Chapter 12: Cracks in the Sky

  .

  Taron had learned that when a building creaked in Caer Valen now, people listened.

  The low groan rolled through the stone like a sigh from something deep beneath the city. Conversation in the temple’s main hall faltered. A few of the freed prisoners flinched. One of the younger novices dropped the bandages she was carrying.

  “It is just the supports settling,” Mara called from near the doors, louder than she needed to. “The Church built this place to survive earthquakes and incompetent renovations. It will hold.”

  It still took several heartbeats for the tension to bleed out of the room.

  Taron watched it happen from the balcony, fingers resting lightly on the lute he wore more out of habit than intent. Three days ago someone had asked him to play and he realized he did not remember the last time he had done so without trying to send a message through a gate.

  Maybe later, he thought. If there was a later.

  Boots on stone announced Mara’s ascent of the stairs. She moved like someone who had not slept enough and was too stubborn to let that slow her.

  “You heard it too,” she said when she reached him.

  “I am not deaf yet,” Taron said. “Unlike some of the Council.”

  Mara huffed a short breath that might almost have been a laugh on a better day. “They are waiting for you.”

  “Of course they are,” Taron said. “Would not want to keep them from their favorite activity.”

  “Which one?” Mara asked. “Lying or blaming you?”

  “Why choose?” Taron said.

  He followed her down the corridor toward what had once been a meditation chamber for senior priests and was now, at least today, a council room. Two guards flanked the door: former Church men who had thrown down their weapons in the battle and then thrown in with Taron when the alternative was a noose.

  They stepped aside. Inside, the air was thick with incense and tension.

  Six of the city’s surviving Councilors sat around a circular table. The seventh chair, Vale’s, was conspicuously empty. No one had suggested filling it yet.

  Taron took the remaining seat without bowing. That had caused a minor scandal the first time. Now they mostly pretended not to notice.

  “Master Taron,” Councilor Sereth began. Thin, hawk-nosed, wearing robes that managed to look expensive even after three days of siege rationing. “We appreciate you taking time away from your… duties.”

  “Yes,” Councilor Brin said. “We had assumed running the city in a time of crisis might leave you too busy for… songs.”

  Taron smiled pleasantly. “I have learned that a well-placed verse can do more than a badly aimed speech, Councilor. But I am happy to provide both, as needed.”

  Sereth’s lips thinned. “Let us speak plainly. The city is fracturing. The food stores you seized from the Church will not last more than a week at current distribution. Merchants complain their caravans cannot get through the Church lines. The Guild Quarter sends word hourly demanding protection. And now—”

  He gestured upward, as if grabbing at the echo of that groan.

  “—now the very sky is cracking,” he finished. “Elara Voss says reality itself may collapse. Do you have any idea what that does to public morale?”

  “Yes,” Taron said. “I walked through the market this morning. People look up more than they look at their neighbors now. That is never a good sign.”

  Brin leaned forward. “Then something must be done. We cannot sit in this temple and wait for the Church to decide our fate. Or for the heavens to fall.”

  “What would you like me to do?” Taron asked mildly. “Go outside and argue with physics?”

  A muscle jumped in Brin’s jaw. “Negotiate,” he said. “With the Church. With the external Council forces. We are not monsters, Master Taron. We do not want to see our people butchered. There are… arrangements that can be made.”

  “Arrangements,” Taron repeated. “Such as?”

  “Limited amnesty,” Sereth said. “For those who lay down arms and accept a return to proper spiritual authority. The Church will want scapegoats, yes, but better a few heads than thousands.”

  All eyes flicked toward him at that.

  Taron gave slow, mocking applause. “Beautifully said. Poetry, almost. ‘Better a few heads than thousands.’ Very noble of you to volunteer someone else’s neck.”

  “No one is volunteering—” Brin began.

  “You are,” Taron said. “You just do not have the spine to say it plain. You want me to hand over this temple. Hand over the freed prisoners. Hand over anyone who can testify about what the Church did here, including myself and everyone who fought beside me. You are hoping the Church will accept that and leave the rest of you in peace so you can get back to arguing over tariffs.”

  The silence after that had weight.

  Sereth broke it with forced dignity. “We seek a solution that preserves as many lives as possible. Your… uncompromising stance risks everything for ideals people cannot eat.”

  “And your compromising stance assumes the Church will keep any bargain you strike,” Taron said. “Have you already forgotten the execution pit beneath this floor?”

  Mara shifted against the wall behind him, but did not speak. She had voiced all of this to him earlier with more profanity. It had not changed the Council’s angle.

  “We have not forgotten anything,” Sereth said stiffly. “Which is why we know how powerful the Church is. They control the other cities. The supply lines. The armies. You and your… band broke their control here , yes, for now, in this building. But beyond these walls? Their writ still runs.”

