Interlude 5
Nowhere to Hide
Cyra adjusts her grip on Stillcurrent, feeling its familiar hum beneath her skin.
The Fractal Prism stretches before her, a crystalline maze of shifting mirrors and refracted lights. Each surface splinters her image into distorted echoes, fragments of a self she barely recognizes. Overhead, her Liminal Blade hovers like a silvery moon, the soft pulse of its glow synced to the measured rhythm of her breath. Its presence steadies her, an unspoken bond that says, You are not alone.
She channels that reassurance into focus.
No doubts, no tremors.
The Prism demands perfect control.
As she steps onto the first platform, a lance of fractured light spears toward her. She lifts a hand, Semblance shimmering as it halts the shard’s deadly momentum mid-air. The energy quivers at her fingertips, and the Liminal Blade brightens in response, a silent nod of approval. With careful precision, she redirects the shard into a hidden glyph. The walls rearrange themselves with a low rumble, revealing a new path.
Yet focus alone cannot quiet the whisper of memory. The High-Exarch’s voice drifts through her mind, as inevitable as her next breath: “Your uncle’s changes are not what they seem, Cyra. He reshapes the Mere for his own ends.”
She wills the memory away and springs onto the next ledge, her landing softened by Stillcurrent’s delicate influence. As the platform crumbles behind her, the Liminal Blade leaves a silver streak in the air. The muscles in her legs tense, recalling how Titus—her uncle, now her mother’s husband—once praised her grace and cunning. Back then, his voice held warmth. Before he captured Kaelenya’s heart and bound himself to their family legacy, he had been a mentor figure—harsh, but never cruel. Or so she thought.
Now, according to the High-Exarch, Titus orchestrates trials that kill initiates with calculated efficiency. He claims it’s for Malkiel’s strength, for House Azure’s indomitability. But Cyra cannot shake the feeling of something rotten beneath his careful words. Her family dynamic, already fragile after the marriage, now feels like a web of lies. She wonders how her mother would react if these revelations surfaced. Would Kaelenya condemn him, or would she stand by the man who helped secure her people's status?
“Titus believes he protects Malkiel,” the High-Exarch had said. “He would claim necessity. But necessity can be a blade with two edges.”
As Cyra navigates a floating corridor of mirrored facets, her Semblance snags a blade of light and gently warps it to stillness. The smell of ozone lingers in the air—faint and sharp—reminding her of nights spent training with Titus, when the clash of practice blades sparked the same scent. Back then, such moments felt like forging steel—painful, but purposeful.
Now she cannot tell if she was tempered or just manipulated.
She channels her tension into action.
Her movements are fluid yet urgent, each success unveiling deeper layers of the Prism. In one twisted hall, reflections swirl like ghosts. Before her, fractured images of herself shimmer—some expressions resolute, others clouded by doubt. A few avert their eyes altogether, as if unwilling to witness what she is becoming.
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As she fights through the Prism’s final obstacles, the High-Exarch’s documents loom in her memory: lists of vanished initiates, training accidents that were not accidents at all.
Her chest tightens.
She thinks of Janus, set adrift in the labyrinth beneath the Mere—her worry for him gnawing at her with every heartbeat. The Prism challenges her physically, but the true battle churns inside her. If she exposes Titus, civil war might ignite. If she stays silent, more innocents die. Including maybe Janus.
The Liminal Blade flickers, sensing her turmoil.
She re-centers herself with a slow inhale. The blade’s glow steadies, and her heart slows to match its rhythm.
With one precise beam of refracted light, she unlocks the Prism’s final barrier. The mirrored walls dissolve, granting her passage back into the outer chamber. Her muscles ache, and a film of sweat cools on her skin. She should feel triumphant, but only hollow uncertainty fills her chest.
A subtle glow on the stone floor catches her eye: a polished fragment etched with the Mere’s sigil, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
Kaelenya’s whispers from long ago drift through Cyra’s mind—legends of hidden corridors and secret powers, stories Titus never bothered to acknowledge. Her mother’s gentle voice and Titus’s calculating gaze are a tangle of memory and meaning. This sigil, this new summons, beckons her deeper into the Mere’s ancient veins. She wonders if it leads to truths that could unravel all she thought she knew.
The Liminal Blade dims slightly, as if urging caution, but Cyra tightens her grip on the stone. She cannot return to her quarters and pretend ignorance.
No. Not while Janus is fighting for his life, not after learning the horrifying purpose behind Titus’s manipulations.
Without fully understanding why, she follows the sigil’s silent command down a corridor seldom walked. Her Semblance flares at each trap, halting swinging blades, steadying collapsing floors. Her senses sharpen. The scent of ancient dust and distant magic seeps into her lungs. The Liminal Blade’s soft glow wavers over carvings of the First and Second Shatterings—epic tragedies etched in stone, distorted if she looks too closely.
“If you expose Titus now,” the High-Exarch had warned, “Malkiel could tear itself apart. Is that a burden you can bear?”
She had nearly wept then, hand trembling above damning documents. Now her tears remain unshed, each step a step deeper into responsibility. Her silence buys time—nothing more. She will not let it become complicity. Her decision may fracture her family, wound her mother, and spark conflict with forces waiting in the dark. But she will not be a pawn in Titus’s game.
At last, she reaches a hidden chamber lit by a single glowglobe. Broken blades and dented armor lie scattered on cold stone, relics of ancient strife. She can feel the old wounds in the silence, taste the bitterness of sacrifices made centuries ago. The Liminal Blade hovers above, cloaked in subspace—an ever quiet sentinel.
Perhaps I can carve my own path?
The High-Exarch emerges from the shadows of memory. His golden mask flashes in her mind’s eye, a symbol of authority and secrecy. He demanded patience. He demanded silence for now. Yes … she will give him that silence—but only long enough to understand the full truth.
She closes her eyes, recalling Titus’s stern face—the mentor, the uncle, the man who now shares her mother’s bed and wields deadly influence.
Tension coils in her gut.
The path ahead is uncertain, but that has never stopped her. She feels the Mere watching her, every carved figure on the walls a silent witness. The Liminal Blade hums, its light no longer just a reflection of her resolve, but a companion to it.
Cyra steps back into the corridor, sigil stone clenched in her hand. Each footstep echoes, whispering that the stakes are higher now—personal, political, mortal.
She will not let Titus’s treachery fester. She will choose her moment carefully, expose him when she can minimize the fallout.
Until then, she learns, she plans, she becomes the hunter, not the hunted.
The Liminal Blade’s light guides her through the gloom, illuminating nothing and everything: the fractures in her family, the shadows in Malkiel’s corridors, and the courage simmering in her heart.
Her silence is a shield and a blade, poised to strike when the time is right.
Soon enough, she will set the rules herself.