Viella's POV
The world didn't just go quiet; it went flat.
Being folded felt like being a pressed flower inside a heavy book. I could see the corridor through the "seam," but it looked like a painting viewed through thick, distorted glass. Orin was a smear of green and silver, Ash was a jagged stroke of gray.
I wasn't breathing. I didn't need to. I was a secret tucked into the lining of reality.
"Look at them," the voice purred. It wasn't echoing in my head anymore; it felt like it was vibrating in my very marrow. "They're reaching for a ghost."
Outside the fold, Orin stepped toward the spot where I'd vanished. He didn't look frustrated. He looked predatory. He held up a hand, and his silver chain began to glow with a sickly, rhythmic light.
"The Anchorhymn is a song of placement, Viella," Orin's voice drifted into my hiding place, warped and deep. "It reminds the world where things belong. You cannot hide from the truth of your own weight forever."
The pressure increased. It felt like the "book" was being squeezed. The fold began to ache.
"He's pinning the space," Ash rasped. I could see him struggling against his own Anchor line, his Sigil flickering like a dying candle. "Viella! Don't stay still! If he stabilizes the fold while you're inside it, you'll become part of the wall!" Panic, cold and sharp, flared in my chest.
"He's right," the voice whispered, and for the first time, there was a jagged edge of hunger in its tone. "The needle is moving. But we don't have to be the cloth, little lock. We can be the tear."
"How?" I thought, my mind frantic.
"Let go of the edges. Stop trying to be Viella Eirely Eulalia Waverly. She's too heavy. She has too many memories. Just be the Rift."
I felt a phantom sensation—like a second set of hands overlapping mine. They were long, elegant, and terrifyingly steady.
"No," I gasped, though no sound left my folded lips.
Orin closed his fist.
The stone wall behind me groaned. The glyphs etched into the rock flared bright blue, screaming in a frequency that made my teeth feel like they were shattering. The fold shivered. I felt the physical world trying to stitch me back into the masonry. My shoulder felt like it was merging with the granite.
"I have you," Orin murmured.
"Viella, move!" Ash screamed. He lunged, the sheer force of his desperation cracking the Anchor line holding him. He didn't run for the exit. He ran for me.
He slammed his hand into the space where I was folded.
The contact was like lightning. Because Ash was a Riftweaver, his touch didn't hit a wall; it hit me. For a split second, the fold buckled, and I saw his eyes—wide, terrified, and filled with a recognition that went back centuries.
"Don't let the voice finish the sentence," he choked out.
But Orin was faster. He snapped his fingers, and a wave of pure Anchor-force slammed into Ash, throwing him back against the far wall.
"Enough interference," Orin said, his face hardening into the mask of a Grandmaster.
"Fetch the suppression kit. We will extract her piece by piece if we must."
Piece by piece.
The words broke something inside me. The discipline of the Academy, the "Veilwork" drills, the "Rule of Sixteen"—it was all a lie designed to make me a quiet, polite victim.
"Yes," the Passenger hissed. "Break the thread."
I stopped fighting the second heartbeat. I let it pulse.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
The fold didn't just open; it exploded.
I didn't step out of the wall; I tore my way back into the room. The sound was like a thousand sheets of silk ripping at once. The blue-white torches blew out. The Anchorhymn shattered into a dissonant, screeching wail.
I stood in the center of the corridor, gasping for air that finally tasted real. But I wasn't alone in my skin. My vision was doubled. I saw the corridor as it was, and I saw it as Nhal—a ruin of shadows and screaming stars.
I looked at my hands. They were wreathed in that ink-black smoke, the threads stitching themselves between my fingers.
Orin recoiled, his face finally showing something human: pure, unadulterated shock. "The seal… it didn't just wake. It's hemorrhaging."
I looked at him, and I didn't feel like a student anymore. I felt like a landslide.
"You called me a needle," I said, my voice sounding like two people speaking in perfect, terrifying unison.
I lifted my hand. The ink-threads lashed out, not at Orin, but at the very air around him. I didn't strike him. I unstitched the floor beneath his feet.
The stone didn't break; it simply ceased to be a floor.
Orin gasped, stumbling as his boots sank into a suddenly liquid reality. He scrambled back, throwing up a frantic Veil-shield, but the threads of my Gift ignored his geometry. They were the absence of geometry.
"Viella, stop!"
It was Ash. He was on his feet, blood trailing from his temple. He didn't look relieved. He looked horrified. He wasn't looking at Orin.
He was looking at me. Or what was standing where I used to be.
"You're opening too far!" he shouted, dodging a stray thread of black light that nearly took his arm off. "If you don't close the seam now, you'll pull the whole fortress into the Rift!"
I couldn't stop. It felt too good. The weight was gone. The fear was gone. There was only the hum of the tear and the delighted laughter of the Passenger.
"Feedit, " the voice urged. "Stitch him into the dark. Erase the man who wants to own you."
My fingers curled. The black threads tightened around Orin's throat—not touching his skin, but tightening the space around his neck until he couldn't draw breath.
"Viella… please…" Orin choked out, his eyes bulging.
I felt a surge of cold, dark joy.
Then, a hand slammed into my back, right between my shoulder blades.
"Look at me!" Ash yelled, forcing himself into my personal space, ignoring the way the black threads began to eat at his cloak.
He grabbed my face with both hands. His skin was burning hot against my void-cold cheeks.
"You are Viella Waverly," he said, his voice cracking. "You like the smell of old ink. You hate the way the Academy bread tastes like sawdust. You're the girl who let her friend braid her hair this morning because she was afraid."
The Passenger shrieked in my mind, a sound of pure static.
"Don't let go of the girl," Ash whispered, his forehead pressing against mine. "If you lose her now, I can't bring you back a second time."
A second time?
The confusion hit me like a physical blow. The double vision flickered. The black threads wavered, thinning into gray smoke.
I looked into Ash's eyes and saw it—the same circles, the same crack. But in his eyes, I saw a reflection of a version of me that was older, colder, and entirely hollow.
I blinked.
The darkness snapped back into my Sigil.
The floor under Orin became stone again. He collapsed, gasping for air, clutching his throat.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by our ragged breathing. The fortress seemed to pull back, its Anchorhymn reduced to a dull, bruised thrum.
Ash didn't let go of my face. He searched my eyes until he was sure the Passenger had retreated.
"Did I… did I kill him?" I whispered, my voice finally mine again.
"No," Ash said, glancing at the trembling Master Orin. "But you showed him the door. And now he knows the lock is broken."
From the shadows of the far corridor, the sound of heavy boots returned. More sentinels. More mages.
Ash let go of me and grabbed my hand. "We have to go. The fold didn't work, and the tear is too loud. We have to do this the hard way."
"What's the hard way?" I asked.
Ash looked toward the end of the hall, where the blue-white light was being replaced by the orange glow of real torches.
"We fight our way to the surface," he said.
"And then we find your father."
The name hit me harder than the fall from the carriage. My hand flew to my pocket, feeling the phantom weight of the letter that hadn't been written yet, the one I'd find later—the one signed by the last Riftweaver.
"My father is dead," I said.
Ash started running, pulling me with him.
"In this timeline, maybe," he threw over his shoulder. "But Nhal doesn't care about 'maybe.' And neither does he."
As we rounded the corner, leaving a gasping Orin behind, the Voice whispered one last thing, so soft I almost missed it:
"he's coming for his daughter, little lock. But which one of us does he want?"
End of chapter 7