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.
Storms of Betrayal
The sun never truly rose that morning—only a feverish gray fought through the rain-smudged sky above Ashwater's tangled ruin. In the crypt beneath Orin’s shattered tower, cold seeped into every stone. The resistance packed what they’d scavenged from the ruins, half-crazed by triumph, half pulverized by the tremor of what they had loosed on the city. Outside: bells, shouts, wailing—fragments of a world reeling from last night’s fire. Inside: a silence heavy as lead.
Lyra sat hunched in a shadowed corner, shards—hers, now plural—nestled atop a bloodstained rag in her lap. The dawn’s promise was a blade’s edge, and she could feel herself coming unraveled, split between the brightness of what she had wielded and a terror that some crucial seam inside her was slipping.
In the half-light, Kalen crouched by the window with Mira. Jax stood across the chamber, hunched, hands curled on the hilt of his battered sword. The others murmured, assembling the council—no longer a fellowship, but camps spiraling further apart.
Orin, voice gravel-rough, called the meeting to order. "We need a path, not more wounds. The city will not care for our regrets, only what we do next."
Jax’s reply cut like a whip. "What we do next? First, we count our dead. Second, we decide if we’re any different from the monsters we claim to fight!"
Lyra flinched. Faces swiveled toward her. She could feel their scrutiny, how hope and dread warred in the hollows of their eyes.
A wiry woman—Tess, the rebellion’s old quartermaster—stood. "No one asked to burn the foundry with us inside. That blue fire—what if it had caught the workers too, instead of freeing them?"
Jax’s voice thundered, "We lost two in the blast. Mira barely pulled the others out. Would Mask, or any imperial, have hesitated to crush us all?"
"We aren’t Mask!" Tess spat. "Or are we? If we wield these Shards, what’s left to make us better? The more we use their cursed magic, the more their poison works its way into us."
Mira’s gaze landed on Lyra. Soft, brittle, edged by guilt. "Power is never innocent. But the Shards aren’t evil—they are what their bearer chooses... at least in part."
"But we don’t know what Lyra is choosing anymore," another rebel muttered. "No one can control that much power. Not and stay who they were."
Lyra’s mouth felt full of dust. She tried to speak, found her voice wouldn’t rise above the pounding in her head. The room span with visions—scenes of flame and flood, of old gods' laughter, of herself both shining and devoured. The weight pressed until she could barely breathe. She curled her fingers around the Shard. It felt colder than ever.
The argument built through the day, swelling as more arrived from outlying safehouses. Suspicion lanced through every word. Should the rebels fight with any weapon, even if it cost their souls? Or did some lines need to be drawn, no matter the price? Fragments of songs Lyra had heard as a child—of heroes, of righteous rage—clashed with the screams echoing behind her eyes.
Cerin’s empty bedroll, the dead from the foundry, the haunted eyes of the prisoners they had freed—but some, she remembered, had not survived the storm of released magic. None could say if they died from empire’s cruelty or rebellion’s rescue. Was it her fault? Did intention matter, when the world burned all the same?
Kalen lingered near her, always a shadow’s breadth away, but she felt him drawing inward. She noticed how the others gave him a wider berth. She caught hushed words as she passed: "Wasn’t he imperial once? No one vouches for him—except her."
Later, in a side tunnel turned storeroom, Kalen cleaned his knife in silence. Lyra tried to catch his gaze. "They think you—"
"Let them think," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. "I know what I owe. After Mask’s hounds killed my family, I chose their side for a year just to survive. But I ran when I could. You know that."
Her hands trembled, spilling moonlight across the rag. "But do they? If they turn on us—"
"If it comes to that, you run. Don’t look back."
She wanted to believe him. The Shard’s song hissed static between her ears, full of light and shadow all tangled together. "I don’t want to run. Not anymore."
He touched her hand—brief, anchoring. "Then don’t let them decide who you’ll become."
Near midday, shouts erupted from the sentry at the crypt’s entrance—a boy pounding down the steps, pale as death, carrying a blood-smeared courier’s sash. Mira snatched a letter from his trembling hand, eyes scanning the runes. As she read, her expression crumpled from cautious hope to horror.
She passed the letter to Orin, voice hollow. "It’s from Greylatch. Or… what’s left. The Emperor has unleashed a new weapon—some kind of storm, alive with relic power. An entire district was erased. The survivors say the rain itself hunts you."
Whispers seized the gathered rebels. Jax tried to stand, faltered, dropped hard onto his seat. "How many—?"
Mira swallowed. "Hundreds, maybe more. The council there was set to rise. Now, there’s nothing but mud and ash."
Orin’s old eyes went glassy. "A sentient storm… It was in the scripts. Mask has merged a relic-shard with a weather-spirit, chained it to his will. It can learn, change, hunt."
A shell-shocked silence. No one looked at Lyra. No one needed to. She could taste the question in the air: was there a line left, or were they all monsters now?
Lyra rose. The room drifted away. She moved through torchlight and the stink of fear to the outer crypt, still not weeping, unable even to breathe. The world narrowed to the pulse in her head, the weight of the Shard, the horror of what could be made of magic—her magic, given to the wrong hands.
In a corner, Mira found her. She looked smaller in the blue dark, hair tangled, face streaked with soot and dried blood.
"Lyra."
Lyra shook her head. "Don’t. Don’t tell me that it wasn’t my fault. That we’re nothing like him."
Mira sat, careful not to come close enough to alarm. "What Mask made—what you can do—are not the same. The Shard is a door, not a master. The poison is in what we become, not in the light itself."
"It’s in me now. I see them. The dead… every time I sleep. When I’m awake too. When does it end?"
Mira’s voice wavered. "You learn to live with it. Or you let it break you. That’s all anyone—any bearer—has ever done."
Footsteps approached: Kalen, tense and wary. He entered the wavering circle of candlelight, gaze flicking from Lyra to Mira. "The council wants an answer—will you fight, or won’t you? Are you with us, or with the storm?"
Lyra’s lips parted. The word stuck behind her teeth. "I don’t know how to fight without becoming what I hate."
Kalen’s jaw worked, some answer jammed in his throat. He knelt, trying to meet her eyes. "Sometimes you fight for those who can’t. Sometimes, that’s what saves you. But I… I’m not sure I believe it either."
Footfalls sounded on stone—Jax, Mira’s voice trailing after him in warning. "They’re dividing the group," he warned, voice clenched. "Some say we run. Others say we arm you, turn you loose and hope you kill Mask before you kill us all. I don’t have the answers. I just know we can’t go on as we are."
For a moment, Lyra saw the future: herself, a caged star, more weapon than girl; the city, drowned and silent; Kalen gone, Mira hollowed, the world ruled by storms and hunger. The old voice from her visions whispered:
The price is always the self. Choose what you save.
She whispered to the dark, "I promised myself I wouldn’t become a monster. But what if that’s all that’s left?"
No one answered. Together, but essentially alone, the three drew in the cold breath of a world at war with itself. In the silence, the Shard’s pulse echoed—a heartbeat or a warning bell—and the storm outside, and within, bided its time.