The Eclipsera Codex

2. Kaien

The Vein was humming too high.

Not enough that civilians would feel it, but enough that anyone with training—and anyone who’d spent too long inside Codex-class fallout—would notice. Resonance under Celadryn isn’t supposed to run this hot, not this close to the Celestium Array. Up here, everything should be regulated, tight, clean.

When it isn’t, it usually means one of three things: Obsidian Crown saboteurs, a relic waking up, or Command didn’t tell us everything.

My money was on the first.

I dropped to a knee behind a broken strut, gloved hand flat on the floor. Celadryn’s underworks were built for conduction, not looks—pale stone cut through with copper channels, all of it feeding back toward the Array’s core. The ground thrummed against my palm: a steady mainline pulse under a thinner, wrong-frequency pattern, like an off note riding a chorus.

“Three hostiles,” I said over team comm, voice low. “One on the main relay, two watching the Vein seam. All running dampeners. They knew what they were coming for.”

“Crown again,” Theron said, bored and pleased at the same time. “They’re starting to feel like fans.”

“Then don’t give them a show,” Eryndor said, quiet and even. “Kaien, you’re clear. I have upper shadow.”

“Copy.”

Cassian cut in, lighter. “And I have emotional support.”

“Stay off the Vein line,” I added. “It’s overcharged.”

“For a guy who can bench a mountain, you worry a lot,” Theron said.

“For a guy who sets things on fire for fun, you don’t worry enough.”

He laughed. Good. He was loose.

I moved.

The corridor opened into a circular chamber—utility room converted into ritual space. Copper glyphs had been etched straight into the floor, all of them Crown-coded: Obrath patterns, faint violet sheen, diverting the Array’s resonance line toward a portable siphon on the far wall. The operative hunched over the main relay was trying to splice their loop into Celadryn’s feed. Another minute and it would’ve been messy.

I didn’t give him the minute.

I drove my fist into the floor.

Earth-Bind is simple if you’re born for it. You give the ground a command; the ground obeys. A shockline rolled out from my hand, low and fast, along the copper seams. The glyphwork jumped like it had been slapped. The nearest Crown guard staggered, and before he could recover I was on him—shoulder down, center-mass hit, all weight. He hit the floor hard. I pinned him, one hand on his wrist, twisting until I heard the joint crack.

“Don’t,” I said.

He went for his dampener with his other hand anyway.

So I knocked him out. Fast. Clean.

Hot wind slammed in behind me—Theron. He always arrived like weather, all pressure and heat. I didn’t have to look to know he’d dropped from the upper ledge, storm braided down his arms.

“Three o’clock,” I said.

“I see them.”

His lightning was controlled, for once. Two thin arcs, one-two. Both Crown sentries jerked and dropped, their dampeners sparking before they blew. Burnt air and ozone stung the room.

“Neat,” Cassian said. “You practicing for when Nyra comes back so you can impress her?”

Theron’s grin bled through comms. “Watch me.”

“We’re still on-mission,” I reminded them.

“Yeah,” Theron said, totally not sorry. “That’s why I hit them.”

Above us, the ceiling shadows shifted—not natural. Eryndor. A Crown operative dropped from the dark, twin blades out, Drakaira style—fast, all throat and tendon strikes. Before I could intercept, the shadows thickened and yanked him sideways, straight into the gloom. There was a muffled sound, short, then silence.

Eryndor stepped back into view a breath later, adjusting his vambrace like nothing happened. “Clear.”

I stood, scanning. “Clear here.”

“Clear,” Theron echoed.

“Mostly clear,” Cassian said, already moving toward the relay. “Except for the part where someone tried to hijack Celadryn’s main feed with an Obrath control loop.”

He crouched by the relay, hair tied back, eyes bright with that starforged shimmer under his lashes. Out of all of us, he always looked the least like a soldier. People underestimated him.

Their mistake.

I joined him, kneeling beside the relay. It was still humming too hot. Crown script flickered in and out around the copper casing, fighting the Array’s clean pattern.

“Can you strip it?” Eryndor asked from the far wall.

“Yeah,” I said. “They didn’t fuse it deep.”

I set my palm on the casing and pushed. Titanblood doesn’t just make things solid—it makes things obey. The Crown glyphs resisted for a second, then cracked, then burned out, leaving only Celadryn’s regulated pattern humming underneath, steady and cool.

