Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

The man inside the surviving reflections opened his eyes.

Marek knew the man himself was not physically inside the department store. Laureen’s Gemini Authority was maintaining some kind of connection with him, allowing his image to remain within the glass even though he was somewhere else. Whatever Black Errancy had done to Laureen had made that connection dangerous enough that distance offered little comfort.

Every surviving reflection gradually turned toward Marek.

"Marek Vale."

The voice came from the glass, and Marek was already tired of strangers using his full name as though knowing it gave them some advantage.

"Yours," Marek replied, keeping his attention on the nearest panel.

The man smiled. "Sareth Venn."

Rhovan’s expression changed almost immediately, and Marek caught it before he could hide it behind his usual performance. "You know that name."

"I do," Rhovan replied without taking his eyes from the glass. "Enough to know I would rather he had remained a description."

Sareth looked beyond Marek toward the rear passage leading to the botanical institute. "The girl has left more than one trace. Hiding one does not erase the others."

Marek shifted until he stood between the reflections and the passage. "Then keep looking somewhere else."

A thin black line spread from Laureen’s Gemini Mark into the reflections and began moving toward Marek’s image in the glass. Rhovan immediately pressed his golden field against the surviving mirrors, warping Sareth’s reflected figures without forcing them to disappear.

The effort showed sooner than Marek expected when blood appeared at the corner of Rhovan’s mouth.

Kellan noticed it too while ducking behind the damaged counter, his eyes widening. "You can bleed?"

Rhovan wiped the blood away with his thumb.

Kellan stared at him. "You can bleed."

"I was hoping that would remain theoretical."

While Rhovan kept his pressure on the mirrors, the others moved without waiting for instructions. Rafe headed back toward the rear passage to make sure their route to the courtyard remained open, while Silas targeted the panels carrying the clearest images of Sareth and shattered them one after another. Dario positioned himself near one of the damaged supports as more duplicated glass shards tore through the store, with Kellan knocking aside the ones that veered toward the others.

Nadia turned her attention to Laureen, using the woman’s own voice whenever the reflections tried to move ahead of their source. Eren ignored the voices and watched the black line instead, following it each time it shifted between Laureen and the surrounding glass.

"It moves when her Mark reacts," he said. "Not when Sareth does."

Marek looked at Laureen’s wrists and saw what Eren meant. Sareth might be appearing inside the mirrors, but whatever allowed him to remain there was still passing through Laureen.

That gave Marek something he could separate. The gray Scale containing the fragment from Ikleni remained stable under Degree III, leaving him free to concentrate on the connection in front of him without losing the Case he was already carrying.

His shoulder began to burn just as Laureen pushed away from the pillar and lunged toward him.

Marek caught her wrist before she could reach his shoulder, but her Gemini Mark flashed as her free hand copied the angle of his grip. The black line inside his reflection reacted immediately, and the gray Scale containing Ikleni’s fragment pulsed painfully beneath his clothes.

Pain drove through his shoulder hard enough to tighten his fingers around Laureen’s wrist.

She smiled despite the blood on her mouth. "Now he can see you."

"He can see something connected to me," Marek replied as she tried to pull away. "That isn’t the same thing."

Laureen copying his movement had created a correspondence between them, but that did not automatically extend Sareth’s connection through her and into Marek. Laureen’s connection to Sareth was one thing. Whatever she had just established with Marek was another.

Marek already knew how to keep distinctions like those separate. What he had never done was keep several of them intact at once while fighting, moving, and maintaining another Case at the same time.

The fragment from Ikleni stayed within its existing boundary even as Marek kept Laureen’s Gemini Authority separate from the connection linking her to Sareth. That connection remained distinct from Laureen herself, and copying Marek’s movement did not allow it to extend through him.

Nadia seemed to catch on to what he was trying to separate. She used Laureen’s voice again, forcing the words through the same tone she had already copied.

"My name is Laureen Harrow."

The living Laureen flinched, and for a fraction of a second her next breath came out in her own voice rather than Sareth’s.

Marek felt the difference immediately.

He opened a Case around the connection to Sareth without disturbing the first gray Scale. Another empty Scale near it began to ache as the boundary narrowed around the connection running through Laureen, excluding both the woman herself and the Gemini Authority that naturally belonged to her.

Only the abnormal connection to Sareth remained inside the Case.

The man in the mirrors stopped smiling.

Marek tightened the Case, and the black line tore away from Laureen’s Mark before rushing toward his shoulder. A second Scale turned gray as the abnormal connection to Sareth entered it, and every surviving reflection of him disappeared at once.

Pain drove Marek to one knee as the interface appeared across his vision.

[DEGREE IV — INTEGRATION ACHIEVED]

[CASE RULES REMAINED TRUE THROUGH MOVEMENT, STRAIN, AND COMPETING ROUTES.]

Marek understood the difference almost immediately. Degree IV had not given him another ability. The boundaries he established no longer had to exist separately from everything else he was doing; they could remain intact while he moved, fought, and maintained another Case at the same time.

