The Shard's Voice

I woke screaming words that weren't mine in a language I'd never learned.

The shard burned against my chest—not the warm pulse I'd grown used to, but actual fire. I clawed at my shirt, expecting to find charred flesh, but my skin was unmarked. Only the crescent mark behind my ear bled, a single drop of crimson that tasted of copper and starlight when it reached my lips.

The nightmare clung to me like wet silk. I'd been someone else—a woman with silver hair and desperate eyes, standing before the Book of Threads itself. She'd reached for it with hands that streamed moonlight, screaming about justice, about rewriting what should never have been written. Then the divine fire had taken her, not burning but unmaking, until even her screams became threads unwoven.

A Thread War memory, some deep part of me understood. The shard remembers.

Dorian's fire had gone cold. No—not just cold. Dead, as if it had never held flame at all. The forest around me held its breath in that particular way that meant predator or prophecy, and I couldn't tell which was worse.

The shard pulsed again. Not painful this time, but insistent. Like a child tugging at sleeves, demanding attention. Demanding... movement.

I rose on legs that barely felt like mine. The mark behind my ear throbbed in rhythm with the shard, creating a harmony that made my bones ache. Without choosing to, I found myself walking. Not on the paths Dorian had shown me, but deeper. Older. Following something that might have been memory or might have been command.

The cliff edge appeared between one heartbeat and the next.

Below, morning fog obscured everything past the first few feet. I could have been standing at the edge of the world, and maybe I was. The shard grew warmer, its crystalline surface beginning to glow through the leather pouch I'd fashioned for it.

Touch me truly, it seemed to whisper. Not words—the divine didn't lower itself to human language. But intent, clear as moonlight. See what you're becoming.

I'd resisted since claiming it. Kept it close but contained, wrapped in leather and caution. But here, at the edge of everything with nothing but fog and fall below, resistance felt like cowardice.

"No. Not like her. I won't burn for answers," I whispered to myself.

Still, I pulled the shard free.

The world shattered.

No—not shattered. Unveiled. Like someone had been holding painted glass before my eyes my whole life, and only now was I seeing what lay beyond.

Threads. Infinite threads stretching across a void that wasn't dark or light but something altogether other. Each one pulsed with its own rhythm, its own color, its own song. Lives and bonds and connections that transcended flesh, written into the very fabric of existence.

But some threads were wrong.

I watched—helpless, bodiless—as a Council priest severed a child's thread. Not in rejection, but in ritual. The broken ends didn't drift apart as mine had. Instead, he gathered them like rope, weaving them into something else. Power. Raw, stolen, fundamental power drawn from a soul's most sacred connection.

The vision shifted.

A temple burned with silver fire. Not the Old Temple where I'd found the shard, but something grander. Ancient. A woman stood at its heart, and for a moment I thought I was seeing myself. But no—her face was different, older, marked by scars that spoke of battles I'd never fought. Yet her eyes...

Her eyes were mine. Or would be mine. Or had been mine in some future-past that the shard remembered.

She led wolves bound not by thread but by flame itself. Silver light connected them, created a pack that transcended blood or bond. They moved as one, thought as one, burned as one. And when they howled, the very stars trembled.

This is what you could become, the shard whispered. This is what they fear.

The vision shifted again.

Deeper now. Past memory into something that felt like the universe's unconscious. A black wolf waited in a place that wasn't a place, surrounded by pages that weren't pages. The Book of Threads itself, but not as object. As entity. As prison.

The wolf's eyes were silver as moon-tears, and when it saw me—truly saw me—it smiled with too many teeth.

Sister, it said without speaking. You're almost ready.

Pain exploded through my skull. I tasted copper, felt warmth on my lips. Blood. My blood. The shard was showing too much too fast, trying to pour infinity through a vessel meant for mortality.

But beneath the pain, a question formed. Not in words but in the space between heartbeats:

Will you rewrite, or repeat?

I understood then. The woman who'd died reaching for the Book—she'd tried to change her own thread. Selfish. Personal. Limited. The woman leading wolves bound by flame—she'd tried to replace one system with another. Still threads. Still binding. Still chains, even if they glowed prettier.

But me? Thread-severed, flame-touched, standing at the edge of all things with divine fragment in my hand?

I could do something else.

"I choose," I gasped, blood running freely now from nose and mouth, "to awaken slowly."

The visions shattered. I was back on the cliff edge, shard clutched in fingers gone white with strain. But I was changed. Could feel it in the way the morning light hit my skin, the way the fog below seemed to pulse with my heartbeat.

