The morning after the Convocation did not rise, it unfolded — slow, deliberate, as though the Glen itself were stretching after a slumber that had lasted not days, not years, but centuries unmeasured. The air was thick with a hush not of silence, but of fulfillment. The kind of stillness that follows the final chord of a song too holy to name.
All around Dawnroot Glen, the earth exhaled coolness. The scent of lilac petals — damp, bruised, and fallen like offerings — mingled with the faint metallic ghost of pyre smoke, the memory of torches that had burned in vigil all night and now lay in sooty halos across dew-laced grass. Above, the newborn star no longer flared with the sharpened brilliance of celestial newness; instead, it glowed a quiet amber, like the heart of an old candle — warm, unwavering, and oddly mortal.
I awoke not in my chambers, nor beneath stone and sigil, but in the infirmary loft of the Academy, swaddled in a cradle of dawn-thread — a hammock of memory and light, strung between unfinished beams. The rafters above still bore marks of the construction paused for Convocation rites, and below them, the gentle hum of a lullaby carried through the dust-speckled light.
A custodian novice — Aster, whose voice always trembled like the last note of a harp string — stood over me, murmuring the melody we had once offered to the restless pillars. Their hands carried a steaming bowl of moon-grass tea, its scent sweet and earthy, like moss warmed by sun. I drank, and the coolness ran through me like clarity, flushing exhaustion with something like purpose.
My feet touched stone just as Calia appeared, all bustle and breathlessness, her ever-present ledger hugged tightly to her chest. Her hair had rebelled against its braid and now crowned her like an untamed halo — she looked like chaos made competent.
"Half the delegates took wing before dawn," she reported, flipping open her notes with fingers smudged by ink and determination. "The rest are still haggling over research desks and airship docking rights." She tapped the leather-bound cover. "But none challenged the tariffs. Sincerity, so far, prevails."
"Good," I rasped — my voice still sanded raw from speeches and the soul-deep chanting that had threaded through root iron veins.
"Any sign of Valke?" I added, knowing the answer would fall like a stone.
"Sky legion swept every coastline east of the Waxen Isles. All they found was driftwood and steam. The crater still breathes." She paused. "No body."
Not dead, then. Gone. As shadows do. I tucked the unease into that inward shelf where future battles quietly wait. "And Ravan?"
Calia's expression softened into something wry and faintly exasperated. "Behind the forge annex. Mud up to the elbows. Apparently, emperors birth saplings now."
And indeed, I found them there — behind the forge where the newly tilled soil had been prepared for the Academy's orchard-to-be. The space had not yet been sanctified by ceremony or syllabus, yet something sacred was already happening.
Echo knelt in the loam, planting fragile sprigs of hybrid lilac-glass vine, her fingers delicate and stained. Beside her, Ravan crouched low, pressing root lanterns — half stone, half biolume — into the soft earth. They worked without grandeur, their rhythm an unspoken harmony: Echo humming the lullaby in a high, breathy tone, Ravan reciting dark, old planting verses that curled like smoke from ancient hearths.
When he looked up, his silver eyes were rimmed in red, yet they shone with a lucidity I hadn't seen in years. "The seedlings asked," he said, "why the light stays. I told them stories."
Echo, solemn and sun-kissed, turned toward me, her porcelain diadem dusted with pollen. "Name day?" she asked softly, as if speaking to the grove itself.
I crouched, traced a fingertip over damp soil that still remembered the dead. "The Quiet Heart," I said.
She beamed, and the vines, stirred by some unseen current, trembled their agreement.
Brina arrived soon after, courier scroll in hand. Regent Myron of Aurelian had sent reparations — grain shipments to coincide with autumn's first lesson. A gesture, political and cosmetic. I instructed Brina to accept half. The remainder would be rerouted to Ashvale, where famine still clawed. Let generosity wear the perfume of memory, I thought. It lingers longer.
The peace did not last.
