{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreiemzajjw5ven6vpwpbrf6i62mqfkuvcnwimyh4j7rwmzjehlkv5sq",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:wae56x7iervx4xwdjniixzjl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mo54lzoensa2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreialxw2wrtrvxcgpzhqmjlzulchqvepeqg35prg3udskocer6eej4q"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/png",
    "size": 2916253
  },
  "description": "This is a draft chapter. Contents will change between now and final publication as this chapter and the book continues to undergo revision.\n\nThis is currently being made available for free as a thank you for helping the PRIDE: Brighter than the Stars Bundle on Itchio meet its goals. A new chapter unlocks with every $500 milestone.\n\nGet the Bundle Now\n\n\nChapter 13\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere is potentially another option, Zephyr whispers while Petra and Kiut Tshu debate whether they trust the Evenstar or not. ",
  "path": "/shackles-and-shards-shattered-chapter-13/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-13T01:37:27.000Z",
  "site": "https://dreaming.daxmurray.com",
  "tags": [
    "Get the Bundle Now"
  ],
  "textContent": "This is a draft chapter. Contents will change between now and final publication as this chapter and the book continues to undergo revision.\n\nThis is currently being made available for free as a thank you for helping the PRIDE: Brighter than the Stars Bundle on Itchio meet its goals. A new chapter unlocks with every $500 milestone.\n\nGet the Bundle Now\n\n* * *\n\n# Chapter 13\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n _There is potentially another option,_ Zephyr whispers while Petra and Kiut Tshu debate whether they trust the Evenstar or not. _It comes with great cost, but it could be the key to victory._\n\n_What is that?_\n\n_Free me._\n\n_And the cost?_\n\n_Doing so would mean you lose me as your protector. Once I am unshackled, I shall never return to our meadow._\n\n_What does that mean?_ But she does know without him telling her. He has been protecting her for years; protecting her from something she does not want to remember. Something that is too painful for her to accept.\n\n_We will try some other way first. I—_\n\n _This, Sresca. This is why you failed._\n\nShe wants to argue with him, wants to interrogate him; ask him how he knows what he does. But he is gone and her meadow seems impossibly far away.\n\n“The mountains,” Kiut Tshu says, plucking a book from the floor of the sanctum and tearing out a blank page from the start of it. She draws out the map shown by the Evenstar before tracing a new route upon it. “There’s another shard of Where Shadows Sleep that we can use to get out of the area of the Temple and into the mountains, first. Then we can make for the mines. There’s a hatch over there,” she points to the altar.\n\n“We’ve decided to trust her?” Sresca closes the doors and pulls down the barricade, but it does nothing to dampen the screams.\n\n“Doesn’t matter. She is right about one thing; we have to get out of here. Then we can figure out what is next.” Kiut Tshu wanders behind the altar, dust rising around her. “It’s over here. Let’s be off.”\n\n“Not yet,” Petra says. Sie glances over hir shoulder one more time at the door. “Not yet, wait.”\n\n“We don’t have time.” The cries outside are growing, the wind banging on the windows and the flames they carry lick at the door. Whatever mayhem Oksana has brough to the doors of the Temple is only escalating.\n\nPetra bites hir lip. “The collar. Oksana can track us with it.”\n\nSresca reaches for the metal ring around her neck, so accustomed to wearing it now that she had forgotten in the chaos of their escape that she had it on still. “But I don’t know how to take it off.”\n\nPetra takes a metal disc from hir pouch and lifts Sresca’s hair from her neck. “This should be the key.”\n\nHolding her breath, Sresca waits. But the metal only grows hotter.\n\n“What’s wrong?”\n\n“This should have worked. Unless Oksana already thought of this and…” Petra takes a breath. “Will you let me try another way?”\n\n“How?” Smoke slips under the cracks of the doors and through the shattered glass of stained-glass windows; it burns her nose and she has to hold back a sneeze.\n\n“I can try to melt it off.”\n\nSresca takes a deep breath, determined to show no fear. “If you think it will work.”\n\nPetra rips hir long, flowing sleeve from the ceremonial jacket and slides it in the thin space between the back of Sresca's neck and the collar.\n\n“Here,” Kiut Tshu says, pulling a flask of water from her belt. She pours a little bit of it onto the sleeve while Sresca ties her hair forward and lays on her stomach.