Eclipsed by Fate: The Covenant Reforged

dies, so do th

a memory folded into the evening and pressed to her ribs, so that whenever dusk fell the words would wake and fidget like embers. She couldn't say when it had first caught her a

s held i

balconies a dozen times too many; it hugged her shoulders like a promise. The drizzle from earlier had left the air still wet and metallic, and her hair, wind-t

ruments forgotten against the cobbles. In an alley off Market Row an old woman banged shutters closed with the decisiveness of someone who had closed more than windows in her life. Children were yanked inside by anx

ith incense from shrines, when alleys filled with molten conversation and lamps threw gossip across cobblestones. Tonight, dusk recoiled like a wounde

red nearby - but a rhythm like a drumbeat under the ribs. It rose and th

edge of that rhythm, p

owe

ng a sound - leathered boots touching stone like secrets. He stepped up beside her and the breath between them was the same night-blood wind. He was less shadow tha

e up here," he said, equa

nd hands knew: the Watchtower of Hollowlight cutting a crooked silhouette, the Moonstone spire in ruin like a tooth left in a skull,

tightened. "Or i

r and then vanish without a call. Birds made no complai

id. "Whispering. It's

in an ugly violet tinge that was almost laughable until it weren't. A patchwork of lamp-light and shadow

el that?"

ow drew down

trembled under her palms, the tremor travel-stiff and faint. "It's like some

em. His hand hovered, just above her fing

stone Ruins where the elders had once pressed iron and oath and blood together. She thought of fragments of an old wa

et - softer at the edges, almost humming, and far too close. When it came out in full, there were runes within its surface, pale g

ft in a small hitch

lways ordinary, shimmered faintly as if something lit the edge of them. The violet was

his voice curdled with fear and s

s," she answered. Her voice ha

"This change

er like a blade. "Every

was what the elders' stones called it. The same symbol carved deep into the obsidian vault: a moon with an eyebrow of shadow, the mark of t

er mother's voice, clipped and sometimes drunk on worries - a memory of a small hand on her ch

acombs?" Cassian aske

t the moonlight into something

firm, human, a tether. "You do. Y

her flared. "It's not destiny

had been with her longer than anyone who still walked free: fence of a past he'd tried to bury,

nuckles pressed a memory into h

the precise snap of someone used to be

t from t

ck gutters, struck a narrow balcony, slid across a lead pipe slick with rain and old lichen. Each stone was an animal underfoot she had learned t

as in her teeth, in the register of hollow bones; it was not a sound to the ear so much as a code under skin. She moved, and the

ity of a thing that had been insulted and was now t

stone, overhung with laundry that snapped like flags, through dead-end courtyards where rats built kingdoms under the moon's violet. Citizens glanced with eyes full of stories: a la

er joints. She pressed her palm flat to the wall of an alleyway and felt the stone answer. The morta

t the clumsy scuff of a common thief. Heavy, measured,

old moonlight: silver fabric ragged at the edges, stitched with patterns she recognized in fragments from the ruins - knotwork like constellations mapped by hands that no longer held

Even under the mask hi

d. The voice came muffled, deeper th

hinned. "Y

," he answered, and there was a weight beh

Runes that pulsed in time with the violet sky. He looked

ke one might inspect a relic. "Y

undred things tonight. The seal cracks. The city

erstand." The man's words skated across t

urve of her cheekbones. "I was born in danger. Raise

May the old accord

r sound. "There are no gods

across years. She could have sworn she heard the echo of chanting - not the petty prayers o

ed across her skin. Somewhere a bell had been struck and

ll, human protest might have whispered into the night. There are moments in which a person becomes

ed towar

aded through the soles of her boots. It spoke in a language older than the merchant guilds and the petty kings, the b

s. The air smelled like old rain and the tang of iron: the smell of things kept in order and then forgotten. Someone - many someones - had scrawled words here once

ung like a questi

d into

ear-bones and marrow. Her breath came in small, deliberate measures; the dagger at her hip felt like an extension of the syllables in her mouth. She moved slo

gers along the carved sigils in the stairwell and in the dim glow of his runes the marks begun to sing with a faint light of their own. The catacombs

yet an alarm. Something like a council convened below; a gossip held in a throa

hought she had left him on the roofs; he always arrived at the

mile that didn't reach the da

e quiet between them

face covered his stance gave away much: shoulders squar

the Watchers," he said. "Of the circle that keeps the moonbound accords." His words were old-f

he stories?

. "We keep what binds. But binding rots. Seals

a student," Elowen said. "Try me.

slit of polished fate. "You were not meant to answer. You we

early." Her ans

ned. "Then answer, Elowen. If the boundary loosens, the things pressed behi

rent thrill. She thought of the obsidian vaults, of elders with inked thumbs, of the relic

s came out harder than she'd meant. "Everything

en, sudden and possessive. "Th

ook that suggested prophecy and blo

ars - old, familiar, and dangerously softening. She wondered, only for a single b

hings are monsters. Not all are friends. The breach will call to those wit

sieve," she said.

both ways,"

aloged. The hum rose into a pitch just at the edge of sense, and in the press of it she heard her own name. Not in the sibilant whis

oice as much as an arrangement of pressure

ravado. They were an acceptance, tempered by the kind of hunger only h

ibed a thing she had seen only in shards: the Bound Moon Prophecy. The verses were not whole; shards of lines slid past her l

the stair, finding them like a ribbon tipped by an unseen hand. Elowen felt it rest across her sh

tween those categories with the careless grace of someone who wore danger like a familiar garment. She thought of her mother, of

pper and old coins. At the center of the room stood a shallow basin, carved with a dozen sigils, now scalloped and cra

stone sang, a note like a memory uncoiling, and for a beat the gallery of cata

ways lived in her head moved through her like current. "When the light dies,

f the moon but with something colder, like flash-frozen light. In that utter

" the Watcher said. "You are

the choice

n sat with that knowledge in her lap like an animal that might bite. She had always been told that prophecies were traps f

nes and try to fit her into letters that had been carved by hands te

a small comfort in the shape of cold metal. "Let's go," she s

holding their breath and finally let it go. The Watcher replaced his

, windows, narrow streets, and a moon that had never looked so like a problem. Lamp

matched the moon's slow pulsing, and she felt, as plainly as a hand against her sternum, t

into the

had carved her name into the bones of the cit

ng to its feet after being nudged awake. The rhyme - ash on the wind - settled in