The rooftops of Tharros were slick with rain, each tile a treacherous step between survival and a thirty-foot drop into the canals.

Ren Talvos didn’t have the luxury of caution. The shouts behind him were getting closer. The city watch weren’t built for climbing, but they didn’t need to be — one archer with a clean shot, and he’d tumble into the Sarrun’s black waters.

Left, the voice whispered. Not from behind, not from ahead — it came from everywhere. From the rain running off his hood. From the glint of lanternlight in the puddles. From the shard clutched in his gloved hand.

Ren obeyed without thinking, vaulting over a narrow gap to land on the tiled roof of a bakery.

Now down. Trust me.

He skidded to the roof’s edge and saw only a blind drop into an alley three stories below. “That’s not a street,” he hissed under his breath.

Not yet.

A bolt clattered off the roof tiles inches from his boot. No time. He jumped.

The fall was shorter than it looked — or the shard had made it shorter — and he landed hard in a pile of rotting crates. He rolled to his feet, ignoring the splinters digging into his coat. Somewhere above, a voice cursed, and bootsteps thundered past.

Good. They’re chasing your shadow now.

Ren ducked into the maze of backstreets. The shard’s weight in his hand was wrong — too heavy for its size, like it contained something that wanted to pull free. In the fractured reflection of a broken bottle on the ground, he saw its jagged edges gleaming, light bending across them in unnatural colors.

“Next time,” he muttered, “you tell me what we’re running from before I nearly break my neck.”

Would you have listened? the voice asked, amused.

Ren didn’t answer. Somewhere in the city, bells began to ring — not for the hour, but for the hunt.

Ren didn’t stop moving until the bells faded into the distance, their sound swallowed by the constant hiss of rain on slate and stone.

The safehouse was nothing more than a forgotten warehouse tucked between two leaning tenements, its doors swollen from years of damp and neglect. He shouldered his way inside, the hinges shrieking like a dying gull.

Inside, the air smelled of mildew and dust. Moonlight leaked through a patchwork of broken windows, casting pale shards of light across the warped floorboards.

Ren set the crystal on the table in the center of the room — a jagged, uneven piece the size of a man’s palm, edges catching the dim light and splitting it into slivers of strange color. The shard seemed to hum faintly, not with sound but with the vibration of a thought pressing against his own.

“You can speak now,” Ren said, voice low. “We’re alone.”

We are never alone.

The voice was sharper here, clearer, like the rain outside was only a curtain pulled between him and something vast.

“You’ve been steering me for weeks,” Ren said. “Saving my life one moment, throwing me into chaos the next. What are you, really?”

You know what I am.

“I know what they call you. The Shattered Glass. A relic from the Old Age. But names aren’t answers.”

The shard’s facets flared briefly, and for a heartbeat the light in the room fractured into dozens of overlapping shadows — each of them him, but not quite: older, younger, scarred, laughing, lifeless.

I am the truth you are not ready to see. I am every choice you could make, and every price you will pay.

Ren stepped back, hand going to the dagger at his belt. “If you’re trying to scare me—”

—I am trying to prepare you.

The glow dimmed, settling back into its steady, unnatural shimmer.

“You said there were more of you,” Ren said finally. “More shards.”

Seven more. Each held by hands that will not release them willingly.

“And if I gather them?”

Then you will have the power to mend what was broken… or to break what was mended.

Ren’s mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of faith in me.”

Not faith, the voice murmured. Necessity.

A sudden knock echoed from the warehouse door. Three slow raps, then silence.

Ren’s hand froze on the dagger hilt.

See who knocks before you decide how to strike, the shard urged.

He padded to the side of the doorway, keeping out of sight. The warped wood left thin cracks through which he could see the street beyond. A figure stood in the rain, cloak drawn tight, head bowed just enough to hide their face. But the way the weight sat on the left side — Ren knew it instantly.

He opened the door just enough for his voice to carry.
“I thought you were dead, Master Veyran.”

The hood lifted. The face beneath was leaner than Ren remembered, skin weathered by years outside the city’s comfort, but the eyes… the eyes were still cold steel.
“I was,” Veyran said. “And then I found something worth coming back for.”

Ren’s hand tightened on the dagger. “You mean this.” He nodded toward the shard on the table.

