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Keeper's Adage:
"Beware the hand that reshapes the divine; in the god it slays, it finds the mold for its own prison."
– Scroll of Sundered Threads of Virgil
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The door sealed behind the humiliated Theron, leaving silence in its wake. It was broken by Hatim's ragged panting. He stood trembling, every muscle screaming. His forehead throbbed where it had connected with Theron's nose, and a warm trickle of blood seeped from his split knuckles. The taste of copper and the ghost of mint-coolant filled his mouth. His ribs ached from the Tharnel-enhanced blows he'd absorbed, but the Verge-forged endurance had held. He was a tapestry of fresh pain over old scars.
Kander let out a long, slow breath, the tension in his own shoulders easing only a fraction. "Alive. That's something." He tossed Hatim a clean cloth from his belt. "Wrap the hand. Don't let the blood drip on his polished floors; he'll probably bill you for the cleaning."
Hatim did so, wincing as the rough fabric made contact. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a hollow chill. He had survived, but he felt no triumph. He had seen the chasm. Theron's every motion had been a lesson in a language he couldn't speak—effortless mental glyphs layered over physical perfection. His own victory was a gutter-born trick, a stumble in the dark.
Before he could give voice to the despair, the main door hissed open again.
It was not a servant.
Elara entered, her slate-grey robes whispering against the floor. She was followed by two attendants pushing a trolley bearing complex apparatus that looked both medical and arcane: crystalline nodes that hummed with restrained power, coiled filaments of glimmersteel, and a basin filled with a swirling, mercurial substance that seemed to absorb the light from the Akar Font.
She ignored Hatim's bleeding hand and his obvious pain. Her fanatical gaze was fixed on him as a subject, a specimen.
"Phase Two commences: Resonant Cartography," she announced, her voice devoid of warmth. "The physical evaluation, while crude, is concluded. We now map the metaphysical." She gestured, and the attendants began setting up the apparatus with silent, terrifying efficiency. One node was positioned above Hatim's head, another aimed at his chest where the violet thread lay dormant. The mercurial basin pulsed with a deep, unsettling rhythm.
Kander stepped forward, his bulk blocking her path to the cot. "He just fought for his life. He needs to mend, not be your next experiment."
Elara's eyes flicked to Kander, dismissive. "Discomfort is data. Fatigue lowers psychic defenses, allowing for clearer readings of the substrate." Her focus returned to Hatim. "Subject. Focus. Recall the moment of severance in the council chamber. The silence of the null-lattice. The emptiness where your Core should be. Then, the influx. Not the power, but the essence. Was it cold? Hungry? Did it possess a sense of... memory?"
Hatim flinched as an attendant reached to adjust the node near his temple. The movement sent a fresh spike of pain through his bruised body. Deep within, the violet thread thrummed, a warning vibration that was both threat and promise. He remembered the crushing nullity, the suffocating silence where his connection to the world's song had been ripped away. Then, the surge. Not warmth, but a terrible, icy fullness. Not hunger, but a vast, indifferent presence. Ancient. Implacable.
"It... knew," Hatim rasped, the words dragged from a place of deep trauma. "It knew the silence was wrong. An insult. It didn't fill it... it erased it. Replaced it with... something older." He shuddered, the memory a void threatening to swallow him. "Cold. So cold. And old. Older than names."
Elara's stylus flew across her bone tablet, dark glyphs flaring to life. "Before names. Before Asha. The anti-resonance profile aligns with Pre-Creation models. The 'cold' is the absence of divine imposition." She made another sharp glyph. "Initiate sympathetic resonance. Frequency: Sigma-Null. Amplitude: Minimal. Target: The ontological wound site."
One of the crystalline nodes near Hatim's chest began to pulse with a deep, subsonic vibration. It wasn't sound; it was a pressure tuned to the frequency of absence, a vile echo of the Crown lattice's severance.
Hatim cried out as agony lanced through him—not in his muscles, but in his soul. The carefully scarred-over void within him ripped open anew. The violet thread roared, not in fury this time, but in agonized recognition. The air above the mercurial basin warped, forming a miniature vortex of swirling darkness that drank the light from the room.
"Suppression field holding!" an attendant murmured.
"Record the vortex signature! Full spectrum!" Elara commanded, her voice trembling with a scholar's ecstasy. "Proof of fundamental incompatibility!"
Kander roared. This was beyond a test; it was violation. He lunged, not at Elara, but at the resonance node. His fist, wreathed in the flaring, desperate sigils of a Vein-Warden—Fracture, Nullify—slammed toward the pulsing crystal.
A figure appeared in the doorway. Torvin.
He didn't shout. He didn't gesture. He simply looked.
The Royal Seal on his chest flared, a single, searing pulse of blood-hued light. The air in the room solidified. Kander's fist froze inches from the node, arrested by an invisible, crushing force. The sigils around his hand sputtered and died. The subsonic pulse from the node ceased instantly. The vortex above the basin collapsed with a soundless implosion.
