Chapter 13: The Fracture The schematic pulsed on the obsidian pedestal. Theron turned to me with that look he got when he'd made up his mind about something. The conduit we'd just created still shimmered between us and the thinning, but he was already moving past it. "Now," he said. "We channel the primary energies. Directly through the conduit, just as the schematic shows." I looked at the glowing diagram again. The lines were clear enough, showing the flow of power from the artifact through the conduit and into the heart of the thinning. But there was something about the sequence that still bothered me. The external conduit we'd woven was delicate, a thread of silver and blue that had taken careful manipulation to establish. What Theron was proposing would send a torrent of raw energy through that thread. "Theron, wait. The conduit is stable, but it's not reinforced. If we channel too much power too quickly—" "The schematic is explicit," he interrupted. "We've established the external pathway. Now we use it. The longer we delay, the more the thinning spreads. I can sense it even now, Helena. The erosion is accelerating." He wasn't wrong about that. The air in the archive had grown colder since we'd arrived, and the subtle distortions at the edges of my vision had become more pronounced. The thinning was spreading, eating away at the stability we'd just tried to create. "But the sequence," I started again. "There's a reason the schematic shows multiple stages. We've only completed the first one. If we skip ahead—" "We're not skipping. We're proceeding. The conduit exists. The next step is to use it." Theron's voice had that edge to it again, the one that said he was done discussing. "Unless you have a better interpretation of these symbols?" I stared at the schematic. The truth was, I didn't have a better interpretation. The diagram showed the conduit, then showed the channeling. What I had was a gut instinct that something was off, that the delicate thread we'd woven wasn't meant to carry the kind of power Theron was talking about. But instinct wasn't the same as knowledge, and Theron had made it clear he valued certainty over caution. "Fine," I said. "But we start slowly. We test the conduit's capacity before we commit to a full channeling." "Agreed." He moved back toward the alcove where our conduit terminated, the silver and blue thread still pulsing with that steady rhythm. "Position yourself opposite me. We'll mirror the synchronization we used to create the conduit, but this time we're not weaving. We're channeling." I took my place across from him, the conduit between us like a bridge made of light. The artifact in my hand had grown warm again, its hum rising to match the increased tension in the air. Theron held up one of the larger crystals from our collection, a deep amber stone that seemed to absorb the dim light of the archive. "This will serve as the primary focus," he explained. "I'll channel through it, and you'll use the artifact to amplify and direct the flow. The conduit will carry our combined energy into the thinning, where it should begin the mending process." Should. That word hung in the air between us. Theron had been so certain about everything else, but now he was using words like "should." Maybe he wasn't as confident as he pretended to be. "On my mark," he said. "Begin with a low-level channeling. We'll increase gradually." I nodded, focusing on the artifact. The warmth in my hand spread up my arm as I began to channel my magic through it. The silver light that had woven the conduit earlier now flowed more freely, responding to my intent. Theron's amber crystal flared, and a deep golden light joined the silver, the two streams meeting at the conduit's base. The thread of light brightened. The silver and blue we'd carefully woven now had gold running through it, a third color that made the whole structure more complex. The conduit held, but I could sense the strain. It was like watching someone add weight to a rope that was already taut. "Increase," Theron commanded. I pushed more power through the artifact. The silver light intensified, and the conduit's glow became almost blinding. The golden thread from Theron's crystal thickened, and I watched as the three colors began to spiral around each other, creating a helix of pure magical energy. The conduit trembled. "Theron, it's not stable—" "It's holding. Continue." But it wasn't holding, not really. I could see the way the light flickered at the edges, the way the spiral pattern we'd created was starting to fray. The conduit had been designed for gentle persuasion, for coaxing the thinning to align itself. What we were doing now was forcing power through it, and the structure was beginning to buckle under the pressure. "We need to stop," I said. "We need to reinforce the conduit before we go any further." "We're almost there." Theron's voice was strained now, and I realized he was channeling more power than I'd thought. The amber crystal in his hand blazed like a small sun, and the golden light pouring from it had become a torrent. "The schematic shows a threshold. Once we reach it, the mending will begin automatically. We just need to push through." Push through. That was exactly what we were doing, and exactly what I'd been afraid of. The conduit wasn't a channel anymore. It was a dam, and we were flooding it with more water than it could hold. The artifact in my hand began to pulse erratically. The steady rhythm that had guided us through the weaving process was gone, replaced by a frantic, almost panicked beat. I tried to pull back, to reduce the flow of power, but Theron was still channeling at full strength. The golden light overwhelmed the silver, and the conduit's spiral pattern collapsed into a chaotic tangle of colors. "Theron, stop!" He didn't stop. Maybe he couldn't hear me over the roar of magic that had filled the archive, or maybe he was too focused on reaching that threshold he'd mentioned. The amber crystal in his hand cracked, a thin line appearing down its center, but he kept channeling. The conduit shattered. Not all at once, but in stages. First, the outer layer of blue light peeled away, dissolving into mist. Then the silver thread began to unravel, its carefully woven structure coming apart like a rope under too much tension. The golden core that Theron had forced through it blazed brighter, trying to maintain the connection on its own, but without the supporting structure, it had nothing to anchor to. The backlash hit me like a physical blow. Raw, unmediated energy exploded outward from the conduit's collapse, a wave of pure magical force that sent me stumbling backward. The artifact in my hand screamed, its hum rising to a shriek that made my teeth ache. I tried to contain the