Veyran’s gaze flicked past him, and the faintest smile touched the old glasswright’s lips. “You’ve kept it safe. Good. Now hand it over.”

“Not happening.”

The smile vanished. “You think you know what you’re holding? That thing will cut deeper than any blade — straight through your mind. I tried to keep you from it once, Ren. I won’t try again.”

The voice of the Shattered Glass cut through the air, sharp as breaking crystal. He lies. The shard is yours by right.

Ren’s stomach knotted. Two voices — one from the man who’d taught him everything, one from the thing that had saved his life — pulling him in opposite directions.

“You left me to burn,” Ren said.

Veyran didn’t deny it. “And I’ll leave you again if I have to. But first…”

Steel whispered from its sheath. The blade in Veyran’s hand was forged from some pale, crystalline glass, edges catching the light in lethal rainbows.

Ren stepped back, every instinct screaming that the fight had already started.

Strike first, the shard urged. Shatter him

The warehouse seemed to shrink around them.
Rain drummed against the roof, water dripping through the warped beams in thin, steady threads.

Veyran moved first. A flick of his wrist sent a fan of glass slivers screaming through the air, each piece catching the moonlight and splintering it into vicious, glittering arcs.

Ren dove sideways, the shards hissing past to bury themselves in the door behind him. They quivered there, humming faintly — and then began to flow, edges knitting together into a single jagged spike that pulsed like it was alive.

Careful, the Shattered Glass warned. His craft is bound to him. Even the pieces obey.

Ren’s free hand went to his belt, fingers brushing the smooth edge of a smoke vial. He hurled it to the ground, and a thick, choking cloud filled the warehouse.

“Still hiding behind tricks,” Veyran’s voice came through the fog. “Did I teach you nothing about standing your ground?”

Ren didn’t answer. The shard’s power was already curling through him — cold, sharp, eager. He stretched out his hand, and the air between them split, thin cracks of light jagging through the smoke. Through those fissures, Ren could see Veyran’s outline as if the fog didn’t exist.

Veyran turned just as Ren stepped forward, thrusting the magic into the floorboards. The wood splintered outward in a burst of conjured glass shards, a jagged field cutting a path between them.

But Veyran didn’t retreat. He walked through it, the shards bending away from his coat like they remembered his hand.

Ren’s stomach sank. He’d forgotten what it was like to fight the man who had taught him.

Veyran’s blade caught the light again — then he slashed low, the motion sending a ripple through the floor itself. The boards cracked open, spearing upward into a rising wall of razor-sharp glass that surged toward Ren like a wave.

The shard’s voice rang inside his skull. Break it.

Ren thrust his palm forward, the crystal in his grip flaring white-hot. The wave exploded mid-surge, raining down in harmless slivers. For a moment, the air was full of glittering fragments — and in each, Ren thought he saw Veyran’s face, coming closer, blade raised.

The blade arced toward him, close enough for Ren to feel the breath of air it pushed before it struck.
He ducked under it, but Veyran was already pivoting, his off-hand slashing with a smaller shard-knife.

Ren twisted away, the edge grazing his coat — and then the world split. The Shattered Glass flared in his palm, not as a weapon this time, but as a door.

A jagged seam tore open in the air beside him, a rift edged in raw, flickering light. Through it, he saw a rain-slick alley only a dozen paces away from the warehouse.

Now, the shard pressed.

Ren didn’t argue. He threw himself through. For a heartbeat, he was weightless in a place of fractured light, his body stretched across a dozen shards of himself. Then his boots hit cobblestone and the seam snapped shut.

The alley was empty save for the rain and the echo of his ragged breathing.
Inside the warehouse, Veyran’s voice carried faintly through the storm.

“You can run, boy. But I will find you. And when I do, I’ll cut that parasite out of your hand before it devours you.”

Ren didn’t move until the voice was gone.

Only then did he look down at the shard. It was warm now, almost pulsing against his skin, as if pleased.

You see? it whispered. Only I can keep you ahead of him.

Ren shoved it back into the pouch at his belt and started walking. Every step away from the warehouse felt heavier than the last.

The hunt had begun — and this time, it wasn’t just the city watch on his trail.