"Enough, Elara," Torvin stated, his voice calm but carrying the weight of tectonic plates. "The Subject is strained. Your zeal outpaces prudence." He stepped fully into the room. The attendants bowed low, retreating instantly. Elara stiffened, a flicker of frustration quickly masked by deference. She closed her folio with a definitive snap.
"The data was unprecedented, Lord Torvin," she said, her voice tight. "The Void-State responded directly to simulated severance. Its capacity for ontological negation is..."
"...Understood," Torvin interrupted. His gaze, colder and sharper than Elara's scalpel-mind, settled on Hatim, who panted on the cot, trembling, the phantom void within him aching like a fresh wound. Torvin's expression held no pity, only intense assessment. He saw the pain, the violation, the raw terror... and the potential power it represented. "Recovery is paramount now. Force yields diminishing returns and risks destabilizing the conduit." He glanced at the suppressed vortex apparatus. "Your findings are noted. Correlate them with the decay patterns from the sanctum. Dismissed."
Elara bowed, her fanaticism banked but not extinguished, and swept out, attendants following with their trolley. The door sealed, leaving the hum of the Atrium and the reek of ozone and fear.
Torvin turned his gaze to Kander, still frozen mid-lunge. The pressure holding him eased. Kander stumbled back, gasping, hatred burning in his eyes. Torvin ignored it, addressing Hatim.
"Rest, Hatim. Heal. The path ahead requires resilience, not just power." He gestured towards the door. An attendant silently entered, bearing a tray of jewel-like fruit and shimmering liquid. "Eat. Your body is the vessel. Keep it strong." His gaze lingered on Hatim's chest. "The silence you touched... the cold you felt... it is the canvas upon which all else is merely painted. Remember that. It is the key to everything."
He turned to leave, but paused at the threshold, delivering his final blow not with a shout, but with a quiet, inescapable truth.
"The Synod's patience is a fraying thread. Valerius's bluster gathers supporters. Aethel's calculations now likely include the odds of storming this manor." He looked back, his eyes cold chips of obsidian. "The sanctuary of the Trial cannot be invoked once their knives are at the door. If you are to walk that path... it must be now. Dawn, Hatim. Decide by dawn."
With that, he was gone.
The silence he left behind was absolute. The scent of the noble feast was a perfume of dread.
Before Hatim or Kander could speak, the seamless door opened once more. Two of the silent, grey-clad servants stood there, heads bowed, waiting.
"Come," one said, its voice a soft, neutral tone. "Your quarters are prepared."
They were led from the stark, humming Atrium down another corridor. This one was different. The walls were still seamless stone, but inlaid with subtle silver filigree that depicted soaring hawks—the Torvin sigil. The air lost its sterile chill, becoming warm, carrying a faint, expensive scent of sandalwood and ozone.
A door, wider and more ornate than any they had seen, slid open without a sound.
The room within was a masterpiece of opulent restraint. A large bed with a mattress that looked softer than cloud, draped in dark grey linens. A sitting area with low, comfortable chairs fashioned from polished dark wood and upholstered in what felt like spun shadow. A wide, crystal-clear window looked out not onto other towers, but into a breathtaking, private vista of a cascading Akar waterfall within a cavern, its light painting shifting patterns on the floor. It was a room designed for a high-ranking guest, a noble. A gilded cage of impeccable taste.
The servants bowed and left, sealing the door.
Kander immediately began pacing the perimeter, his fingers tracing the walls, searching for seams, vents, anything. He found nothing but smooth, impenetrable perfection.
Hatim sank onto the edge of the impossibly soft bed, the tray of food placed beside him. He stared at his reflection in the polished floor, seeing the boy from the Sinks surrounded by impossible wealth, his face bruised, his knuckles bloody.
"Dawn," Hatim whispered, the word echoing in the luxurious silence.
Kander stopped his pacing, his shoulders slumped in a rare gesture of defeat. "He's not lying. The political clock is ticking faster than I thought. The Trial..." He ran a hand over his scarred scalp. "It's a death sentence, boy. But so is staying here. Valerius won't offer you a comfortable room. He'll offer a slab in a lab."
Hatim picked up a perfect, ruby-red fruit. It was cool and firm in his hand. He thought of the hard, stale bread Lugal had tossed him in the alley. He thought of the desperate hunger that had been a constant companion his entire life.
Now, he was being offered a different kind of sustenance. Power. Purpose. A chance to survive, at the cost of becoming the weapon that would tear his world apart.
He looked from the fruit to the majestic, artificial Akar waterfall outside the window. Torvin's words echoed in the spacious, beautiful room.
It is the key to everything.
The god-slayer's scalpel had been offered, and their gilded cage came with an expiration date. The choice was no longer theoretical. It was due by dawn.