Laureen collapsed beside him just as the damaged ceiling gave another violent groan.

Dario looked up. "We need to move!"

Rhovan released his field and helped Marek up while the others rushed through the rear exit. Dario remained behind long enough to keep one damaged section from falling across the passage before following them outside. Behind him, the center of the department store had already begun folding inward.

Dust rolled through the rear passage just as Rhovan emerged onto the service street, dragging Silas by the back of his coat. Silas still had his metal rod in one hand and had apparently decided that destroying one last panel was worth nearly getting buried beneath the building.

The rest of the department store collapsed moments later.

Marek sat against the institute wall and pressed one hand over his Mark. Two gray Scales were occupied now: the first contained the fragment he had taken from Ikleni, while the second held the abnormal connection to Sareth that he had separated from Laureen.

Once everyone was safely outside, Rhovan came over and crouched in front of him. He studied Marek for a moment, apparently still processing what he had just witnessed.

"Degree IV in less than two days," he said.

Marek looked at the faint blood still staining the corner of his mouth. "You were bleeding, and somehow we’re still discussing me."

"Of course we are. Degree IV in less than two days is considerably more alarming."

"That makes me the problem?"

"I know why I was bleeding. I still don’t know how you managed that."

Before Rhovan could continue, a strip of white fabric moved farther along the institute wall, immediately drawing Marek’s attention.

The dust from the collapsed department store had barely begun to settle when something silver-white moved beyond it.

At first, Marek thought it was another strip of fabric caught in the wind. Then several more appeared through the thinning dust, hanging in long, narrow layers around a woman as she stepped onto the service street.

Her feet were light as a feather, and ironically, Marek felt the weight of it.

Her dress was unlike anything he had seen since Awakening. Soft silver-white fabric formed its main body, while thinner pieces descended from her shoulders, waist, and sleeves in overlapping lengths, almost like several translucent curtains had been allowed to hang freely around her. They shifted with every step and continued moving lightly even after she stopped. Some of them looked almost identical to the pieces of fabric Marek had been finding throughout Linden.

Silver-white hair fell past her shoulders, bright enough against the damaged street that Marek noticed it before the rest of her face. Her eyes were a clear green, and there was something strangely composed about the way she stood among the broken glass and half-collapsed buildings, as though none of it belonged close enough to touch her.

For the first time, there was no witness telling Marek where she had gone after he arrived too late. No footprints ending where she had already disappeared, and no strip of silver-white fabric left behind for him to find.

She was here. Only several meters away.

Her green eyes passed over Marek briefly before settling on Laureen and then the remains of the department store.

"Sareth Venn," she said.

Rhovan’s attention shifted to the silver-white woman, and the change in him was immediate. The ease in his posture disappeared, along with the amusement he usually carried even around people trying to kill him. Marek could not tell what Rhovan was sensing from her, but whatever it was made him straighten slightly and watch her with an unfamiliar amount of caution.

"You know him?" Rhovan asked.

"Yes."

"What Cycle?"

The woman kept her green eyes on the ruined store. "Cycle VIII, Degree V. He had already reached both before Black Errancy."

’Cycle VIII?! We were extremely lucky to survive that. Damn.’

Marek calmed himself down and glanced toward Rhovan. "Stronger than you?"

For once, Rhovan answered without trying to make himself sound impressive. "In this body, yes."

What caught Marek’s attention was that Rhovan still had not relaxed. His eyes remained on the woman in front of them, as though Sareth was not the only person present whose strength concerned him.

The silver-white woman’s attention moved toward Marek’s right shoulder. "He found the brother. He will try to use whatever trace remains around you to reach your sister."

Marek pushed himself away from the wall despite the pain. "Then he’ll fail twice."

Behind them, Laureen began to regain consciousness. The black lines around her Gemini Mark had not disappeared, and when she tried to speak, the first sound repeated faintly from a piece of broken glass nearby.

Marek frowned at the reaction. "Separating Sareth from her didn’t stop the Errancy."

"You separated Sareth’s connection from her," the woman replied. "But her Black Errancy was already present before he used their correspondence. Removing him would not remove what was already affecting her."

"So she isn’t cured," Marek said, watching Laureen struggle to speak again.

"No."

Marek remained silent for a moment before asking whether she could recover. The silver-white woman took noticeably longer to answer that question and eventually admitted, "I don’t know."

When her attention returned to him, she studied him for a few seconds before asking, "You reached Degree IV during that?"

"Apparently."

Rhovan looked mildly vindicated. "At least I’m not the only one who finds that unreasonable."

Marek sighed. "I never said you were."

The woman’s expression shifted slightly, almost becoming a smile. "Mara said you would argue with anyone who made too much of you."

Marek’s attention snapped fully toward her. "She’s here?"

The woman looked toward the botanical institute courtyard before answering.

"She has been waiting."