  “That is changing,” Taron said. “Other cities are stirring. The Underground networks you dismissed as tavern gossip have teeth you never bothered to see. And the Church has a bigger problem than a rebellious city.”

  He glanced up.

  “The sky,” he added.

  A faint crack had appeared in it yesterday. Just a thin, shimmering line overhead, like a fracture in glass. Today there were three.

  Sereth’s gaze flicked upward involuntarily. “Elara claims that is connected to… whatever you did in the sanctum. To whatever the Church and the Council have been hiding about these ‘gates’ and ‘wells.’”

  “She is right,” Taron said. “And if we do not finish what we started, it will not matter whether we bow to the Church, to you, or to the gods themselves. There will be nothing left to bow on .”

  Brin rubbed his temples. “So you say. But to the people? It looks like the world started breaking after you took the temple. Cause and effect are… malleable.”

  There it was. The quiet accusation he had heard whispered in corridors: that by attacking the Church, breaking the gate, he had angered whatever forces held reality together.

  Taron had thought it himself, in darker moments.

  “Elara can explain the specifics,” he said. “Better than I can. I only know this: the corruption and the drain began centuries ago. This is the debt coming due, not a new offense. We just happened to kick over the altar in time to see the ledger.”

  Sereth spread his hands. “And what would you have us do, then? Sit and wait for the sky to shatter while your scholar plays with old books?”

  Taron smiled without humor. “That is precisely what I intend to do, yes. And hope that from the other side of the gate, Kieran is doing something equally reckless.”

  Brin opened his mouth, then closed it. The others shifted uneasily. They did not trust this Player from another world. They also had no better ideas.

  “We brought supplies,” Taron said. “We have enough grain, if rationed properly, to last a few weeks. We are securing wells. We are organizing patrols to keep the Guild Quarter from exploding. You think we are doing nothing because we are not handing power back to the people who abused it? That is… accurate. I do not intend to return this temple to the Church.”

  “You have no right to hold it,” Sereth said sharply.

  “I have a building full of people who bled for it,” Taron said. “That will do for now.”

  The stone above them creaked again. This time the sound had a faint, crystalline edge, like ice cracking.

  Mara pushed off the wall. “Elara should be at the upper observatory,” she said. “She has people watching the fractures.”

  “Then we are done here,” Taron said, standing. “Unless you plan to arrest me in front of half the city?”

  Sereth’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. In the end, he only said, “This is not over, Master Taron.”

  “Nothing is,” Taron said, and left.

  The observatory used to be a place for priests to chart the heavens. Now it was where people went to see if the heavens were still there.

  Elara stood at the wide window, ink on her fingers and dark circles under her eyes. A half-dozen apprentices worked at tables behind her, moving counters across maps, recalculating figures with each new report.

  Taron joined her at the glass.

  From this height, Caer Valen’s streets looked almost peaceful. The siege lines encircling the city were far enough away that the Church banners were little more than colored smudges. Smoke rose here and there where something had burned and been put out. People moved in miniature through markets and alleys.

  Above it all, the sky was cracking.

  What had begun as hairline shimmer was now a branching web. Lines of pale light scored the blue, faint but unmistakable, radiating from points Taron could not quite fix.

  “Elara,” he said quietly. “Tell me something that will not make me want to drink until I forget my own name.”

  She did not look away from the sky. “I can tell you that it will be over quickly,” she said. “If that helps.”

  “Oddly, no,” Taron said. “Details?”

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  She tapped the glass with one ink-stained fingertip, indicating one of the faintest cracks. “First manifestation appeared here, over the old Church archive. Second over the Gate tower. Third, just now, above the western Energy Well outside the walls. The pattern is not random.”

  “Can you predict where the next will appear?” Taron asked.

  “In broad terms,” Elara said. “Over places where glyph saturation was highest and for longest. Wells, monolith sites, temples. The fractures are anchored where reality was… thinned.”

  “Is it Elendyr itself?” Taron asked. “Or the System?”

  “Both,” Elara said. “The System is the scaffolding that has been propping up a damaged wall. The Energy Wells were stealing bricks from someplace else to keep this one standing. Now that we know the ‘someplace else’ is Earth, and that drain has been pushed to its limits…” She made a small, helpless gesture. “The wall is giving way at the weakest points.”

  “How long?” Taron asked. “If you had to guess.”

  “I do not have to guess,” Elara said. “I have numbers. If the pattern holds, and if the rate of expansion continues as projected, we reach critical failure in… seventy-eight days. Less than three months.”

  Taron exhaled slowly. “And that is assuming nothing else changes.”