\n\n“Be quick. Please.” She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut. The hair on her arms stands on end, and she isn't sure if it’s because of her nerves or the strange sensation she sometimes gets when close to an aclaeric wielding their power.\n\nThe heat is intense, and she almost vomits as the smell of melting metal floods her nose. But she forces herself to hold still.\n\n“Good girl,” Petra says. “I almost have it off. You're doing so well.”\n\nThe heat increases and she knows her skin will be red and angry for some time. She takes a deep breath and nearly screams in pain when Petra's long fingers skitter across her neck and the collar clanks to the stone floor. “I’ll have to find another one for you after this is all over. You looked so pretty with it.”\n\nSresca is too relieved by the loss of the aclaerical tracker that she does not register Petra’s words. “So we can get going now?” She gets onto her hands and knees and looks down at the melted chunk of metal on the floor. All that remains around her neck is the leather cord with her talisman. She tentatively hovers a hand over the former collar and does not feel any heat radiating from it. Nor does she feel the tingle of aclaere. Whatever powers it had possessed are now gone.\n\nPetra extends a hand, and Sresca takes it, allowing herself to be lifted to her feet, again noting how long Petra’s fingers are. “Thank you,” she says, looking into Petra’s hazel eyes and almost recoils at the intensity. Fear, longing, apprehension, determination, and something else, all swirling inside hir impossibly large eyes.\n\n“Freeing the princess from her shackles is the least I can do,” Petra says, bowing gracefully. Sresca wishes she could ask if they are back to their courtly games or if… She shakes her head. It doesn’t matter. They are on the run.\n\nShe looks one more time over her shoulder toward the Temple. Her home for so many years, the only home she can remember. The holy place where Dana resides, the Dark Lady, the Shadowsinger; the Goddess she had pledged her life to and sworn to follow. And now, she is running away. _I’ll be back, my Goddess._\n\nKiut Tshu lifts the hunk of metal in her palm and tosses it a few times up and down before hurling it out of a window. She smirks and then turns back to Petra and Sresca.\n\nAgain, Sresca searches for the hidden hatch that will lead them back into the dark below; a different underground tunnel, a different destination, a different mission.\n\n“Do you keep any rations in here?” Petra looks under the altar, lifting a silk cloth without any of the reverence that should be shown to a holy artifact.\n\n“Yes, there should be some food and water.”\n\n“Grab all of it. We’re going to need it.”\n\nKiut Tshu does not argue. She disappears behind a door nearly falling from it’s hinges.\n\nPetra leans against the altar and picks at the loose threads remaining from what was once an elegant silk sleeve. “I mean it. You looked very pretty with a collar around your neck. Maybe I’ll get you one with a sparkling gemstone on it and a matching leash.”\n\nSresca’s face burns and her skin prickles. “What does that mean?”\n\n“I said we would take it slowly, that does not mean I cannot imagine what I will do when our courtship finally reaches it’s climax.”\n\n“We are on the run from a monster and you speak of courtship?”\n\n“All of the folk stories about knights and princesses involve monsters and quests. Why shouldn’t ours, too?” Petra leans down next to Sresca, hir mouth too close to Sresca’s ear, hir breath hot on her neck. “I will free you from the shackles of the monster but that doesn’t mean I won’t place new ones on you. A knight has to protect the princess, and that is so much easier to do when she can’t leave the knight’s sight.”\n\nSresca shivers and shakes her head. “We have a mission,” she repeats.\n\nKiut Tshu returns with several backs and clears her throat but Petra does not back away from Sreaca. “I have enough rations for the three of us for a week. We will have to find a way to hunt or get more water after.” She hands a pack to Petra and Sresca and then shoulders her own pack.\n\n“Let’s get going.” Sresca does not want to linger any longer in this strange, shattered sanctum. She can feel Dana’s presence in the walls, in the floors, echoing from every corner. But she can feel something else, too. Something just as divine, but far more ancient. Kiut Tshu sinks into the hole in the floor, her feet finding the divots carved into the stone as she lowers out of sight.\n\n“You next, princess. I’ll make sure nothing follows us.”\n\nSresca wants to tell Petra to stop calling her ‘princess.’ That is over now. She will not even be the puppet-princess now. But she can’t bring herself to. Some part of her flutters in excitement at the thought of Petra being her knight.