Aris saw it before anyone else. Perhaps it was the unique perspective of seeing in the Solvent itself. When she asked those in the group about the line that appeared above the Heart, all they could describe was a line of darkness that flickered like a dark flame. Ral was sure it was the same dark flame that came out of a Gate. Aris agreed with this assessment as she could see the same strange void-like qualities of the dark line as if it was a stretched out Gate.

However Aris could see it open slightly at its midpoint. The opening of which grew by the day. When it finally translated into the real world and Ral could see the slight bulge in the middle of the line, it had opened enough in the Solvent for Aris to see that it resembled an eye opening.

Except unlike a Gate it seemed so far away to her. It chilled her to think that if the eye opened completely, it would look like a moon that hung too close to the world. She wondered if the similarity was on purpose.

The Gate opened by Verne’s parents was the catalyst, Aris was almost sure of it. Laell plotted the exact location and it completed the triangle shape for Aris via her view in the Great Solvent. If they included the Gate opened by Lord Teverine, it would sit at the last vertices. She found it difficult to explain to everyone else.

“The triangular shape is then used to summon an even greater Gate, the beginning of which is what you see above us,” Aris said to the group. They started to use the room Rask found by the port as their meeting room.

“M-modular enchantment,” Laell muttered. Aris could see her solute surrounded by tiny specks of runes. The men had a table dragged up for her and she had been making talismans nonstop the moment the dark line appeared.

“What’s that?” Rask asked.

“It’s a method of casting a large, complicated enchantment by engaging in smaller, simpler ones.” Aris paused. “It’s like telling ten short stories that are related to each other to convey a larger, more complicated story.”

“So the smaller Gates around the Heart… they are strategically opened to be a part of an enchantment to form a huge Gate,” Ral said.

“It seems like it.”

“It doesn’t look or act like a Gate,” Rask said. “It’s just a line.”

“It’s getting wider,” Ral pointed out. “We have to assume it will continue to open.”

Rask made a thoughtful sound. “But how? A solute had been needed for every other Gate to fuel its opening. Even ones formed without an enchantment use a solute of an unsuspecting Gaian. By that theory, this one also needs something to fuel it.”

Rask made a good point. Upon looking at the dark line, Aris couldn’t make out anything that would resemble a solute. Of course, perhaps she was too far away to see it, but it seemed impossible that any regular solute would be able to power something of that scale. Then perhaps this ‘Gate’ was opened by some other method; it begged the question: could she and Ral close it at all?

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Verne hadn’t spoken much since his parents died. That night when his father died, Aris had been silently following her brother when the group seemingly disbanded. She had every intention of going her own way to start her own search of the city. But something about the way Verne sounded prompted her to follow him when he urged Ral to leave.

When she saw his parents and overheard their conversation about their manservant, she immediately went to fetch Ral. As far as she could tell, Verne had no idea his parents were colluding with the Bringers. The whole incident was horrible, of course, but she could not shake a sense of relief that at least Verne had been proven innocent in all of it. He has nothing to do with whatever religious fueled insanity his Sekrelli family had been embroiled in.

But despite that, she couldn’t help but feel something was off when Lord Teverine died. Aris wished she could claim tactfulness as the reason why she hadn’t broached the subject with him, but in reality there were more pressing matters at hand for her.

If she really had to grasp at a single silver lining to the situation was that the very visible phenomenon stretched over the Heart’s sky prompted a mass exodus from its population. The group hardly needed to do anything to start their initial task of evacuating the capital. However there were many refusing to leave their homes despite the signs in the sky. Rask and Ral set off to try to convince any official to give some sort of announcement, but the most important ones have left the Heart.

“Even the emperor is gone,” Rask said after a morning of running around the city. “Convinced some dock worker to tell me he saw his ships take his majesty to Academy island.”

“They said he left days ago,” Ral pointed out. “It sounds suspiciously like he knows something.”

Aris folded her arms. It wasn’t long ago she raged about the empire’s less than tepid response to Caelis being wiped off the map. The emperor had been suspicious since the beginning, but due to his extremely private nature people had always waved it off. His response was tepid towards everything, they would reason. The familiar bite of anger rose from the pit of her stomach, but to her surprise it died down.

The time to say ‘I told you so’ comes after.

“If the emperor abandoning his palace doesn’t convince people to leave, nothing will,” Aris said. “Right now we need to get rid of that thing in the sky.”

“I can make m-more talismans,” Laell said. “I just need t-time and materials.”

Because Ral was in the room, the runist didn’t add the fact that the Yscian had been helping her. It had been increasingly hard for Laell to not take an academic interest in Mikol, especially learning that his people also use runes on a regular basis. Aris suspected she used ‘rune making time’ as an excuse to speak to him about his people.

“And I need to look at that thing from another angle,” Aris said. “I’ll get more materials on the way.”

She was about to beckon her brother to join her when she felt a hand on her arm.

“Verne will go with you,” Rask said. The Freerunner used a tone of voice she was extremely familiar with. It was the same one he used when she and her brother were younger and they needed to be ushered to bed.

Her first thought was that her brother was much better at consoling anyone, hence it would be useless for her to be stuck with Verne. But then she thought about the handkerchief tucked beneath the cloth belt of her clothing and of Verne’s silence. There had been no sorrow, no anger, no incredulity from the Sekrelli. Just silence.

She remembered that she knew of pain and loss.

“Alright. I need help carrying things anyway.”