3. Arcady: Dawn

Arcady wakes from recurring dreams of Everen—intimate, tender, and impossible—then from nightmares of wraiths. On the last morning at the Last Golden, Arcady brews coffee and cooks for Kelwyn, their fence and friend. They skirt painful topics: Everen, the creeping Struck marks that reveal Arcady has turned Starveling, and Larkin’s betrayal and theft of Arcady’s true-name seal.

Kelwyn presses about money; Arcady deflects, planning to survive university by study, theft, and scraping by under the long-term con of living as Arcady Dalca. They exchange a careful “not good-bye,” and Arcady leaves, determined yet fractured.

On the streets, Arcady shapeshifts with stolen sealwork and the cinder-like residue of Everen’s magic, pickpocketing a bracelet and coins to fund dorm fees. Joining other students ascending to the hilltop Citadel, Arcady steels themself: the records will recognize Arcady Dalca, though the identity’s limits remain uncertain.

At the Citadel gate, Arcady enters, ready to find the dorm when a series of gongs halts the campus. Crowds gather as robed figures appear on a balcony—two Chancellors and the Head Priest. The Citadel Herald announces that Chancellor Yrsa of Swiftsea has died after a brief illness, praising decades of service.

Shock and conflicting grief roll through the crowd. Arcady withdraws to the dorm room, reeling. Yrsa, who helped brand Barrow Eremia the Plaguebringer and bury him alive among Loc’s pariahs, will never face Arcady’s reckoning. Rage and loss crest; Arcady casts a silencing charm in the empty room and screams.