\n\nShe can’t give herself the chance to second guess her choice, she climbs into the hole in the floor and grips the wooden rails running on either side of the steps in the wall.\n\nPetra manages to close the hatch behind them and the whole world goes black; darkness surrounding them once more.\n\nKiut Tshu leads them through the shadows, unerringly moving through the darkness with deftness; and Sresca can only hope that there is a temple for them to return home to once they have the Ring of Refulgence.\n\n* * *\n\nWhere the Shadows Sleep continues on for hours before Sresca notices a subtle incline—they are heading upward. Eventually, she sees a faint light ahead of her. “A cave,” Kiut Tshu informs them. “This path in the Sleeping Shadows leads out through a cave. We should be past the mountains now.”\n\nThey must have walked all through the evening, for when the cave opens up and they are swallowed by the dawn. The sun is just rising above the treeline, and the chill of morning still lingers in the air.\n\n“There’s a town up ahead,” the Mercy says. “We should be able to rest there, resupply, and then get moving again. The Evenstar said the entrance to the Erevluné is on the border between Danalov and Khornov. We should be there tomorrow evening if we don’t take too long here.”\n\n“What’s the name of this village we will be resting in?”\n\n“Nazamosk,” Kiut Tshu says. “We’re on the border of Khornov and Danalov right now.”\n\nSresca looks at the snow-covered fields stretching before them. Khonov is the province of Sekristall. Her home for most of her life. Spreading out before them to the west is Danalov, a province she has never been to.\n\n“The Erevluné is outside of the mining town of Almezosk, in the north of Danalov. It shouldn’t be too difficult to get there tomorrow.”\n\nPetra reaches up and clutches the star pendant at hir throat. “I still don’t know if I trust the Evenstar.”\n\n“I do trust her,” Sresca says.\n\n“I suppose that will have to be enough for now,” Petra replies, patting Sresca on the shoulder.\n\nSresca is about to say something when the sound of hoofbeats in snow breaks the morning silence. She spins around to see two dozen riders, all wearing cloaks in the reds and yellows of the Great House of Khotov—Volkov’s house.\n\n“We need to be gone,” Petra says.\n\n“No, we need to know what they are doing.” She slinks into the shade of a nearby copse of trees, instinctively searching the shadows for echoes, finding more than a few. She tries to stay focused on the approaching riders and she assimilates the shadows of the past and forces them into her talisman. Just in case, she tells herself.\n\nThe group of riders draws closer and Sresca gasps when she sees who is leading them.\n\nOksana.\n\n“How did she get here so quickly?” Petra grabs Sresca’s sleeve and pulls her backward. How could she have followed them? Even with the fastest horses, Oksana and her students should not have been able to catch up with them.\n\nThe instructor raises her hand and those behind her halt. “Listen up, aclaerics. We are looking for anyone with religious symbols in their homes. Yes, even those with symbols of Dana. We also need anyone who is not Tsvetokrasan. And anyone who looks like they are too old or too weak to work, bring them. Use any means, even aclaere, to bring them to me. Alive or dead is fine.”\n\n“Yes, General!” the group cries.\n\n“She’s not after us?”\n\nKiut Tshu pulls out one of her knives. “There’s no way around them.”\n\nPetra is already running, sword drawn, a scream in hir throat tearing loose.\n\n“Fuck,” Kiut Tshu says. “Come on, I guess we have to take her out before we carry on.”\n\n“But won’t it give away our location? He’s surely looking for us, even if she isn’t.”\n\nKiut Tshu just waves at Petra. “Too late.”\n\nThe robed figures dismount in unison, each taking a stance that Sresca recognizes too well. No longer children stolen from their homes, these are weapons in Volkov’s arsenal. Whatever Oksana’s feelings may have been before—proclaiming she merely wanted to study—are moot. She is the general, wielding these weapons of war. Sresca shudders. It was rumored that aclaere had been responsible for the massive amounts of destruction that the former prince of Sua, Ashur mat Sumalika, had unleashed in his battle with the revolutionaries. But it didn’t have a name back then, no one had studied it. But now it was not just a known entity, but a studied one.\n\nA war with swords and spears and the canons that are ever improving is one thing. But a war where aclaere can be weaponized? A war with aclaerics?\n\n_We are doomed if we do not stop Volkov, whatever his plans are._\n\nThe aclaerics are already raising their shields as Petra raises hir sword and brings it crashing down over and over again.