(Page 8) Chapter 1 – The Celestial Thread | Present

Dusk bled through the forest like watered ink, turning trunks to pillars and leaves to stained glass. The wind had gone thin and cold, and with it the birds; even the insects kept their counsel. The only sound was the hush of boots over fallen oak, and the soft chime of Myla’s pendant when it brushed the buckle of her satchel.

They were traveling light—bedrolls lashed tight, waterskins half-full, rations counted like prayers. North and east, always toward the high country where the Spire shouldered the sky. Kieran led, eyes moving as if they had learned the lay of danger before they’d learned letters. Myla followed, penciling small notes by feel, the page catching the last gold of the sun. Elira came last, hood shadowing her face, one hand always near the hilt at her hip—a sword that looked too old to shine and too faithful to leave behind.

A grove yawned ahead, ringed by firs, carpeted in damp leaves. In the center stood a fallen beech, its heartwood splintered pale as bone. Kieran raised a fist and they stilled. He crouched, touched two fingers to the soil, then the bark—listening with something other than ears.

“What is it?” Myla whispered.

Kieran cocked his head. “Echo.”

“From the ravine?” Myla said. “From—”

“Not sound,” Elira said softly. “Memory.”

They looked to her. She drew back her hood. In the failing light, her eyes held a banked glow, like coals under ash.

“We keep to the Spire,” Kieran said, more for himself than for them. “We reach it before the Sunring fades. That was the charge.”

Myla’s pencil paused. “Readers would say: what is the Sunring, exactly? And why does it fade?”

Elira’s mouth twitched—half a smile, half a wound. “The Sunring is the crown of light drawn over our world at high day; a sign and a shield. It should burn sure as breath.” She looked to the dimming sky where, even at this hour, a pale, circular sheen wavered like a halo thinned by years. “But it has waned for a generation, and in these last weeks it falters. When the Ring unthreads, the older darkness remembers its name.”

“And the Spire?” Myla asked.

“A conduit,” Elira said. “An altar. A gate. The first stone ever laid by hands that were taught by heaven. If there is remedy anywhere, it is there.”

Myla nodded, writing as she walked. “Traveling light makes sense, then. Speed. Secrecy.”

“Secrecy most,” Elira said. “Crowns paint targets.”

The word hung between them. Majesty unsaid, but understood. Elira’s jaw set; she did not flinch from the title, only from what it cost others.

The wind shifted. A thread of scent rode it—oak char and iron.

Kieran’s fingers tightened on the leather wrap of his mother’s blade. “Smoke.”

Myla swallowed. “From a camp?”

Elira didn’t answer. Something in the sharp tang turned her inward, not to fear, but to a room whose light had been taken.

The smell of burning oak, the ring of iron on stone—the world tilted and opened like door.