The Shards of the Pattern

Broken pieces of the Anchors of First Map — each a spine of the Pattern and an anchor of reality. They hum with forgotten power and remember each other when brought near; Eidon has said there are "eight, or thirteen, or one shattered eight ways." Shards behave like gravity, not objectives. They pull toward one another slowly, indirectly, across regions — and people, factions, and entire towns rearrange themselves around that pull without realising it. Three Shards are known to have been recovered so far: one inside the Bell Tree at Drelmere, one in the underwater well at Virelay, and one in the Black Tower. Father's Shard is a fourth, carried since the Fray's onset by Kaerlin. No one in the Archive knows what will happen when all the Shards of a region are reunited, much less all the Shards of every region. That unknown is the gravitational centre of every story.