Mira had never run so hard in her life, not from someone, but from herself.
Even as she slept, her hands twitched with sparks, her breath curled in coils of light, and something inside her kept humming like a warning siren. By morning, the room Zeke had hidden her in—an abandoned theater behind the school, was scorched in patches. The floor crackled under her steps. Her dreams had bled into reality.
And yet, Lys was smiling.
"Good," she said, nodding to the singed curtains. "That means your Threadlight is waking up."
Mira scowled. "If this is what waking up feels like, I want to go back to sleep."
Lys flipped her long braid over one shoulder and tossed her a pair of black gloves. "Put those on. You're not controlling it yet."
"I noticed."
The gloves itched when she slid them on, like they didn't want her, but they muffled the glow of her fingers just enough.
Zeke sat in the back of the room, arms crossed. Watching. Not talking.
Mira felt like she was being judged by an audience of ghosts.
Training, according to Lys, didn't start with spells or power bursts.
It started with names.
"You call it the Rift. But it's more than that," Lys said, chalk in hand. She drew the spiral on the dusty theater wall, then circled it three times. "It's not just a crack. It's a consciousness."
Mira raised an eyebrow. "You mean it's… alive?"
"It doesn't live like we do," Lys said. "But it remembers. It adapts. And worst of all, it listens."
She wrote five names around the spiral:
1. Echoes
2. Shardbearers
3. The Riftbound
4. The Awakened
5. The Unnamed
Mira read them slowly. "What am I?"
Zeke spoke quietly from the back. "You're somewhere between Awakened and Shardbearer."
"And what's a Shard?"
Lys pointed at Mira's chest. "That."
Mira looked down.
At first, she saw nothing.
Then, as if peeled from invisibility, a faint shimmer appeared near her heart.
A crystal, small, silver-blue, and beating in time with her pulse.
Mira gasped. "That wasn't there before."
"It was," Lys said. "But now it's awake."
Mira didn't feel awake. She felt like she was going to pass out.
Lys tossed her a wooden rod.
"Try channeling through this," she said.
Mira stared at it. "It's a stick."
"Exactly. If you can light up a stick, you can control bigger things later. You start small or you explode."
Zeke muttered, "Sometimes both."
Mira focused.
Nothing happened.
"Don't force it," Lys said. "Feel it like a thread. Something pulled toward you, not pushed."
Mira closed her eyes.
And felt it.
A tug.
Like a thread being yanked deep in her chest.
She reached.
The rod lit up.
Not in flames, but symbols. Faint blue runes shimmered across the surface, curling like vines.
Lys raised a brow. "Huh."
Zeke stood. "That's fast."
"I thought you said I was unstable," Mira said.
"You are," Lys replied. "But maybe that's exactly what the Rift wants."
Later that day, Lys took Mira beyond the school grounds, through a hidden path beneath the cemetery gates.
The tunnel led to a chamber Mira didn't know existed.
The walls were stone. The floor was etched with a giant spiral, cracked in places.
"Welcome," Lys said, "to the first Riftsite."
Zeke didn't follow them in.
Mira turned. "Where are you going?"
"I'll stay here," he muttered. "There are things I… don't want to see again."
She didn't press.
Inside the chamber, Lys knelt by a pedestal. On it sat a mirror, fractured, but glowing faintly.
"This is a sealed riftshard," she explained. "Each one holds a piece of something that fell through."
Mira's breath caught.
Her reflection moved, but not in sync with her.
It blinked slower. Smiled later.
Lys handed her a dagger.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Mira asked.
"Cut the reflection."
"That sounds like a terrible idea."
Lys didn't argue.
Mira took the blade.
The reflection watched.
She hesitated.
Then slashed.
The mirror screamed.
Not out loud—but in her mind.
A burst of energy shot out from the glass, and Mira stumbled back. Her gloves burned away instantly, and the glow on her skin surged like a sunrise.
Lys shielded her eyes. "You just cut through a tether."
"To what?"
"The Echo that's been watching you since day one."
Mira shivered. "You mean there was more than one?"
"They don't stop with just a copy," Lys said. "They multiply. Layered versions. Loops. Some of them aren't just mimics."
"Then what are they?"
"Predictions."
Mira sat down, chest heaving. "This is insane."
"And it's only beginning."
As they left the chamber, Mira caught sight of something written on the wall in faded paint.
A name she hadn't heard before.
Elric Devereux.
She stopped cold.
"Who's that?"
Lys glanced back. "I was hoping you'd ask."
"You know him?"
"Better than you'd like. He was the last Awakened to carry the Codex before you."
Mira's heart pounded. "That's… that's my last name."
Lys nodded.
"He was your father."