  “Yes,” Elara said. “Which is foolish. Kieran has already changed something by leaving. Meridian has by panicking. We have by breaking their gate. The system is not in a steady state. It is in freefall.”

  “And yet you sound almost… calm,” Taron observed.

  “I am very tired,” Elara said. “And I cannot afford to spend what energy I have left on panic. That is what apprentices are for.”

  One of the apprentices looked up at that, stricken. Elara’s mouth twitched.

  “What do we do?” Taron asked.

  “On this side?” Elara said. “We hold. We keep as many people alive and sane as we can for as long as we can. We continue refining the reconfiguration code. We prepare this gate to act as a focal point when Kieran finds a way to use it.”

  “And if he does not?” Taron asked.

  “Then we die,” Elara said simply. “Along with everyone else. But we will do it properly informed.”

  He almost laughed. “You really do not know how to comfort a man, do you?”

  “I am a researcher, not a poet,” she said. “I deal in truth, not in solace.”

  “Sometimes they are the same,” Taron said. “Sometimes.”

  He watched the sky with her for a while. The cracks did not move in any way he could see, but they seemed… sharper somehow. More defined.

  “Have there been any… other effects?” he asked. “On people? On magic?”

  “Yes,” Elara said. “Healers report spells failing unpredictably near former glyph sites. One of Kessa’s apprentices tried to cleanse a minor corruption yesterday and the energy… went sideways. The patient is alive, but the corruption migrated instead of dissolving.”

  “Migrated where?” Taron asked.

  Elara pointed up.

  “Out,” she said. “Into the fractures. It is as if the System is rerouting load to any available pathway.”

  Taron’s skin crawled. “So the cracks are not just a symptom. They are being used.”

  “They are opportunity,” Elara said. “For the System to bleed off stresses. For things to slip through. For… other actors to reach in.”

  “Other actors,” Taron repeated. “Such as?”

  Elara hesitated just a heartbeat too long.

  “Kieran’s Key pulsed yesterday,” she said. “Before you arrived. Briefly. I felt it from the sanctum. The gate responded, just a flicker. I believe he tried to contact us.”

  “And?” Taron asked.

  “And the connection failed,” Elara said. “We are reaching across realities with tools designed for moving people, not messages. It is… difficult. But the attempt tells us he is alive. That he is working.”

  Taron let that sit. Kieran, alive and stubborn on the other side of a cracked sky, felt like both comfort and pressure.

  “What did you tell the Council?” he asked.

  “About the seventy-eight days?” Elara said. “That it might be longer. That if we ration properly and maintain order, we can stretch supplies. I gave them hope with one hand and a countdown with the other. They will do what they always do: argue until the last possible moment, then panic.”

  “You are in a charitable mood today,” Taron said.

  “Realistic,” Elara said. “You asked me for truth.”

  He did not argue.

  Below, in the streets, a shout rose and fell. Not alarm; more of a chant. Someone starting an argument over bread or water, probably. The sound faded quickly enough.

  “Have there been any word from the other cities?” Taron asked. “From the Underground contacts?”

  “A few messages got through before the siege tightened,” Elara said. “At least two other major temples report similar fractures. Smaller towns that never had heavy glyph presence are… quieter. For now. That will not last if the big nodes fail.”

  “And the Church?” Taron asked.

  “They are calling this a test,” Elara said. “A cleansing. The devout are urged to repent and tithe more generously to ensure divine favor.”

  Taron closed his eyes briefly. “Of course they are.”

  He opened them again as hurried footsteps approached from behind.

  Pip, the street runner who had somehow attached himself to Taron’s entourage like a particularly sharp-eyed stray cat, skidded to a stop in the doorway.

  “You should come,” Pip said, breathing hard. “To the lower hall. Corin is back. And he is… he is saying things.”

  “Good things or bad things?” Taron asked.

  “Scared things,” Pip said. “About the sky. About… holes.”

  Elara’s head snapped around at that last word.

  “Holes?” she repeated.

  “Like… openings,” Pip said. He made an awkward tearing gesture. “In the middle of places. People walking and then—” He clapped his hands together sharply. “Gone. Like the gate but… wrong.”

  Elara and Taron exchanged a look.

  “We are coming,” Taron said.

  Corin sat on a bench in the lower hall, hands wrapped around a mug of something herbal. His clothes were scorched and streaked with soot. He looked older than he had a week ago when Taron had last seen him.

  Mara stood nearby, arms folded. Her expression was the carefully neutral one she wore when listening to accounts that might become orders.

  “Taron,” she said as he approached. “He will only talk to you and Elara together.”

  “That is flattering,” Taron said. “Or ominous.”

  “Both,” Mara said.

