Nyxi's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

The pale body still steamed on the ice when Nyxi stood and faced her circle. The bowls burned green again. She lifted her voice and called the night. The sky bent down to listen, then stopped. Her throat could not reach the next word. The tongue she needed was older than stars, and she did not have it. Lyr stepped close, her dress crackling with low light. "Your voice is not enough," she said. "The dark wants an older mouth." Yza moved to the edge of the circle, hands folded, eyes steady. "Then we give it one," she said. "I carried something for this." From inside her sleeve Yza drew a heavy book. Its cover was stitched skin, dyed deep red, bound in cord. The ribbons hanging from its spine moved on their own. Plymaz looked at it once and nodded. "That will hold," he said. "Open it on the broken bowl." Nyxi knelt and set the book where the green flame had spilled. The cover opened by itself. The pages were dark and wet. A voice rose out of them, not loud, not hers — a sound from before sound, low and patient. Umi watched without moving. "Beautiful," she said. "And not yours. Borrow carefully." Nyxi pressed her palm to the open page and let the old tongue speak through her mouth. The word came out cold. The circle closed. Every bowl flared at once, then went black. Above them the sky cracked from edge to edge, and a thin sheet of true dark slid across the stars. Not all of them. A strip. A first cut. Nyxi lowered her hand. The book's pages turned by themselves, hunting the next word, and would not stop. Lyr's mouth tightened. "It is reading you now," she said. The realm had given Nyxi her first piece of night — and taken the price in private, a debt written somewhere she could not yet see.