That night she climbed.
The panes smelled of lemon and rain. The largest at the center was veined with gold, warm enough to make Ixa raise her hand to the glass as if it were a hearth. She had no right to touch it. The rune above the frame was the same color as the crescent that had been there at her birth. The glass did not show a single memory; it thrummed like a held breath. She thought of her mother teaching her to mend kettles and her father speaking in small, serious sentences about gear tolerances. She thought of Kir's first flight and the way the city lights trembled underneath. Impulse pushed her palm forward. drakorkitain top
Ixa was born under one such rune, a thin crescent that glowed the color of bruised plums. Her mother said it meant stubbornness; her father, who fixed the clockwork birds that nested in the Top's eaves, said it meant fate. Ixa chose neither. She chose to climb. That night she climbed
Ixa went to the Tower’s rim and watched the sky split and stitch like cloth. She thought of her parents' hands, of gears and kettles, of the crescent rune that had begun the change. Her fingers found the brass band and felt it warm. She did not know if the pact would last forever—cities remember and forget in cycles—but she had learned how to tend both grief and wonder. She had no right to touch it