energy, to redirect it back into the artifact, but there was too much of it. The careful balance we'd maintained during the weaving was gone, replaced by chaos. Theron shouted something, but I couldn't hear him over the roar. The amber crystal in his hand exploded, shards of stone flying in all directions. He threw up a shield, a desperate barrier of golden light that barely held against the backlash. The archive trembled, and I heard the sound of stone cracking somewhere above us. The spectral guardians stirred. They'd been dormant since we'd created the conduit, their translucent forms fading into the background. But now, with the conduit's collapse flooding the archive with uncontrolled magical energy, they were waking up. I watched as their forms solidified, becoming more distinct, more present. They weren't attacking yet, but they were watching us with those ancient, silent gazes, and I had the distinct impression they were waiting to see what we'd do next. "Theron!" I managed to shout over the chaos. "We need to contain this!" He was already moving, his hands weaving patterns in the air as he tried to gather the scattered energy. But it was like trying to catch smoke. The backlash from the conduit's collapse had dispersed in all directions, and every attempt to contain it just seemed to make it worse. The thinning at the edge of the archive began to spread. I could see it happening in real-time, the way the stone walls started to blur and fade, the way the air itself seemed to thin out and become translucent. The conduit's collapse had destabilized the very thing we'd been trying to fix, and now the erosion was accelerating. "The artifact!" Theron shouted. "Use it to absorb the excess energy!" I looked down at the disc in my hand. It was still shrieking, still pulsing with that frantic, panicked rhythm. Using it to absorb more energy seemed like a terrible idea, but I didn't have a better one. I focused on the artifact, trying to calm its chaotic pulsing, trying to guide it back to that steady rhythm we'd established during the weaving. It resisted. The artifact had been designed to duplicate, to amplify, not to absorb. Asking it to contain the backlash was like asking a mirror to swallow light instead of reflecting it. But I didn't have a choice. The alternative was letting the energy continue to spread, continue to destabilize the archive and accelerate the thinning. I pushed harder, forcing my will through the artifact. The shrieking intensified, and for a moment I thought the disc would shatter just like Theron's crystal had. But then something shifted. The artifact's pulse changed, becoming slower, deeper. It wasn't calming down so much as changing its nature, adapting to what I was asking it to do. The scattered energy began to flow toward me. Not all of it, but enough to make a difference. The artifact pulled it in, drawing the chaotic magical force back into itself. I could see the silver light returning, coalescing around the disc in my hand, but it was different now. Darker. More volatile. Theron was still trying to contain his portion of the backlash, but he was losing ground. The golden light from his shattered crystal had dispersed too widely, and without a focus to channel through, he was just throwing raw power at the problem. The spectral guardians were growing more distinct with every passing second, their forms solidifying as they drew strength from the chaos. "It's not working!" he shouted. "The energy is too dispersed!" I could see that. The conduit's collapse had created a feedback loop. The backlash destabilized the thinning, which released more energy, which fed back into the backlash. We were making it worse, not better, and I didn't know how to stop it. The schematic on the obsidian pedestal flickered. The glowing lines that had seemed so clear before were now distorted, warping and twisting as the archive's instability affected even the ancient diagram. I stared at it, trying to find some clue, some indication of what we were supposed to do when everything went wrong. There was nothing. The schematic showed the ideal path, the perfect execution. It didn't account for failure. "Helena!" Theron's voice was desperate now. "The guardians!" I looked up. The spectral forms had moved closer, their translucent bodies now solid enough to cast shadows. They weren't attacking, but they were surrounding us, forming a circle that cut us off from the rest of the archive. Their ancient gazes were fixed on the artifact in my hand, and I realized they weren't just drawn to the chaos. They were drawn to the artifact itself. The conduit between us and the thinning was completely gone now, its carefully woven structure reduced to scattered motes of light. In its place was a jagged tear, a wound in reality that pulsed with the same chaotic energy that had destroyed the conduit. The thinning was spreading through that tear, reaching into the archive like fingers of erosion. Theron tried to move toward me, but one of the guardians blocked his path. It didn't attack, just stood there, a silent barrier between us. He tried to go around it, but another guardian moved to intercept. They were separating us, isolating us from each other. "Don't fight them!" I shouted. "They're not hostile, they're just—" The archive shook. Not a tremor this time, but a violent lurch that sent me to my knees. The obsidian pedestal cracked, a deep fissure running through its center. The schematic's glow intensified, then flickered, then went dark. The ancient diagram that had guided us this far was gone, leaving us with nothing but the chaos we'd created. The artifact in my hand pulsed one more time, a deep, resonant beat that I could sense in my bones. Then it went silent. Not dormant, but waiting. The silver light that had been coalescing around it dimmed, and I could see hairline cracks spreading across its surface. Theron was shouting something, but I couldn't hear him anymore. The roar of the backlash had become deafening, drowning out everything else. The spectral guardians were fully solid now, their forms as real as mine or Theron's, and they were closing in. Not attacking, just watching, waiting. The external conduit we'd worked so hard to create was gone. The careful balance we'd maintained was shattered. And the thinning, the erosion we'd been trying to stop, was spreading faster than ever. I looked down at the artifact in my hand. The cracks on its surface were growing, spreading like a spiderweb across the ancient disc. My initial caution, my instinct that we were moving too fast, had been right. But right didn't matter anymore. We'd pushed forward anyway, and now we were facing the consequences. The conduit cracked one final time, and I watched as both realities began to destabilize.