Moonlight pooled in fractured silver beneath the bell-chamber's collapsed dome as Sylvie Lightwhisper and her companions gathered around the fallen foundry's largest bell. Its bronze surface was dented, scarred by flame and time—an unlikely cradle for the next testing of Sylvie's gift. The clang of distant steel and the low rumble of Regent Asha's forces on the move reminded them of the urgency: the third shard of the Blood-Iron Gong lay ahead, and each night—each rising moon—brought new peril.
Sylvie knelt before the bell's gaping mouth, the crystalline shard from the spirit corridors secured in a padded satchel at her side. Her hands trembled as she produced a second shard—a jagged fragment of blood-iron metal, dull gray with red veins—that Lark had stabilized in an enchanted glass vial