I pulled the bone knife from my belt. Without hesitation, without plan, I carved into the skin of my left wrist. Not deep—this wasn't about pain or payment. This was about claiming.

A second crescent. Inverted. Mirroring the mark behind my ear but facing the opposite direction.

One mark given by the Goddess. One mark taken by my own hand.

Balance.

The shard's urgent pulling ceased. It settled back into warm quiescence against my palm, satisfied or at least accepting of my choice. I'd refused its flood. Chosen instead to drink power one sip at a time, to become whatever I was becoming on my own terms.

"Aria."

Dorian's voice cut through my meditation. I turned to find him emerging from the forest, and my blood went cold.

He carried a body.

A rogue from the look of it—male, scarred, the kind who'd survived seasons in the wild. But survived was the wrong word now. The corpse was burned from the inside out, flesh charred in patterns that followed vein-lines. His eyes had melted, running down his cheeks like tears of glass.

"The Inquisitor has crossed the border," Dorian said, dropping the body without ceremony. "One of the Flamebound. Trained to track divine sparks." His gold eyes found mine, harder than I'd ever seen them. "They smell the shard now. Smell you."

I'd heard of the Flamebound in whispers. Wolves who'd undergone something worse than rejection—who'd had their threads not severed but burned away by holy fire. It left them empty, perfect vessels for the Council's will. Perfect hunters of anything that glowed with unwanted divinity.

"This one was scouting?"

"Testing." Dorian nudged the corpse with his boot. "Seeing how the shard's resonance affects lesser wolves. The real Inquisitor won't be so easy to burn."

I looked at the corpse's destruction—the precise patterns, the way the burning had followed specific pathways. "You didn't do this."

"No." His smile was sharp as winter. "You did. The shard did. Your proximity did." He stepped closer, and I smelled ash and old fear on him. "We don't run anymore, flame-bearer. Next time, you learn how to kill a holy man."

The moon chose that moment to reveal itself, though the sun still claimed the sky. But instead of silver-white, it glowed red as heart's blood. Red as the drops still drying on my lips.

An omen. Even I, raised as the lowest Omega, knew that much.

A crow's harsh call broke the silence. Not a normal crow—this one was ancient, scarred, missing an eye. It landed on the corpse without fear, a message cylinder bound to its leg.

Dorian removed it with careful fingers. The wax seal was black as void, pressed with the mark of the Lunar Council. The highest authority in all five territories, voices of the Goddess's law made manifest.

He broke the seal, read, and his face went very still.

"What?" I asked, though I already knew it would be nothing good.

He handed me the parchment. The words were written in silver ink that seemed to move on the page:

By decree of the Lunar Council and the Grace of the Goddess:

The one calling herself flame-bearer will present herself before the Twelve at the rise of the Trial Moon. Seven nights hence. She will answer for her heresies, submit to divine judgment, and accept the Council's mercy.

Should she refuse this summons, her ashes will suffice as answer.

The Inquisitor Matthias Silverclaw has been sanctioned to retrieve either.

May the Moon have mercy on the threadless.

I read it twice. Three times. The words didn't change, though the silver ink began to smoke against my skin.

"Seven nights," I said quietly.

"Seven nights," Dorian confirmed. "The Trial Moon is when the Council performs its deepest judgments. When they—" He stopped, jaw tightening.

"When they what?"

"When they unmake wolves who've grown too far from the Goddess's design." He took the parchment back, watched it dissolve into silver ash. "They want to study you. Understand you. Then erase you."

The shard pulsed against my chest, no longer warm but hot as forge-fire. The new crescent on my wrist throbbed in answer. And somewhere in the distance, I could swear I heard howling. Not normal wolves.

Flamebound. Hunting.

"So," I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded. "You'll teach me to kill a holy man?"

Dorian's smile was all predator. "I'll teach you to kill a god's own hound. But first—" He nudged the corpse again. "We burn this. No traces. No trails. Let them wonder why their scout never reported back."

As we built the pyre, I found myself thinking of the black wolf in the vision. The one that waited in the Book itself, calling me sister.

You're almost ready, it had said.

Ready for what?

The shard held its silence, but I could feel its satisfaction humming against my ribs. Whatever I was becoming, whatever the Council feared enough to send Inquisitors and ultimatums, it was accelerating.

Seven nights until the Trial Moon.

Seven nights to decide if I would go to them, or make them come to me.

Seven nights to become something even the Twelve couldn't unmake.

I touched the inverted crescent on my wrist, felt it pulse with power I'd claimed rather than received.

Will you rewrite, or repeat?

Neither, I decided as the corpse began to burn with regular fire. I would revolt.

And if the Goddess had opinions about that, She could tell me Herself.