  Taron sat opposite Corin. Elara took the spot beside him, notebook already in hand.

  “Corin,” Taron said gently. “You made it out again.”

  Corin gave a ragged laugh. “I am very hard to burn,” he said. “Turns out practice helps.”

  “What happened?” Elara asked.

  Corin looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, but clear.

  “You remember the fractures you can see?” he asked. “In the sky?”

  “We could hardly forget,” Taron said.

  “There are smaller ones,” Corin said. “On the ground. In the air. I did not see them at first. No one did. We just… lost people.”

  Taron’s stomach went cold. “Lost how?”

  “One moment they were there,” Corin said. “Talking, shouting, running. Then there was a… shimmer. Like heat on stone. And they were not there anymore. No sound. No scream. Just… gone.”

  “Where?” Elara asked. “Did you see any sign of where they went?”

  Corin shook his head. “I only saw it once, close. At the north gate. Church scouts were testing our lines. One of our lads rushed forward more than he should. I was shouting at him to get back when the air between him and the enemy… broke. Like glass. Only for a heartbeat. On the other side I saw…”

  He swallowed.

  “What?” Elara prompted gently.

  “Not our world,” Corin said. “Not this city. Buildings taller than anything we have. Lights like stars. And noise. So loud. Then it snapped shut and he was gone.”

  Taron and Elara shared another look.

  “Earth,” Taron said quietly.

  “Or another place like it,” Elara said. “The fractures are not only relieving stress. They are linking.”

  “Temporary, uncontrolled gates,” Taron said. “Pulling people at random.”

  “Pushing them, too, maybe,” Corin said. “There were… others. People in strange clothes. They appeared in the middle of the street, panicked, shouting in words we did not understand. Then another shimmer, and they were gone again. Sometimes with others. Swept up like leaves.”

  “How many?” Taron asked.

  “In the north quarter alone?” Corin said. “Two dozen in one day. Maybe more. I did not see them all. And that is just the ones who vanished in front of witnesses. There are children missing. Old folk. People who went to fetch water and did not return. The city is… afraid.”

  “Of you,” a voice said from the doorway.

  Taron turned. Councilor Brin stood there, face tight.

  “You did not mention that part,” Taron said.

  “I was coming to find you when your runner did,” Brin said. “Word is moving faster than we can shape it. People say this is punishment. That the world is tearing because you interfered with the Church’s holy work.”

  “And what do you say?” Taron asked.

  Brin hesitated. “I say the timing is… compelling,” he said. “We never had cracks in the sky before you took the temple.”

  “We did not have reality bleeding at the seams because the debt had not come due yet,” Elara snapped. “Do you truly think the Church was doing the gods’ will by feeding people into an interdimensional grinder?”

  “I think,” Brin said quietly, “that right now, people are disappearing into holes in the air and you are telling them the only hope is to trust in someone from another world and an untested plan to rewrite reality. Forgive me if I doubt their appetite for that.”

  Taron stood. The room was too small. The air too crowded with fear.

  “Elara?” he said. “Is there anything we can do about these… small fractures? Anything at all?”

  “Not directly,” Elara said. “They are symptoms of the same underlying failure. Plugging one would just push the pressure elsewhere. Like jamming a finger into a leaking dam.”

  “And gates?” Taron asked. “Can we use them to control any of this, or are they just another piece of the breaking machine?”

  “They are part of the machine,” Elara said. “Which means, in theory, they can be used to route pressure more safely. But without a full map of the network and access from the other side…” She shook her head. “We would be guessing. And guesswork at this scale kills people.”

  “How reassuring,” Brin muttered.

  Taron turned to him. “You want reassurance?” he said. “I will give you what I have. Kieran is alive. He has allies. They have done something on their side to start changing the System. We just tested a small version of our own patch at one of the Wells. It held. We have proof we can touch the thing that is hurting us.”

  “And if they fail?” Brin asked.

  “Then we fail with them,” Taron said. “There is no separate safety for Caer Valen. Not this time.”

  Brin looked away first.

  “Tell your fellow Councilors that we are working,” Taron said. “Tell them we have seventy-eight days on parchment and fewer in truth. Tell them that surrendering this temple back to the Church will not mend the sky. It will only ensure that when it falls, it falls on their bowed heads.”

  “And if they do not listen?” Brin asked.

  Taron smiled without warmth. “Then they can join us in the lower sanctum when the ceiling gives way. Maybe the gods will appreciate the company.”

  Later, when he stood alone in the sanctum and played a melody toward the dormant gate, he wove the cracks in the sky into the song, hoping that somehow, on the other side, the man with the Aegis would hear the tremor in the notes and understand:

  Time is shorter than we thought.