\n\n_And the Republic will have nothing to match,_ Sresca realizes. _They’ve forbidden the use of the aclaere. There have been no official government aclaerics since the establishment of the Republic._\n\nShe tries to rid herself of the thoughts, focusing only on her own aclaere—on her obscura.\n\nKiut Tshu pelts the aclaerics with her daggers and throwing stars, retrieving them from the corpses just as quickly as she gets in range to deliver deadly blows with her hands and feet.\n\nThe pulse of her talisman is steady; she should have enough power to help her companions make it through. The last time she had used this power in battle, she had felt overwhelmed and unprepared.\n\nAs she draws out the echoes, she imagines them as spears, taking all the lessons she had learned under Oksana’s tutelage and applying them to her obscura, honing her shadows and aiming them precisely before letting them fly.\n\nThey find their marks; arms and legs, feet and shoulders. Never the chest; never the heart. These might be soldiers, but they are also still children. They can’t have more than twenty or so winters. They are not fighting in Volkov’s war voluntarily.\n\nThe shadow-spears pierce through aclaerical shields; shattering protective barriers and striking at the aclaerics. Kiut Tshu and Petra take advantage of the openings and apply steel and iron.\n\nBut then she sees the look in their eyes as the soldiers under Oksana’s command fight back. They aren’t just children anymore. They _believe._ They are fighting not for their own life. They are fighting for a cause.\n\nStill; she cannot bring herself to cause serious injury to them. She draws again on her echoes, forming her shadows into arrows, hoping to interrupt the aclaeric preparing to create another shield.\n\n“Die, you fucking filthy feline!” One of them screams, aiming a ball of fire directly at Kiut Tshu.\n\nSresca unleashes every single arrow at the young man who dared to insult a Mercy.\n\n“Suan scum,” another screams.\n\nThey are believers. Whether Volkov truly believes the hatred himself or if he is wielding it for political gain is immaterial right now. These young adults believe it; their hearts are full of anger.\n\nOksana might only be interested in aclaere, but she has no compunctions with it being wielded to perpetuate such hatred. Someone must have taught these students lessons beyond just those in aclaere.\n\nShe gathers more shadows—constructs more arrows. Her eyes track Petra as sie rams hirself into the shields of the claerics, letting hir sword shatter their shields. Once she knows the defenses are down, she lets the arrows fly.\n\nOne by one, the aclaerics—the _children_ —drop to the ground. Some with poignant screams, some with muffled whimpers. Dana knows their hour, and if this is it, then She shall come and claim the dead.\n\n“There you are, Petra.” Oksana says as the last of her soldiers falls; Oksana is the only survivor of the battle. She raises two hands at once and a robust shield surrounds her. “And our imposter princess, too. I take it you’ve been trying to bring them back to Novakov?”\n\nPetra throws hirself at the shield. “What are you doing? This was not part of the plan!” But the shield does not crack, it doesn’t so much as quiver as Petra’s sword bounces off of it.\n\n“You don’t get to know the plan anymore, little traitor.” She flicks her wrist in Petra’s direction, and Petra is sent flying into a tree, a volley of ice following. Three of the icicles pierce through Petra’s body.\n\nOksana glances at her fallen soldiers and shrugs, clenching her hand into a fist and raising it skyward. Sresca’s remaining shadow-arrows vanish, the cuts and lacerations across Oksana’s body heal, and her army rises again.\n\n“That’s impossible,” Sresca says. “She shouldn’t be able to do that. No one but a Rose can bring the dead back… They were dead. Weren’t they?” She glances at Kiut Tshu. But the kattu just stares at the dead bodies now re-animated.\n\nPetra rises to her feet, shaking and bleeding, closing hir eyes for a second before raising hir sword again.\n\n“No,” Kiut Tshu whispers. “We need to go. You can’t fight like that.”\n\n“But you heard what she said…”\n\n“I know. But there’s nothing we can do now.”\n\nOksana laughs. “Run. Go ahead. I promise I will catch up. But I have business here with an Araeltan healer first, and anyone else who stands in our way.”\n\n* * *\n\n“She said you needed mugwort, too,” Kiut Tshu says, handing the bag to Lisa.\n\n“ _Imma shara_! Oh goodness, yes! I had completely forgotten I was out of it. Thank you.”\n\n“She refused payment, too. Said you would be able to pay her back soon enough.” Kiut Tshu sets the coin purse down on a small table near the hearth.