Shards of Dawn
In a world where magic is carved from ancient relics and wielded by tyrants, a destitute orphan discovers she alone holds the key to ending the empire’s reign of terror. Hunted through slums, catacombs, and shattered ruins, Lyra Veil must unite rebels, outwit traitors, and master a forgotten magic—before darkness swallows the last hope for freedom.
Echoes of the Lost
Rain lashed the broken rooftops. Lyra fled through Marrow’s End, each breath scalded by the memory of Mask’s gaze, every muscle trembling with exhaustion and magic’s ache. Every sound—the chime of bells, the crack of thunder, her own footfalls—seemed to echo twice: once in the waking world, once in the inner storm that churned ceaselessly since the palace escape. The Shard pressed burning-cold to her skin, and with every heartbeat, she feared the boundaries of herself slip a little more.
More than once, as she darted through shadow and sewer-filth, faces appeared where no faces should have been. Her mother’s: hair plastered black above pleading eyes. Her father’s, half-remembered, then glimpses of Sable, Mira, even Mask—each eyeshot appearing in pools, in broken glass, in the bloom of streetlight on wet brick. She blinked hard, but the ghosts only thickened, running alongside her like wolves.
When Lyra next stopped, breathless in a trash-laden alcove, Kalen was there. He had followed her—maybe he had never lost her, always able to trace her through panic and city maze. “They’ve posted every gate,” he whispered, face drawn. “The city’s closing in.”
Lyra tried to form words, but all that came was a rasp. The Shard flickered between her ribs, its two pieces like heated glass, singing two different chords. Every nerve burned with the effort of keeping them from breaking her. She dropped to a crouch, clutching her head. Kalen’s shadow fell over her, uncertain. “Lyra—”
A deeper voice interrupted—Mira, appearing out of the streaming dark, one hand pressed to her side. Jax hovered behind, ever the sentinel before the storm. “We must go,” Mira intoned. “Now. Or we die here. Jax has a route.”
Jax barely looked at Lyra. “If she can walk, she comes. If not—”
Lyra forced her limbs to move, feeling half-puppeted by ancient strings. The others clustered around her, battered, eyes rimmed with fear and conflicting need—some for her power, others for her weakness. They moved.
They left Marrow’s End by crawling through a sluice of filth and torchlit water, out into the bone-fields at the city’s edge. Kalen steadied Lyra when she stumbled; Mira’s presence was a brittle shield, smoothing her frayed edges only a little. Jax scouted ahead, striking down muttering sentries, but the way east—toward the city’s abandoned outskirts—was jagged with portents: flocks of crows circling over broken statues, strange tremors in the ground, flickers of rune-light that were not from human hands.
Lyra grew weaker. The Shards’ voices tangled in her head—one always half-singing, one keening. Her wounds would not heal as they once had; each step cost her twice, dizziness rising until the world shaded red or white. Twice they nearly doubled back, thinking her done for.
But one thing drove Lyra: cold, insistent, undeniable. A call. It pulsed under her skin, not words but longing—eastward, further from the city, out past the very edge of imperial power. “There’s something… out there,” she managed. “I see it… a tower on fire.”
Mira studied her with terror and hope. “The first forge. The makers’ last stronghold—they said it was lost to the ages.”
Jax spat. “You’re following dreams? We barely survived Mask.”
But Kalen was quiet, eyes locked on Lyra. He said, softly, “She’s leading us, or we’re dying anyway. I’ll follow.”
They pressed on through a ruined stretch of woodland and fallen temple stones. Day broke behind clouds, mingling shadow and pale fire. The city faded into swamp and root-choked hills. The further they went, the worse Lyra’s condition became—fevered bouts where she sobbed, laughed, or went dead-calm, her hands flickering with stray magic that turned puddles to glittering ice or made the grass grow wild behind them. Once, the Shard flared unbidden, lighting her veins until Mira had to shock her back with a whispered counterspell.
Soon, an old road presented itself: broken flagstones leading to a knoll where masonry peeked from under roots and moss. The air here was thick, oppressive.
“Stay close,” Mira breathed, drawing her own relic for comfort. “The records say the forge’s makers left guardians, not to keep out soldiers, but to keep what was inside from being used for war again.”
As they crested the hill, the ground trembled. Twin stone doors, half-sunken in earth, blocked the way. As the group paused, the air vibrated—a humming that scraped the inside of Lyra’s teeth. She staggered, gripping the Shard with both hands, every sense screaming.
