There were hundreds of small cells like this one scattered through the Dusk Chambers, yet I knew this was mine. It had been my first and only cell, where the inquisitors had slowly torn one secret after another from my bruised and bloody body. The table stood where I remembered it, beneath a narrow light that barely reached the corners.
I struggled to draw a full breath. Only part of the tightness in my chest came from fear. The rest was the pressure of the barrier the church had raised around the Divine Throne. It bore down with the weight of a world barrier, seeming to constrict with every breath. Fashioned almost entirely from sun mana, it pressed against my wards without pause. If they failed, I wasn't sure my soul would survive, caught between that pressure and the unstable power within me.
"Gods, I haven't been down here in a while," Jessia murmured.
She wandered through the cell, trailing a hand over the table before moving on.