\n\n“Yes, I bet I will. She has had a persistent ache in her back. I bet she’s running low on the tincture I made her. Give me a few moments to prepare the ointment for your friend.”\n\nThe healer is efficient as she grinds the herbs into a paste and then mixes it with a slimy substance she has in a jar. Sresca tries to follow the rest of the steps, vigilant for anything that might give away ill-intentions.\n\nBut the healer never tries to slip anything toxic into the mixture, never tries to prepare it where she and Kiut Tshu cannot see her.\n\nShe holds her hands over it and they take on the silver glow that Sresca realizes must be from Andrya. She pulls her hair back and Sresca notices that she does not have any ears. But then she sees them. Stubs at the top of her head; stubs where the ears of a kattu should be. And her awkward gait is not from a leg or foot injury, but a body that is used to having a tail for balance.\n\nSresca wants to ask what happened; how had this kattu come to be so mutilated? But she’s an ally; a friend. Kiut Tshu said they needed friends, that Nadia would not be rude to comrades. So she holds back the question. She does not want Kiut Tshu to be even more disappointed in her.\n\nThe healer applies the ointment to Petra’s chest and then wraps it in bandages, instructing hir to reapply the ointment twice a day and to keep it covered as best she can. For a few extra dien, she allows them to stay the night and in the morning they find a small market at the village center and stock up on supplies.\n\nBefore the sun has even reached its zenith, they are departing again.\n\n“May the moon mother watch you and light your way,” Lisa had said, sending a shiver down Sresca’s spine. But an elbow to her ribs from Kiut Tshu prevented her from blurting out anything rude.\n\n“She was an odd one,” Petra says as they make their way back to the mine.\n\n“What do you mean?”\n\n“She knew Mother Marija, said she had studied with her.”\n\n“She was a follower of Dana before?”\n\n“No,” Petra says. “I think she’s always been devoted to Andrya, but… I don’t know. I feel like she’s hiding something.”\n\n“She was kattu,” Sresca says.\n\n“Yes, well, no. Yes, she is kattu, I don’t know what happened to her, but that’s not what I mean. Her use of aclaere, I got the feeling there was more to it than just Andrya’s blessing. It felt like the aclaere that Mother Marija used, so I mentioned it. It’s different than anything else. And she said she could tell I had been taught by Mother Marija, she could tell I used the same kind of aclaere. She asked if Mother Marija told me anything else, and was disappointed when I said no.”\n\n“Interesting,” is all Kiut Tshu says.\n\n* * *\n\n“We need to get you to a healer,” Kiut Tshu says again. Her and Sresca have done their best to treat Petra’s wound, but none of them are confident it is enough. Oksana had ridden away, not caring that she left them alive, more determined to make it to whatever village her army was to take.\n\n“I am fine,” Petra says again, the pain in hir voice giving away the lie.\n\n“Please,” Sresca says, allowing herself to be pulled into this argument for the first time. She has been too afraid to add her voice to Kiut Tshu’s, not sure if she even has the right, not after all she has put Petra through. “For me. If we can find a healer, let you heal…”\n\n“For you?” Petra says, looking Sresca up and down. “For you. Very well. If we can find a way.”\n\n“Well, lucky for you both, there is a village close enough with a healer trusted by the Mercy.” Kiut Tshu smirks and cocks her head, indicating that they follow her. They veer off the trail and follow her for a short while into a thick forest.\n\nKiut Tshu moves easily through the woods; bounding over fallen branches and deftly dodging low hanging boughs while Petra and Sresca stumble, taking turns catching each other as they try to keep up.\n\nPetra chuckles, an easy laugh that rings too many bells for Sresca. Too many memories that she doesn’t want to acknowledge. Memories of that laugh in palace walls, set against a backdrop of elegant music and court whispers.\n\n“What’s bothering you?” Petra prods. “You have that faraway look.”\n\nSresca shakes her head. “Just lost in memories.” Lost. Drowning. Fighting against. Battling until they are dead and buried and in Dana’s embrace. If she had succeeded her trial, she would be the Rose of Oblivion, unplagued with memories of any past, let alone multiple. There’s not enough air, not enough cool wind to keep her grounded in the present; the only thing she is sure about.\n\nShe’s far from home, far from where she thought she would be. But she’s safe. She’s safe from… from parents she can’t remember, from a past that she locked away behind stone walls and memories best left forgotten.