CHAPTER ONE

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“Come to Cullis at summer Rise. On the longest day of the year watch night banished. See the Rise at the Port of Cullis.” 

Holding the invitation to the Festival of Light in a loose hand, an idea began to form in her mind. The Company was coming for her and there was nowhere in the world she could run. 

Nowhere in this world…

Memories of words came back to her, growing stronger in her mind with each passing heartbeat.

“Where the world is thin a traveller can access the Web of Three; the key to the door is forged from the weight of a crowd’s gaze, turned when only one alone sees.” 

Travellers wear the world thin, so she would need a port.

Human’s gaze carries power, so she needed a crowd. An unseeing crowd at that so she can turn the key.

As long as she was the only one in that liminal space who saw where many gaze, she could become reality's author.

She could create a connection to the Web of Three.

I could run. Escape.

This could work…

I’m going to need an Obscura and one incredible firework.

—-

Three months after she had read that invitation she thumbed the Obscura she had bled to get. 

Looking at an old man with milky eyes who laughed at his granddaughter’s joke, she rubbed her finger across the device; the ebony smoke-glass, the ivory white bracket. The Obscura was as cold as her body would be if she failed. As cold as those bodies she had made, working for the Company.

From the ornate balcony on the Principia Sophia she looked up at the sky she was going to break.

She had nearly died getting the ashpowder, but it was key to her success - it would make her firework blinding.

The festival crowd had flowed through the streets and now pooled in squares. All the works of hands that moved between the start of love and the close of death would be sampled tonight. 

Now, all pinned their gaze to the sky. The roar of expectation growing. 

The old man’s eyes stuck in her mind. The slight bulge, the odd colour. The joy in them when he held his granddaughter on his knee. 

Though he was a stranger she recognised him, knew his name. Admired his style. His art wasn’t provocative. It was almost provocative. The closest it could get without incurring the wrath of Orthodoxy. A brave man, to walk that line. In this world it was rare to find a man she admired.

He was here to see the fireworks with his granddaughter. Her firework was going to split the night apart. It would blind him. 

Turning on her heel and a whim she briskly descended the servant’s stairs in search of the kitchen and ground Tet chilli. 

Soon she was walking back up the stairs with the small pouch in her hand when she saw a man with the white halo around his pupil. 

She snapped her eyes to the marble stairs and forced her jaw to unclench. 

He was far away. He might not have seen her. 

Upstairs the first of the fireworks exploded. 

That was foolish. She entered the balcony. You risk everything so some washed up painter can still earn a living. 

Heavy footsteps on the stairs behind her.

She found her fan and snapped it open, cooling her neck. Spotted the painter in the crowd, at the back of the gallery. 

But it wasn’t for some washed up painter. It was for a man who lived to see the joy in the face of his family. 

She tapped him on the shoulder and when he turned, smiling, fanned the powder off her hand. She timed it to the squeal of a rocket. No one heard his cry. 

It wasn’t for some washed up painter, it was to save the sight of a man whose artwork whispered defiant hope. Art had the power to change the world. Better a night of pain that would pass, than a life blind. 

The chilli would wash out but the painter’s eyes would never have survived the coming light.

She snapped her fan away, pulled out the smoked glasses and nudged past the crying painter without a second glance. 

She placed the Obscura on her face as a strong hand grabbed her.

“Sanctuary.” She whispered, staring up. 

Her firework rose…

…and a blanket of light overlaid the night.

Light split the dark.

Each and every person who had cast the weight of their gaze on the sky had a fractional second to experience awe before their vision fled.

All who looked, blinked. 

All but one. 

She looked at the world through darkened glass and for the space of a blink, reality was hers to define. 

She saw the Web of Three, reached, grasped… 

…and was gone.

Nothing remaining but the echo of her name, screamed by a man with haloed eyes.

The name that he screamed was:

1) Vell

2) Yūgen

3) Thera

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