The relay steadied.

“Better,” Cassian said. “Now the Array won’t blow out when she plugs in.”

I didn’t react. Not outwardly.

When she plugs in.

That was why we were doing this sweep ourselves instead of letting Celadryn maintenance handle it—Command wanted the whole corridor clean before the incoming Echo-Warden got anywhere near the Array.

Before Nyra got anywhere near it.

Theron rocked back on his heels, looking around at the downed Crown operatives like they were set dressing. “So,” he said, “we’re just not going to talk about it?”

“Talk about what,” I said, flat.

He made a face I could practically see. “Come on, Varric.”

“We’re still on-site.”

“We’re alive and the relay isn’t exploding. That counts as done.”

“We haven’t filed.”

“You haven’t filed,” he said. “I consider it filed.”

“Theron,” Eryndor said, mild warning.

“What?” Theron said. “We all got the same recall. We all saw the name. You think we’re not thinking about it?”

Cassian leaned an elbow on the relay, way too relaxed for someone standing two feet from freshly fried enemies. “He’s right.”

“Of course you think he’s right,” I said. “You like drama.”

“I like honesty,” Cassian said. “And right now the Vein isn’t the only thing humming too high.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Even with Celadryn’s steady pulse under us, the air had that tightness it gets before big things—storm, battle, or Nyra Aelori walking back into our orbit after two years.

Theron nudged a fallen dampener away with his boot. “I can’t believe she actually said yes.”

“She didn’t say yes,” I said. “She was recalled.”

“She could’ve refused.”

“No, she couldn’t,” Eryndor said quietly. “Not if she heard what I think she heard.”

The room went still for a beat.

We all knew—or guessed—the same thing. If Nyra heard the Codex outside official channels, she’d come. She’d tell herself it was because she was the only one with full-range resonance, but we knew better. Nyra doesn’t ignore a call for help. Not from the Veins.

“She’s going to be pissed,” Theron said, sounding almost cheerful about it. “It’s going to be great.”

“She has a right to be,” I said.

He looked over. “You going to tell her that?”

“Yes.”

“In Aetherion-ese or in actual human words?”

“In mission-appropriate phrasing.”

Cassian laughed. “He’s going to say ‘welcome back, Echo-Warden Aelori.’”

“Because she is,” I said. “And because we’re on duty.”

“You were on duty at the Tower and you still broke command for her,” Theron said.

There it was.

The Tower operation lived under everything else. Not avoided, not picked apart—just there. Heavy. Two years out and I could still smell scorched air and hear her voice scraping raw as the Codex flared through her. I didn’t regret pulling her out. I regretted that Command called it contained and filed us like a solved equation. I regretted that she walked away afterward and we didn’t’t stop her.

“I broke command because she was burning out,” I said. “I’d do it again.”

“None of us blamed you,” Cassian said. “Command did. We didn’t.”

I knew that. They’d been there. Theron nearly fried himself keeping the stormfield from collapsing the whole city. Eryndor got stuck in shadow for three days. Cassian saw something in the Veins he still wouldn’t talk about.

We all paid for that mission.

She paid the most.

“She walked because she needed to,” Eryndor said. “Voice like that—you can’t keep pushing it and expect it not to crack.”

“I know,” Theron said. “Doesn’t mean I liked it.”

I pushed to my feet. “We can have feelings later. Right now we make sure this line stays stable until she gets here.”

Cassian tilted his head. “You hear yourself?”

“Yes.”

“You do realize you default to ‘protect the asset’ when you mean ‘protect Nyra,’ right?”

“She is the asset,” I said.

He smiled like I’d proved his point. “Sure.”

Theron propped his hands on his hips, eyeing the relay. “You think she’ll sound the same?”

“No,” Eryndor said. “But close.”

“With her it’s not just the sound,” Theron said. “It’s the way it… I don’t know. Lines you up.”

He wasn’t wrong. Nyra’s voice didn’t just speak—it tuned. Even untrained ears straightened when she talked. Part Aelori bloodline, part Echo-Warden conditioning, part just… her.

And yeah. I missed it.

“Command pulled us together for a reason,” Cassian said. “They didn’t just want an Echo-Warden. They wanted this unit.”

“Because we’ve done Codex-class before,” I said.

“Because we’re attuned,” Cassian corrected.

Theron smirked. “You mean they finally noticed we all wanted the same woman.”