\n\n“Something happened with the High Priestess. She told you something, or you told her something. You don’t want to tell me, though.” Petra’s voice is solid, sad but sturdy enough for Sresca to grab ahold of. To cling to. It’s the lifeline she will cling to for now as something bangs against the walls in her mind. An insistent pounding as regular as her heartbeat.\n\n“Yes,” is all she can say.\n\n“When you are ready, you are welcome to tell me. Until then, I will protect you.”\n\n“You have too many wounds to do that right now, my knight. Right now, it’s my turn to take care of you.”\n\nSresca has no idea how much time passes; her heartbeat slows to match Petra’s, a metronome keeping time for minutes or hours. The silent song punctuated by Kiut Tshu holding up a hand and calling a halt at the edge of the forest.\n\n* * *\n\n“That’s the place. They have an Andrya-sworn healer. Or they did last time I was there,” Kiut Tshu says. “She should be able to help Petra.”\n\nThey trudge through the crisp snow; the chill of evening biting as a gale slices through the clearing. Before Sresca can again get lost in her thoughts, they walk through the village gates. “This way,” Kiut Tshu says, leading them down a smaller lane. The sign with the moon and arrow is prominently hanging above the door and Kiut Tshu does not even bother knocking before pushing open the door and waving Petra and Sresca inside.\n\n“Ms. Laika, welcome.” A woman with no more than thirty winters is seated in a worn chair near a hearth stirring a cauldron over the fire. A row of empty beds lines the back wall, and the whole place smells like sage and thyme. The woman adds another pitcher of water to her cauldron, stirs it once more time, and rises to greet her guests.\n\n“Hello, Lisa.” Kiut Tshu touches her hand to her forehead and bows. “I have brought a friend with me, she was injured badly.”\n\nPetra steps forward and pulls up hir shirt, exposing the wounds from Oksana’s attack. They are no longer bleeding, but the gashes still look deep.\n\nThere are bags under the woman’s eyes and she favors her left foot as she steps closer to Petra to examine the wounds. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Go have a seat on one of the beds.”\n\nPetra does not argue and Lisa pulls her cauldron out of the fire and carefully fishes a long white cloth out of the boiling water. She dabs at the wounds, poking them and pressing the warm cloth to them in multiple places, sounds of dismay and curiosity escaping her mouth periodically.\n\n“Is it bad?” Kiut Tshu asks, standing perfectly still at Petra’s bedside.\n\n“I can’t say. I’ve never seen anything like this. Tell me, are you in pain?”\n\n“I was at the time I acquired it, but now there is only a faint ache occassionally. Right now, I feel nothing.”\n\n“Not even as I poke at it?” The disbelief in the healer’s voice scares Sresca.\n\n“No. Should I?”\n\nSresca remembers the night she tried to escape, the way Petra fought; the way sie fought the the aclaerics; as if nothing could touch hir, nothing could harm hir; as if sie was immune to damage.\n\nLisa bites her lip and looks away. “ _Imma sahra,_ ” __ she mutters under her breath, a phrase that sounds vaguely Suan but Sresca can’t place precisely. “Andrya help me.” She holds her hands over Petra’s chest and they take on a faint glow, silver like the full moons. The purple bruising recedes briefly, but the skin underneath is red with welts. Sresca wants to slap the woman, pull her blasphemous hands away from Petra. Praying to Andrya, here in Dana’s land? How dare this woman…\n\nHer shoulders sag. She knows the very basics of healing; but this healer is using aclaere in a way that Sresca cannot follow. While the various Temples of the pantheon at first decried the use of aclaere, claiming their gods had forbid its use, eventually they relented. And it was the Temple of Andrya who relented first, granting affiliated healers leave to use the aclaere in their healing arts.\n\nOf course this healer would ask for the goddess of healing to intercede. But she does wonder why such a woman would choose to live in Dana’s domain. Sresca wonders how many have died in these beds, how many Lisa failed to heal, how many echoes might be waiting if she just reached out and sought them.\n\nLisa lets out a breath, sweat dripping down her face. The purple across Petra’s chest spreading out again before the healer grits her teeth, the glow around her hands intensifying. She struggles as if the damaged done to Petra were a living thing battling her, fighting to continue to lurk inside of Petra. But the purple does disappear, seared out of Petra’s skin, leaving welts behind.