Suddenly, constructs burst from beneath the ferns: manlike shapes cobbled from brass and old blue stone, eyes burning with cold fire. Their movements were jerky, as if force barely contained by purpose and ancient, withering will.
Jax swore and readied his blade. Kalen reached for a makeshift bomb tucked at his waist.
But Lyra found herself stepping forward. The world sharpened around her, narrowing to the song of the Shards—still torn, but with a clear undertone. Light flickered between her fingers as if searching for a note it had lost. The constructs halted, cocked their heads as one, then spoke in voices that echoed not aloud, but inside the rebels’ skulls:
“Bearer. Lost. Healer. Broken. Choose.”
Lyra could not answer. The Shards screamed in her nerves, fighting each other, the pieces of herself splintering apart. The constructs’ eyes glazed blue-white; they raised blades.
With a wordless shriek, Lyra’s magic snapped—lightning shot from her, lashing the first construct, splintering its chest. The backlash hit her, knocking her to her knees as the Shard’s dual power bucked like a storm whipped by a dying wind. The constructs surged forward. Kalen and Jax fought desperately, hacking at limbs of stone, while Mira threw runes that cracked some, only for others to regrow with shrieking, uncanny vigor.
At last, by pain and luck, the rebels broke through. Only Lyra’s wild, leaking magic—devastating friend and foe alike—forced a path. The stone doors parted, and the last construct fell, keening not in threat, but in a lament that chilled Lyra to the bone.
Inside, the air was a tomb. The ancient forge, untouched for centuries, sprawled beneath a shattered dome. Huge, obsidian anvils ringed a dais carved with glyphs that twined like sunlight into words. The floor was littered with the dust of centuries and the bones of long-gone keepers, their hands still clasped in rituals of warding or weeping.
Every ghost Lyra carried pressed close—their faces fusing into strange, luminous shapes she half-recognized from her visions. Mira traced the glyphs, whispering translations:
“Here the First Light was shaped and sundered. Here, only choice heals its wound.”
Lyra stumbled to the center of the dais. The Shard, burning so hot it nearly scorched her flesh, dragged her to her knees. The others tried to help, but power flared—a wave of compulsion, commanding distance.
Kalen called her name. Mira’s tears cut tracks through ancient dust. “She has to finish it,” Mira choked. “The rite—the old healing—it can only be done by a true bearer.”
Lyra’s skin cracked with light; her heart hammered so wildly it felt as if it would burst. Her mind dissolved—unmoored, falling through veils of time. She saw:
- The dawn of a world, fragments of crystal and flame forged by hands both human and not;
- The shining host of Makers, faces wild and bright, shaping the Shards for healing, unity, creation—not war;
- The exile and ruin, the Masked One’s hand splintering the First Shard, hate and hunger rising from a single, desperate grasp for immortality;
- Her own lineage illuminated—the bloodline of Veil seeded by a Maker’s self-sacrifice to shelter a kernel of hope;
- Sable, shackled by a dark twin fragment, her face twisted by longing;
- Herself, standing linked to thousands past and future—a gate, a vessel, a choice.
A voice rang in her core—gentle, battered by sorrow: Will you carry this wound into healing? Or will you let the pattern repeat?
Lyra, shaking, braced herself on bleeding palms. “I want… to mend it. If I must burn, let it be to heal.”
Light cascaded through her—shardsong becoming symphony, pain peeling back to open wounds made whole. The two Shard fragments fused in her chest, the break sealing—not to seal her off from suffering, but to make room for it, to carry the grief and hope both. Her scars became glyphs, old and bright. The agony sharpened, then dimmed until only fierce clarity remained.
All around, the forge glowed with new fire. Mira shielded her eyes; Jax and Kalen dropped, afraid to witness.
Lyra rose. In her mind, the makers’ presence withdrew, leaving a sense of the world as it was meant to be—a single, unbroken thing, still rippling with possibility. The Shard in her chest sang—not as a wound, but as a beacon. Her skin healed; her wounds vanished. Her gaze, when it at last found the others, was not quite the Lyra they had known before.
Kalen gaped, awe and terror at war. Jax knelt, for lack of words. Mira, weeping openly, whispered, “The first Shardbearer reborn.”
The ancient forge quieted. Only Lyra’s halo remained—a dawn breaking in the ruins, a hope hammered from pain. For good or for ill, she was more than a bearer now—she was the answer to a wound traced from the world’s first light.