Eryndor actually huffed a quiet laugh.

“We keep this professional,” I said.

“We can keep it professional,” Theron said. “We can also not pretend we didn’t spend two years thinking about how it should’ve gone if we had done tings differently.”

“How what should’ve gone,” I asked, even though I knew.

“Our debrief,” he said. “You know. The one Command interrupted by ripping us apart and pretending Tower didn’t almost kill us.”

He wasn’t wrong there, either. We came back half-broken and instead of letting us fix it as a unit, they split us—standard Aetherion damage control. If you separate the witnesses, you stop them building a narrative.

Also stops them building a life.

This recall was them putting the board back together. For operational efficiency, yes.

And because the Codex itself was calling the same five signatures it called last time.

I glanced at the relay one more time. Sealed. Stable. Ready.

“Command will want confirmation,” I said. “I’ll send the field report.”

“Good,” Eryndor said. “I’ll make sure Crown didn’t leave a watcher outside.”

He slid into the shadowed exit, gone like he’d never been there.

Theron rolled his shoulders, excess energy still crackling under his skin. “So. First one to make her laugh wins.”

“Wins what,” I said.

“A date.”

“We’re on a Codex mission.”

“Yeah. A date after we don’t die.”

Cassian snorted. “Bold of you to assume she’s not going to ignore all of us for the first twenty-four hours.”

“She won’t ignore us,” Theron said. “She can’t. We’re pretty.”

I gave him a look. “She has eyes.”

“Exactly.”

Cassian pushed off the relay, expression shifting to something lighter. “Speaking of eyes—I checked docking. Her transport’s already in Array orbit. She’s actually here.”

It landed low, solid.

Nyra was here.

Not a file, not an old echo. In Celadryn orbit, right above us. Probably tired from the trip, already annoyed Command dragged her back. Probably already rehearsing what to say. Probably already in Aetherion black like she never took it off.

“All right,” I said. “Then we do this right.”

Theron grinned. “What, no ‘welcome back, Echo-Warden Aelori’ speech practice?”

“I’ll say it when I see her.”

Cassian shook his head, amused. “You’re unbelievable.”

“You can say whatever you want,” I said. “I’m not giving Command any reason. We make this corridor look perfect, we make this Array look secure, and we don’t let the Crown touch it.”

“That’s your way of saying ‘I want her to stay,’” Cassian said.

I didn’t answer.

We headed toward the exit. The chamber behind us was quiet now—Crown operatives down, relay clean, Obrath glyphs cracked and dead. Celadryn’s filtered glow cut through the maintenance shafts ahead, cool over copper.

“Hey,” Theron said, falling into step beside me. “You think she’s going to hit you?”

“Why would she hit me,” I said.

“Because you let her walk.”

“I didn’t let her do anything,” I said. “I respected her choice.”

Theron squinted. “You hear that, Cass? ‘Respected her choice.’”

Cassian grinned. “Translation: ‘I wanted to stop her, but then I’d have to apologize, and Kaien Varric does not apologize.’”

“I do apologize,” I said.

Theron looked genuinely surprised. “Do you?”

“Yes. When I’m wrong.”

“You’re never wrong,” Cassian said.

I didn’t deny it fast enough.

Theron barked a laugh. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”

We reached the corridor door. I hit the panel and it slid open, letting in cooler Array air. Above, through open grates, the faint halo of Celadryn’s upper ring glowed—the level where arrivals docked.

We had a job. We always did. Secure. Stabilize. Report.

This time, another current ran under the checklist—anticipation. Two years of things unsaid. Two years of not hearing her. Two years of pretending Tower didn’t change everything.

“Mission’s done,” I said into comm. “Vein corridor secure. Relay purged of Crown imprint. Ready for Echo-Warden insertion.”

“Copy,” Command replied, clipped. “Return to Array.”

Theron clapped my shoulder on his way past. “Look at us,” he said. “Protecting the big shiny tower for our girl.”

“She’s not—”

Cassian laughed. “Careful. He’ll earth-bind you to the floor.”

Theron just shot me a grin over his shoulder. “Relax, Varric. At least if the Codex tries to kill us this time…”

He jerked a thumb at the knocked-out Crown operatives and the still-humming relay.

“…we’ll die handsome.”

Cassian lost it, laughter echoing down the corridor as we headed back toward the Array.