Midafternoon arrived wrapped in heat and warning. Vael descended from the pavilion roof, feathers bristling with static tension. "Dust storm," he said simply. "Southbound. No wind. No natural cause."
We climbed the observatory steps, our eyes turned to the horizon.
There, churning like some great beast exiled from time, was a copper stormfront — roiling forward without wind to push it. Through the spyglass, I saw it: mirror grit, flickering and cruel, riding the wave of dust like broken dreams.
Lys arrived, their cloak a flare of yellow. "Residual threads," they murmured. "When the Loom sealed the fissure, not all hunger was contained. Some rose — expelled like breath held too long. And now it returns, seeking resonance."
If it settled over the Glen, over the orchard, over the iron-veined earth — the hunger could rise anew. We had, perhaps, two hours.
Ravan summoned an emergency Weave Circle in the amphitheater. Every apprentice, every smith, every custodian and delegate gathered — shoulders squared, hearts thundering. I proposed the Veil Sails — massive, shimmering sheets woven of dawn-thread warp and mirror petal weft, able to redirect the dust rather than trap it. Calia brought the prototype. The smiths would need to scale it twentyfold.
The Circle became a symphony of urgency.
Brina's rebels erected sail frames on the ridgeline. Vael's wind legion poised above, ready to shepherd the storm's arc. Echo, guided by the soft whisper of Caelia through her pendant, taught the apprentices a counter-hymn — a resonance of dissonance, meant to confound the dust's purpose.
Even Esmenet — ever the merchant queen — rolled up her sleeves and hauled shuttle crates like a laborer. "Commerce demands product stability," she muttered, ignoring the flustered murmurs of her peers.
Time bent. Hours hissed by. My fingers bled from threading as the sails rose like prayers. The first gust of dust reached the ridgeline — Vael dove, his wings slicing wind into crosscurrent. The sails billowed, magnificent and strange, humming lullaby chords like temples breathing.
Dust met them — and hissed.
It sounded like ocean spray on shattered stone. The mirror flecks were caught in shimmering arcs, deflected harmlessly. The resonance that carried hunger struck the sails — and splintered.
A few strands slipped past.
They fell upon the orchard.
Echo stepped forward, alone, and loosed a single, clarion note. The sprigs trembled. The mirror dust transformed — transmuted — into glittering dew that fell upon the roots like starlight's tears. The children watching shrieked with wonder.
The cloud broke.
The sails held.
Applause swelled, raw and relieved. Lys' cloak turned teal — the color of triumph.
I collapsed into the grass, hands ruined, heart full.
That night, banquet tables lined the amphitheater, crowned with ember bread, honeygrain, and starfruit that shimmered like captured dusk. Drums pounded from repurposed smith anvils, and the apprentices danced beneath the constellations they had helped protect.
I slipped away.
To the terrace. To the mirror bowl.
Caelia appeared, as she always did — surface flickering, eyes tired but kind.
Dust sleeps, she said. But the spool thins. The Weft Eaters test the edges.
"They always will," I answered. "We thicken the thread."
She nodded, her approval a ripple, then silence.
Ravan found me there, two cups of mountain cider in hand. We clinked them softly, like sealing a pact.
"The forest breathes. The sails stand. The orchard lives." He smiled. "A good day, Leora."
I leaned into his shoulder. "The threads hold. For now."
Below, Echo and Calia danced, glitter dew scattering like stars fallen too soon.
I closed my eyes.
Listened.
The loom's heartbeat. The roots' sigh. The sails' rustle. The newborn star, pulsing softly. A soundscape of peace — fragile, stitched with courage and compromise.
Tomorrow, I would draft ethics codes, negotiate trade, perhaps chase echoes of Valke's absence.
But tonight — beneath a sky unstained — I breathed with the Loom's quiet heart.
And knew: dust can be redirected, hunger can be gentled, and dawn thread can hold — if we are willing to bleed our sincerity into every pattern.
The tapestry waited for morning.
And I was ready to pick up the shuttle again.