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Keeper's Adage:
"Beware the sterile light that fears the root. For when the sealed heart rejects the rot of perfect order, the gilded cage becomes a tomb, and the judgment of the fractured soul bleeds the sanctum dry."
– Scroll of Sundered Threads of Virgil
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The council chamber wasn't a hall of governance. It was a sanctum carved from power's ossified heart. Every polished basalt stone breathed judgment. Every fractured beam of light whispered a legacy of control.
High above, light pierced the dome through stained-glass depictions of Embermark's founding sigils, casting fractured halos onto the floor. These shards of colored light warped unnaturally around the null-lattice cage suspended mid-air. Within it: Hatim. Not seated. Not merely bound. Displayed.A specimen pinned in gilded shadow.
The Akar veins here bore no resemblance to the Sinks' wild, bleeding currents. These were tamed. Threaded through the obsidian walls like sacred, surgical incisions, they pulsed with a deliberate, mechanical rhythm – liquid gold imprisoned behind flawless crystal lattices. Not a drop spilled. Not a flicker deviated. Order, perfected to sterility.
Platinum and gold runes traced spiraling paths around each vein – sacred tattoos fused into the stone, shimmering with a soft, suffocated light, like breath held too long in a grave.
Babs, tiny winged jewels drawn to purity, fluttered towards the luminous veins. One alighted on the crystal near Hatim's cage. Its needle-tail dipped, drew a single, perfect droplet of molten Akar. The liquid flared – a captured, dying star – then vanished into the creature's form. Consumed.
Incense coiled from serpentine braziers – cinnamon and iron, amber and lightning-strike. But beneath the gilded perfume slithered something fouler: the acrid sweat of fear, the copper tang of impending execution.
Valerius of House Valerian surged to his feet. His crimson robes pooled like blood on the floor, the embroidered serpent coiling as if agitated by his fury. "This is no trial!" he hissed, the sound tight, venomous. "This is containment. That convergence," he gestured dismissively towards the cage without looking, "is a living fracture in Asha's lattice. Look to the Sinks! That is the future when Order falters! Rot and whispers!"
Beside him, Lady Aethel reclined in calculated shadow. Her robe drank the light – midnight stitched with glyphs that writhed and reconfigured like a living mind solving an equation of domination. Her gaze, sharp as a honed scalpel, slid to Kander. "And you would leash it?" Her voice was glacial. "How many corpses paved your road to control, Veinbreaker? Does the boy know the weight of the ledger you carry?"
The air vibrated with malice. A bab veering too close to Aethel's aura faltered mid-flight, spun erratically, and dropped like a frost-blighted petal, its light extinguished.
Kander stood rigid near the chamber doors, a scar against the glittering backdrop. Scarred hands clenched into fists. He felt the phantom throb deep in his ribs – the hollow ache where his connection to the deep Veins had been excised. The brand of exile. "He fights it," he countered, voice rough, cutting through the tension. "He isn't the sickness. He's the seal holding it back."
Across the obsidian table, the Selvaris envoy tilted his head, forest-green silks whispering like leaves in a tomb's draft. His smile was thin, predatory. "How poetic. The gutter rat resists the rot. How... convenient for the hand that fed it."
Ironheart's envoy rose, a monolith in stark grey steel. Every movement was a challenge. A gauntleted fist slammed onto the black stone table.
CRACK.
A hairline fracture, dark as a curse, bloomed beneath the impact.
"Enough platitudes! The Sinks breeds heresy and calls it balance! Burn the warrens! Salt the root! Purge the source!"
Hatim flinched—not from the voices, but from the memories they struck like flint.
Granny Maldri's hand, calloused and sure, settling on his shoulder. Her voice, old and stubborn, yet warm: "You carry more than hunger, boy. You carry the root." Softening his chaos with belief.
A pulse answered within him.
Thrum.
The violet thread, buried deep beneath the nullification, deep beneath his stolen Node, twitched. Then it sang—a single, piercing, icy vibration that resonated through the obsidian lattice holding him, a discordant note against the chamber's rigid harmony.
Silence fell, thick and sudden. Valerius leaned forward, eyes wide with dawning horror, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper that carried nonetheless:
"The Ascended..."
Every bab froze mid-flight. The light itself seemed to recoil. A thousand years of Keeper records spoke in the sudden stillness: when the Ascended stirred, valleys vanished, civilizations became dust motes on the wind.
Lady Aethel's fingers brushed the thorned sigil on her brow, her composure fracturing. "And the Exile," she said, her voice almost mournful, yet laced with terrible accusation, "taught it glyphs. Gave it Asha's sacred language. Let it shape Akar." Her eyes narrowed, locking onto Kander with lethal intensity. "You didn't tame a beast, Veinbreaker. You honed it. You forged a weapon."
Kander met her gaze, unflinching. "I gave him choice."
Valerius spat the words, his face contorted: "You armed a plague!"
Along the shadowed walls, the Whispercloaks shifted – silent, mirrored statues. Their masks reflected the scene: Hatim. Hatim. Hatim. Refracted. Distorted. Fragmented.
Sink-rat.
Vessel.
Weapon.
The words didn't strike his ears; they invaded. Etching themselves into the hollows behind his eyes. Into the silent spaces between his stolen breaths. Corrupting the very concept of his name.
The violet thread shivered.
Not a pulse.
Not a thought.
A waking.
You are not theirs.
The voice didn't arrive in sound. It bled into him – like ink spreading through stagnant water, like marrow fracturing its bone.
They fear the absence in you.
Agony tore through Hatim's bound hand. His fingers curled—not in glyph-shaping, not in spellcraft—in pure, instinctive refusal. A denial of cage, of judgment, of distortion.
The null-lattice screamed.
A psychic shriek – ultrasonic, soul-rending – vibrated the sanctum's foundations. One of the pristine Akar veins encased in crystal convulsed. Its golden pulse stuttered, faltered… then slowed. The flawless crystal covering it cracked – jagged lines of black lightning spidering across its surface. Inside, the liquid gold Akar curdled. Thickened. Turned viscous and wrong, congealing into clots like spoiled, congealing blood.
Steam hissed from the fractured crystal – a stench both cloyingly sweet and gut-churningly sour. Rotting nectar. Gangrenous honey.
The babs shrieked – a chorus of tiny, crystalline agonies. Their wings curled inward, desiccating mid-flight. Their jeweled carapaces dulled, cracked, and they fell like spent embers, dissolving into ash before they touched the weeping floor.
Lady Aethel staggered back, a hand flying to her throat. The shimmering glyphs on her midnight robe tarnished instantly, fading to the grey of dead cinders.
Valerius gasped, clutching his chest. The hem of his crimson robe visibly shriveled, the embroidered serpent crumbling into flakes of iridescent dust.
And Hatim...
Hatim simply breathed. A ragged, shuddering inhalation in the sudden, reeking silence.
The sanctum wept. The incense choked, turning to the reek of necrotic flesh. The polished black basalt walls glistened with a dark, viscous moisture – not water, something organic and wrong. The vibrant stained-glass overhead dulled, its colors bleeding away like vitality leaching from a corpse.
The violet thread coiled inward, deep into the hollow beneath his ribs.
It did not speak again.
It had judged.
And found the sanctum wanting.