:::read Before the shared waking in The Lighthouse's Common Room, each of the four crossed alone — pulled out of their own world by the same kind of golden thread, though none of them remember it that way now.
Vaelira was in her study at The Polaris Academy on Miroval when a note arrived, sealed with Master Corwin Hale's insignia: "Sparks. I've found it. Come now. Come alone. — C.H." She went straight for his office. The door she'd knocked on more times than she could count wasn't a door anymore — a golden thread wound through the handle, and behind it, a seam in the air. She reached. In the half-second before the world went dark, her Voldaen coin — the one she'd carried since she left home — was pulled from her.
Kodan-Gara was on the trail outside Sikra, keeping the monthly tea ceremony he's kept every month since his Drahn-Veth went missing. The steam off the cup gathered, mid-ritual, into a golden thread. He reached, and his Sacred Tea Box — his one physical link to her — went with him into the dark.
Serendel was arriving at the border ruins on Ithalva'al, a world where old gods grew into the ground instead of leaving it, on a sabbatical he'd been putting off for a year. The ground under his feet turned out to be wound through with the same golden thread. He reached, and his grandfather's compass was pulled from him as he went under.
Mossy was camped in the Kethavar woods with Thorn, a fire built for the night. The flames parted like a seam pulled open from the inside, and a golden thread rose out of the coals. He reached — and two metal teeth, salvaged from the trap that once caught Thorn, went with him.
Four worlds. Four different reasons to reach for something that shouldn't have been there. All four woke together, later, in The Common Room of a lighthouse none of them had ever heard of. :::