What the Glass Remembers
Every glass Maren Duskwell shapes at the Guild of Bound Arts remembers what it was touched by, and tonight, the amber sliver in her tongs is screaming a name she buried years ago: Lyra. Her sister's voice, warm and fragmented, pulses beneath the surface of the cooling glass, and Maren knows it means the Bound Ones have found a way to pull a full memory from the kiln. It should be impossible. The First Glass was meant to hold only echoes. When Cael Voss arrives with Chancellor Dorevane's seal and a demand for the piece, Maren learns the glass isn't an accident. It's a retrieval. The Chancellor has been ordering extractions for months, feeding the First Glass with specific memories to reconstruct a past that, if surfaced, would unmake the Bound Ones' hold on the city. Lyra's memory is the final thread. And Lyra's memory knows what the Chancellor buried beneath the guild three decades ago. Seren, Theron, and the rest of the lower workshop give Maren until dawn to decide. She can hand the sliver over and let the Chancellor finish his reconstruction, silencing Lyra forever. Or she can press the glass to the kiln's heart and force the memory out in a single, uncontrolled flood, risking the First Glass shattering and every stored soul in the city releasing at once, bound or free. There is no middle path. There is only what the glass remembers, and who gets to decide what it forgets.