Page 37 of The Last Remaining Light

That stubborn, beautiful girl. The trembling in her voice hurt worse than it should have.

She stared directly at Caelyn now, her crystalline blue eyes wide with confusion and descending horror. Caelyn wanted desperately to explain something—anything—but he had no explanations left to give.

Because the truth was horrifyingly simple.

He didn't understand what he was either.

“How long have you known?” Elowynn asked, her words breathless.

“I didn't know. Not truly,” he answered honestly.

Agatha’s gaze snapped toward him as if she knew he was withholding information.

“Alright… not fully,” Caelyn corrected, swallowing hard. “About, uh… nine? Ten turnings ago? It was around the time of the Blackwake in the eastern province. I knew odd things happened around me sometimes that involved the resonance within astrylite, but I never…” His voice faltered as he took a step closer. “I never knew why.”

The starway’s sigils began to glow behind them again as he moved. The warped resonance crawling through the chamber seemed to recoil around him, forming that same terrible silence Elowynn had noticed moments earlier. Caelyn saw her subtly flinch as her connection to the aethercurrents dimmed again beneath his presence.

Stars, take him. He moved away from the structure, a few steps back, everything returning to a dormant state once more.

The look on Elowynn’s face nearly destroyed him.

“El—”

Tears were threatening to spill from her stunning eyes. He wanted to reach for her, and as he stepped forward, she stepped backward instinctively, her head shaking.

That one movement struck harder than any blade.

Caelyn immediately felt the hurt twist through his chest. Before he could hide it, he winced, his fingers curling into fists at his sides to keep from putting his hand out.

“No,” she said quickly, shaking her head more as though trying to correct herself. “No, I just…” She pressed trembling fingers against her temple, eyes squeezing shut. “Stars! I am trying to think.”

Agatha finally stepped between them. “Enough.” Her tone ricocheted along the stones and through the chamber. “No one speaks of this outside these halls. Do you understand me?” she demanded, looking between the pair.

Neither answered right away.

“Elowynn,” she prompted, her voice rising some.

A long silence followed before Elowynn nodded once.

Agatha turned toward Caelyn next, her amber eyes hardening beneath the dim lantern light. “And you,” she said while pointing a gnarled finger at him. “You will tell me everything. From the beginning.”

Caelyn sighed, long and heavy. “There really is not much to tell,” he admitted. And there wasn’t. His mother had told him not to tell anyone. So he hadn’t. What little he knew, what memory he had, he would give Agatha.

“That—” Agatha replied grimly, “—is precisely what concerns me most. A Null who doesn’t understand the extent of their own abilities is a danger to the world.”

Chapter Eight

“The stars vanish each dawn and still return. We are not always granted the same mercy.”

— Old Aetheri proverb

Dawnfall, 749 A.V.

The abbey remained unchanged after the undercroft.

Summer had returned fully to southern Aetheris. Sunlight spilled in luminous gold across the western cliffs, warming the faded stone corridors while sea winds drifted through the open archways carrying the scent of salt and blooming ivy. Below the observatory terraces, the gardens had exploded into color from the rains of the last moon, and younger scholars hurried busily between the observatories in lightweight robes with ink-stained fingers and arms full of disorganized charts and loose notes.

Everything should have felt peaceful.