. Bands struck copper, children chased paper suns, and the first of the Ra'teluun lanterns kindled along the terraces. Eryn stood on a low roof beside his two strange teachers and watched the dome shimmer—gold, then, for a blink too long, starless black with the vaguest suggestion of palms pressing from the inside.
People below sighed like it was pretty.
Bolt leaned his elbows on the parapet. "Eat, then pack. Sefira will have us out to the docks by dawn if she has her way."
"Does she usually?" Eryn asked.
"Always," Amon said, eyes on the dome. "And she usually does."
The fireworks went up in white fans that wrote brief flowers on the sky. Eryn let the sound fill his chest until the whisper in the bones dimmed beneath it.
Open, it said, late, patient.
"Not tonight," he answered, too soft for anyone to call it talking to himself.
Lanterns swung. Music braided the air. Somewhere in an alley, Vidar laughed like he'd decided trouble was a hobby. And above them, Ra'teluun hummed to itself, too pleased, too hungry, while the city danced very carefully beneath it.