\n\n“This is the best I can do for now. I can make an ointment for what remains, but I need some arnica and I am all out. Laika,” she says addressing Kiut Tshu as she wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. “Would it be possible for you to fetch me some? I will keep a close eye on your friend while you are gone.”\n\n“Where?” Sresca asks, uneasy at the thought of leaving Petra here. Kiut Tshu says nothing.\n\n“There is a woman who grows it but she’s a bit of a recluse. She’s in the woods to the north. It’s a yellow flower, she’ll have it. And if she has any calendula, I will take that, too. I have enough now, but I can always use more.”\n\nPetra nods. “Go on. I won’t leave my bed. I swear.” And that’s the end of the discussion. The healer hands them a satchel of coins and sends them on their way.\n\n“You trust her?” Sresca asks Kiut Tshu as soon as they are beyond the village fence.\n\n“She’s a friend of the Mercy.”\n\n“She’s aligned with Andrya. She prayed to Andrya!”\n\n“I said friend. It’s not bad to have friends. She just healed Petra.”\n\nSresca shakes her head. Dana is everything; how can Kiut Tshu so easily accept the help of another goddess?\n\nThe sun, so bright when they had started this journey, is setting as they enter the forest. Sresca can feel echoes all around her. She knows she must collect at least a few; her amethyst talisman is depleted, and she will not be able to use obscura or any aclaere at all if she does not replenish while she has a chance. But she doesn’t want to delay their trip. But they claw at her, they reach for her, they lunge toward her as if begging her to hear their story, see their death, be their final witness.\n\n“I won’t tell hir,” Kiut Tshu says finally. “I won’t tell hir of your past as Nadia if you do not want me to. It is your tale to tell. But sie has already figured out that I was the Mercy assigned to Princess Kyra a year before the fall of the monarchy.”\n\nAnother petal falling from the rose; another piece of her constructed past coming undone. She had met Kiut Tshu at the palace; while in service to Princess Kyra. A year before… she would have had sixteen winters. Had she fallen for Kiut Tshu then? Is that when their romance started?\n\n“I don’t want to tell hir,” Sresca says. She can’t tell hir; not when she can barely remember that time, not when so many of her memories of that time seem to be locked away. Not when they feel like they belong to someone else—it was not her, it can’t have been her that lived at the palace as decoy, an imposter princess. Any time she gets close enough to the memories to touch them, it feels like she’s watching them unfold as an outsider. They are like events in a history book, she can read about the events happening, but they don’t have any of the familiarity.\n\n“Can I ask why not?”\n\nSresca shakes her head. She can’t. She can’t. She can’t. She _can’t._\n\n“Listen,” Kiut Tshu says, grabbing Sresca’s arm and bringing her to a halt. “I know it was a difficult time for you, the day you came to me and told me what that bastard did to you…” Kiut Tshu’s mask slips, and for a second there is a mess of emotions in her voice. “I was so angry. I disobeyed my directive. I killed someone without getting Dana’s blessing first.”\n\n“What are you talking about?” Sresca asks, but she knows she shouldn’t. Some part of her is screaming at her to make Kiut Tshu stop. To forbid her from speaking further about whatever incident caused her transgression.\n\n“That bastard, the one that—”\n\nSresca is far away. The birds are chirping happily in the trees, the sunset is pure splendor; a ring encircling it, miniature bursts of light accenting the ring. Kiut Tshu is speaking, but it’s muffled, drowned out by her own heavy heartbeat.\n\nShe does not even realize that an echo is wrapping itself around her leg, not until she is tossed out of the beautiful twilight and into the nightmare.\n\n_She’s running. Swift, hoofed feet beating against the stone path, her horn guiding her forward to safety. The patriars of Audgisil are gaining on her and she can’t let them—_\n\n“Sresca, come back, come back to me.” Kiut Tshu shakes her shoulders, her eyes wide and pleading.\n\nShe struggles to contain the echo, forcing it into the talisman before she opens her eyes again. “I’m sorry…”\n\nHer heart is hammering in her chest, she feels like she had been running. But the echo is contained; the memory of its events forgotten.\n\n“Don’t scare me like that,” Kiut Tshu says.\n\nSresca wants to quip back; tell her that she can’t control it. That it’s not something she has any ability to even influence. But she thinks better of it. “I’m sorry. Let’s just get to the herbalist’s house.”\n\nKiut Tshu rubs Sresca’s arms and nods before turning back to the path. Sresca wants to grab her hands and pull her back, pull her close, feel that touch one more time.