Ash and Echoes

Ash choked the dawn over the gutters of Marrow’s End, the poorest vein in the Imperial capital. Dirty light leaked between ribs of shattered buildings and rain-spattered cloth strung above the alleys. Hunger wound itself round Lyra Veil’s belly, but hunger was easy; it was memory that hurt worse—the memory of her mother’s song, the press of her father’s arms, and the day both vanished in a wash of fire and screams.

She crouched amid the broken crates behind Widow Garra’s half-collapsed bakery, fingers sifting through a week’s worth of spoiled crusts and maggot-picked fruit. Her breath fogged in the gray, freezing air, and her pulse spiked at every distant scream or clatter of boots. Dawn wasn’t a time of hope here. Dawn was the hour when the Empire’s enforcers favored raids.

“Take what you can, little rat,” she muttered. “Don’t get caught.”

The old mantra brought no comfort, only steady caution to her hands. She tucked a bit of moldy bread into her coat, then froze as voices rang out:

“Out! All of you! Hands where I can see!”

Enforcers—five, maybe six, with relic-lanterns burning ghostly blue. Their faces glowed in the magical light, slabs of stone and icicle eyes. Slum-dwellers stumbled from every battered door, knelt on cobbles slick with last night’s storm, shaking under the lanterns’ pale fire. Relic-wrought fear sank in like cold knives.

Lyra drew further back. Over Garra’s stoop, a girl—Mae—shook so badly she dropped her little brother’s hand. An enforcer caught the boy by the collar and twisted, and Mae cried out; a backhand sent her sprawling.

The enforcer who struck her wore a thick necklace. A relic-case, glimmering with veins of rune-light.

Lyra’s nails dug into her palm. Rage tangled with fear. There was nothing she could do. To lash out, to be seen, would mean death.

A small form darted near her hiding place. Niko, a pickpocket she sometimes helped—the only person here thinner than her. He slipped against the broken fence, so close she could see the bruise along his jaw and the tatter of hope left in his eyes. She reached for him.

Before her fingers connected, a shout split the air. “Resistance!”

A man—a stranger, not of Marrow’s End—burst from an alley, torch in hand. It guttered with rebel blue. Fool, Lyra thought, but admiration flickered: to fight back, even knowing the price.

The enforcers did not hesitate. The relic-case at the leader’s throat blazed as he touched it. Threads of rune-fire lashed from his palm, catching the rebel mid-charge. The man convulsed, fell screaming, his torch tumbling into a puddle, hiss dying in the mud.

A chill swept the street.

The leader’s voice, distorted by rune-light, boomed: “Let all see the penalty for insurrection!”

He lifted his hand. From the relic-work bloomed a shell of force—half invisible, air shimmering like heat over stone. Lyra recognized the magic. She’d seen it before: the relic’s touch, the Emperor’s law made cruelty, nothing and no one safe.

The leader stepped toward Mae, toward Niko.

“Please,” Mae sobbed. “We did nothing—”

The leader’s eyes flicked to her, and Lyra saw real pleasure in his gaze.

Time stretched sickly. Lyra’s heart hammered. Niko’s eyes met hers, desperate.

She acted before she thought. She lunged forward—just enough to draw the enforcer’s gaze, to distract, to save someone if she could—

The relic’s eyes met hers. Recognition, calculation—a predator savoring the chase.

“Another rat?”

“Let the children go,” Lyra said. The words barely a whisper, but they carried.

The leader smiled. “Step out, girl.”

Her legs moved before her mind caught up. The rain had stained her coat to her knees. She swallowed terror, shot a glance at Niko: run.

Instead, he stared at her, eyes wide.

The leader reached for his relic again.

No more, Lyra thought. No more fear, no more running—

She darted, recklessly, toward the shadowed fence. The leader’s hand came up, relic burning, but Lyra was faster—

—or luckier.

Her boot caught on something half-buried in the mud. She stumbled, grabbed the edge of a crate to steady herself, and her hand found not wet wood, but something hard, perfectly smooth—

A stone? No—

A shard, faintly luminous, blue-silver with veins of dawnlight. It pulsed against her skin, alive, singing in a wordless tongue. The world fell away.

—Echoes—

A memory not her own. Light, fire, an old voice: You are enough—

Lyra blinked. The enforcer loomed. His rune-light gathered, thinner now, as if something was draining it. The relic-case pulsed, uncertain. Lyra gripped the shard. It was small, jagged, no bigger than her palm, but it burned with new heat as she clenched it.

The enforcer lashed out, magic screaming—

Lyra flinched, bracing to die.

But the shard flared. Dawn burst from her grip, shattering the relic-light. She saw the wave of magic split before her, scything harmlessly around her body like water around a stone. For a heartbeat all could see it: a corona of light, pure and gold edged in blue, brighter than anything she’d known.

The enforcer staggered, blinded. He dropped his hand. The relic went out.

Lyra stood, breath ragged, the world gone silent. The other enforcers stared, slack-mouthed. Mae shrieked, and Niko darted for cover—gone in a flash.

An almost comical pause—then the leader recovered. “Seize her!”

Four enforcers lunged. Lyra whirled, the shard raised, but she had no idea how she’d called that power before. Her mind scrambled, fear clawed up her throat.

A hand caught her, fingers bruising. She kicked, wild, but it did nothing. The leader’s grip was iron, his breath sour and close. He reached for the shard—

It pulsed again. This time, the energy was instinctive: a sweep of pressure, air thickening, reality trembling. The enforcer’s hand spasmed, and he flew backward as if struck by a wall of wind.

Panic shouted through the slum. Some screamed; others threw themselves to the cobbles. Lyra ran, feet pounding, the shard burning in her grasp. Lanterns spun behind her, voices clashing in chaos. “The girl! She has a relic—”

She ducked through drifts of fog and cinders, heart pounding. Down crooked stairways, across ghost-lit alleys, she fled with the empire’s curses echoing behind. Bordering the graveyard of shattered statues, she finally dove between two upended slabs, pressed herself flat and silent as the world’s bones.

For a long while, she did not move. The shard glowed between her palms, soft and subtle—and somewhere, in its dawn-song, an impossible comfort.

At last Lyra let herself breathe, staring at the miracle she had stolen, or which had chosen her.

Ash and echoes. A new day’s light. Everything, now, was changed.