It was strange-tasting near the Cracked Span.
It wasn't ash, or smoke, or anything hot. It was emptiness as if the air had forgotten what it meant to carry life. Michael walked the narrow road beyond Vel'Kareth's outer ridge, and the silence pressed.
The burned sky above was still Pyrrhion's eternal burn red-orange and lapping like a slow-breathing furnace but here, it flickered less. as if the light was holding its breath.
Kael was in front, sword slung across her back, walking sharp and bright. Anna came in the middle, calm as usual, each step considered, gentle, untroubled by the humidity of the atmosphere building to an unbearable weight. Michael was walking behind her as they made distance but he was watching the terrain but more, he was watching her.
He'd been meaning to ask for some time now.
"Anna," he said, softly, not wanting to shatter the mood, "do you have powers? Like… me? Or Kael?"
She didn't stop walking. She kept her hands clasped behind her back, posture loose. But her eyes when they turned to meet his had a glimmer of lightness.
"I suppose," she said.
Kael turned part-way, looking her way. "Wait. You have a Thread?"
Anna smiled.
"Something like that."
Kael slowed. "You don't act like it. I mean—you're calm. Collected. You are so captivating people listen to you like you're made of light. "But I thought it's just … you."
Anna's eyes didn't change. "It is just me."
Michael glanced between them. "I didn't even know there were people like you and Kael. Until… you know. I died."
Kael crossed her arms. "There are stories. About particular souls who arrive with something extra. Not just Threads. Not just summoning. Eyes. They call them Eidolon Eyes."
Michael looked back and forth, frowning slightly. "Eidolon Eyes?" he asked. "What are those?"
Kael shot him a look. "You've never heard of them?"
He shrugged. "I haven't exactly gotten around to reading the encyclopedia of reincarnated soul magic."
Keal looked forward again, her voice lower. "They're rare. Like, world-tilting rare. Most people don't even think they exist apart from the ones who have seen them. They're said to be born of trauma so deep, or clarity so intense, it brands your very soul for eternity. Gives you an Eye that mirrors what the world commonly conceals."
She turned to Anna again. "You have one?"
Anna's face didn't change. "Two."
That stopped Kael's cold. Michael swallowed, not because he understood (he didn't), but because he felt how the words moved the air between the two of them.
Kael fell silent for a moment. Then just, "Damn."
Michael glanced at Anna, but she had already turned back toward the path. Calm. Serene. As if the subject had been tea, or the weather, or something simple and light.
He just didn't comprehend what an Eidolon Eye actually was. But at that moment, he didn't have to.
Because whatever had happened… did not change the fact that Anna was Anna.
And that was already plenty.
...…..
The Cracked Span wasn't broken in a single way.
It was broken in every sense, but it wasn't broken completely. Not shattered just wounded. The land dipped in here like something had pushed too hard on the surface of reality and hadn't completely healed.
Trees grew sideways. Flame pools throbbed like flaccid veins. There was no heat in the air, even though the ground pulsated.
Michael initially said nothing. He just watched. Every change in the environment made his stomach tighten, as if he was bracing for something to go wrong but had no reason to believe it would.
Kael led a little ahead; she carried a blade in her hand, and her typical swagger was reduced to sharp-eyed caution. Anna walked beside Michael, their robes whispering along the dust-cracked path.
They passed a small cliff where fire vines had dried not burned, but blanched, colorless, and frozen.
"This place shouldn't be this quiet," he muttered. "Even out here. Flame is never still."
Anna didn't answer.
Then they saw her.
A woman, in her mid-thirties perhaps, sat with her legs crossed at the foot of a crumbled obelisk—an ancient pyre shrine now rent in two. She wasn't bleeding. She wasn't chained. She wasn't dying.
She was just… empty.
Her eyes were open but unfocused. Again and again, her lips moved faintly. Michael moved closer, and her voice, almost a whisper, came through to him.
"He wanted to know who I was … and I couldn't tell him."
Michael froze.
Kael squatted, attempting to read her. "She's not wounded. She has no spirit mark on her skin. No feedback burns."
Anna knelt down silently and took the woman's hand. Her expression didn't shift but Michael noticed. A flicker of sorrow. The type that only someone with lifetimes behind their eyes could carry.
"Someone's tampered with her Thread," Anna said softly. "Not cut. Not broken. Convinced to let go."
Kael stood slowly. "That's not a person. That's something other than her."
"No," Anna replied. "That's what remains after something else departs."
Blue Falters
Michael had felt it then his fire spirit, so often collected, so close before, drifted away. It sputtered like a guttering candle, its light fading until it resembled more smoke than flame.
He reached, mentally, and tried to summon. Nothing.
Then again tried to force the fire up out of his core.
A tiny flame flickered into being on his palm and then became cold.
Not icy. Just… flame with no purpose. Like a bulb that no longer knew what it was burning for.
Michael clenched his fist. "What is this?"
Kael didn't answer. She focused on the cliff wall nearby an old scorch mark there, half-stained with dust. It's Not a natural burn. A sigil ignited in flame and forgotten.
Anna looked at it too. And for the first time since they'd met her since Pyrrhion, since the city, since the rooftop nights and the quiet firelight Michael saw her expression change.
Just slightly.
Her lips parted. Her eyes narrowed. And for a moment, she was a woman who recognized a name she never wanted to utter again.
Kael surged forward, pointing. "I don't recognize that. What is it?"
Anna's voice was soft. "I saw it once. In a Realm No More."
Michael turned toward her. What do you mean 'doesn't exist'?"
She looked away.
"Not everything survives the Cycle."
Kael didn't argue. She simply gripped her sword tighter and looked toward the horizon. "We need to figure out what did this. And if it's still nearby."
Michael looked at the summoner again—whispering again, hollow again. A name is almost spoken. A soul nearly erased.
Something had gone through here.
And it had made the world a quieter place for it.