\n\nBut she doesn’t. She follows behind her, stepping over fallen branches and around logs.\n\nThe herbalist’s hut is not large, but the all-glass structure next to it is big enough to hold several huts. The woman, an older kattu, is already waiting for them on the steps to her hut, as if she had been forewarned.\n\n“Arnica, right?”\n\nSresca halts, not sure what to make of the kattu wearing a golden circlet on her brow; the sun and sickle sigil of Yessenia shining in dying light of day. Yessenia is the patron of Sua, and perhaps this herbalist no longer wanted to live in the desert. But why would she come _here?_\n\n“Yes, and calendula.” Kiut Tshu does not bristle at all at this kattu, despite her clear allegiance to another goddess.\n\n_Friends,_ Kiut Tshu had called the Andrya worshipper. And Sresca is sure she will say the same about this Yessenia devotee.\n\nMost of her studies have been focused on Dana; she cannot remember if the sun goddess and moon goddess are friends with each other, sisters, maybe even lovers, or possibly rivals. Whatever they are to each other, their followers don’t seem to mind fraternizing with each other.\n\n“Lisa will likely want mugwort, too. I’ll get it all packaged up. Why don’t you warm up inside while I do that?”\n\nSresca has a dozen questions she wants to ask, but the kattu just holds up her wrinkled hand and shakes her head. “Xana has her secrets, so does Yshuld. I was ensconced in Analyza, do you think I would not have the Sight?”\n\n“You’re from Sua.”\n\nThe kattu nods and hobbles toward her greenhouse. “Just wait inside.”\n\nKiut Tshu takes Sresca’s hand and leads her into the hut. “That was rude.”\n\nSresca doesn’t really care. “She’s—”\n\n“Stop. I know what you’re going to say. She’s not a follower of Dana. Sresca, wake up! What happened to you? Did the temple dull your sense of justice? Did it erode away your resourcefulness? You used to take whatever allies you could get, and now you’re insulting those who would help us? Did Nadia die that day?”\n\nSresca takes a seat in a creaking wooden chair, glancing at the shelves and tables all covered in dried herbs and bottled tinctures. “Maybe she did.”\n\nMaybe Nadia did die; maybe she died and another soul was plucked from the asphodaer and given life in this body. Maybe that explains the strange voices in her head. It’s said that after the Rose of Oblivion strips a soul of its memories, it is returned to the asphodaer, where it mixes and merges with other souls, coalescing until it’s something entirely new.\n\nMaybe she’s a mix of souls that never properly coalesced. Or maybe everyone deals with a dozen different voices in their head, intruding with their own opinions, own memories, and own feelings without regard for anyone else. Maybe everyone deals with it; they just deal with it far better than Sresca does. She shakes her head, wondering where Zephyr is; wondering why he seems to have gone silent when she needs him.\n\nKiut Tshu swears under her breath and runs a hand through her hair. “Well, you’ll just have to figure out how to resurrect her. Because what we’re fighting? It’s bigger than Volkov. We’re going to need allies. And a lot of them.”\n\n“Here you go,” the herbalist says as the door creaks open. Kiut Tshu holds out the coin purse as the herbalist hands her a leather satchel. “No, no need for payment. Tell Lisa that she will be able to pay me back another way soon enough.”\n\n“Thank you, sister,” Kiut Tshu says, hand over her heart.\n\n“I have one more thing for you,” the herbalist says, staring directly at Sresca. A strange hum fills the hut. She recognizes the sensation as her skin prickles. Divinity. She has no memory of her trial, but a lingering sensation. This sensation. She is in the presence of a deity. But not hers. “Touched by soft moonlight, she will join the fight; _Shara’tha_ born again of midnight water, hope against the slaughter.”\n\n“What? What does that mean?” Sresca asks.\n\n“I can tell you only what Yshuld tells me. But perhaps you will meet someone else on your journey who can help you unravel the riddle.”\n\n“I’m beginning to understand the people who wish for things to return to how they were before aclaere was discovered, back when the gods were still silent,” Kiut Tshu says as soon as they are out of the hut.\n\n* * *\n\nThis is a draft chapter. Contents will change between now and final publication as the book continues to undergo revisions and editing.\n\nThis is currently being made available for free as a thank you for helping the PRIDE: Brighter than the Stars Bundle on Itchio meet its goals. A new chapter unlocks with every $500 milestone.\n\nGet the Bundle Now",
  "title": "Shackles and Shards: Shattered - Chapter 13",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-13T03:37:27.957Z"
}