Night arrived in its quiet, inevitable way. Yvain spent much of it seated by the window in the modest chamber he'd been given. Small, simple, but warm and clean. It was a far cry from his old quarters in the spire, but that suited him. He wanted to be used to less.
The solitude was welcome. Being free of Celeste, even temporarily, was a balm to his frayed patience. Yet he could not deny the unease gnawing at his thoughts, not for himself, but for her… and for whomever might find themselves in her path. Even now, with walls between them, he could feel her presence like an itch beneath the skin.
In that time, he had turned over in his mind all he had seen and heard of Brother Lome of the Tenth Mind. The man was no common hedge witch, but neither did he rise to the level of true greatness. He had reached too far into the deeper mysteries, and fractured his own psyche in the process. Ten minds. Ten fractured selves stitched together by spellwork and suggestion. A self-made god of small truths. Lome had enthralled a flock of common folk, no doubt seeking order or meaning, offering them peace in exchange for worship
Yvain held a thousand secrets, forgotten names, forbidden formulae, whispered memories of the ages before the Sundering. Secrets a man like Lome would kill for. And die for.
Still, he did not dismiss the man entirely.
The tower, at least, commanded respect. Old stone, older than the current age. It hummed faintly with buried wards, resonating with the Breath of the World, though much weaker now. The Breath was dying, as all things were. Sorcerers were a thinning breed, shadows of what they once had been.
Yvain sighed and leaned back, folding his arms, letting his thoughts drift through the dim.
Then came the knock. He rose to meet it.
Opening the door, he found Celeste and Minerva waiting. Celeste brushed past him without a word, her long coat trailing behind her as she threw herself onto the bed like a lounging cat. Minerva, in contrast, lingered at the threshold, her composure fraying.
"Brother Lome has informed me that my rite of passage will be conducted tonight," she said, her voice trembling slightly despite her effort to appear composed. "Celeste said she wants to witness it. I… I wondered if you'd come too."
He could hear the silent plea in her tone. The brave mask she'd worn earlier had cracked. It was no small thing to face one's rite.
"Sure," Yvain said, simply.
Minerva gave a quick, grateful nod, then hesitated before asking, "How was yours?"
Yvain glanced toward the window, memories blooming unbidden.
His first rite. Augury. They called it the Circle Broken and Broken Again. He'd been forced to drink a potion that dulled all senses but thought, then they drove two iron spikes into his eyes, pain enough to end men thrice his age. He had wandered blind through a labyrinth, hearing voices from the edge of madness. The rite was meant to shatter perception and awaken the mind's eye.
If you emerged, you were changed forever. If not, you never emerged at all.
"Tough," he said, and nothing more.
Celeste snorted from the bed. "Understatement of the decade."
Yvain turned his gaze back to Minerva. "Get what rest you can. Rites are never merciful."
Minerva nodded slowly, visibly swallowing her fear, then turned and left, her footsteps fading into the stone corridor.
Yvain closed the door behind her and looked to Celeste. She was watching him with an inscrutable expression, eyes gleaming faintly in the candlelight.
"The poor thing's going to croak before she even gets there," Celeste said, lounging on the bed, her tone laced with mock pity. Her smile betrayed her amusement at Minerva's mounting dread.
Yvain shot her a sidelong glance. "Who knows?"
Celeste rolled onto her side, propping her head up with one hand. "You think she'll make it?"
He shrugged and sat down on the bedframe, hands resting on his knees. "I don't know."
She snorted. "Come on. You're an augur. Doomseer. Master of hidden truths."
Yvain allowed himself a low chuckle. "You know it doesn't work like that."
Celeste grinned and let the silence fall again, broken only by the low crackle of the fireplace in the corner.
Soon enough, a knock came. A servant, dressed in ceremonial white robes stitched with bronze thread, bowed low and beckoned them to follow.
The chamber for the rite was deep within the tower, hidden behind layers of carved stone and woven enchantments. When they entered, the space was already occupied. Brother Lome stood near the center, calm and reverent, flanked by two others. One was a middle-aged man with a scholar's stoop and eyes too tired for his face, Lome introduced him as a vitalist from the city. The other was younger, barely older than Minerva, with bright eyes and the swagger of someone who hadn't yet failed at anything meaningful. He stood close to Lome, clearly the favored apprentice.
Yvain offered a courteous nod to both. The young apprentice returned it with a cocky grin, his eyes flicking briefly to Celeste, then lingering there too long. Celeste noticed but said nothing, only arched one brow in faint amusement.
Moments later, Minerva was led into the chamber by two of Lome's female followers. She had changed, or rather, been changed. She wore a translucent white garment, gossamer-thin, that clung to her body and revealed more than it hid. Her expression was tight, trying to hide fear with formality, but her limbs trembled.
Without a word, the women disrobed her fully, their movements precise, ritualistic. Minerva stood bare before them all, her pale skin almost glowing in the low light. Then they bathed her with sweet-smelling oils, like myrrh, anise, and something else. Runes were drawn in liquid mercury across her arms and chest.
Her hands and feet were then bound in iron chains and she was gently guided to the great bronze bull in the center of the chamber. Its mouth gaped open like a scream. Inside, Minerva curled into the fetal position, her eyes squeezed shut, breath fast and shallow.
Brother Lome placed a small bundle of herbs beside her, dreamroot, flame-poppy, and knotted thorn.
"Be strong, my child," Lome murmured, his voice solemn as he shut the bronze door and locked it with an iron key.
A fire was lit beneath the belly of the bull. Slowly, surely, the metal began to heat. This was the Bronze Crucible.
The screams came swiftly. Piercing, ragged, and unmistakably human. They echoed off the stone walls like the wails of a damned soul, sharp enough to rattle bone. Minerva thrashed inside the bronze bull, her chains clanking violently with each spasm. She begged, sobbed, cursed. Pleaded for release, for mercy, for death.
No one moved. No one spoke. None even flinched.
This was the nature of the rite.
Her cries continued for what felt like forever, fifteen minutes of raw agony. Then, slowly, the sound ebbed. The bull grew silent again, save for the soft hiss of flames licking its underside. Whether Minerva had fainted or simply run out of strength, it didn't matter. The trial was not over.
The Bronze Crucible was designed to last nearly an hour.
Yvain watched in silence. He had seen rites before, had endured three himself but this one was particularly cruel in its simplicity. Alchemy was the discipline of transformation, of extraction and refinement, and it recognized no gentler path than fire. The core principle was absolute, only through the flames could base matter be purged of impurity.
The initiate was the ore.
Only what was essential would remain.
Time dragged, measured only by the slow collapse of burning wood.
When the hour came to its end, Brother Lome stepped forward. With a nod, one of his followers doused the flames. Steam hissed into the air. The chamber was thick with smoke and the scent of scorched metal and flesh. Yvain could taste it in the back of his throat.
Lome waited for the bull to lose its heat, then unlocked it with the same solemnity he had used to seal it.
As the door creaked open, a wave of heat rushed out, and with it, a vision of what remained. Minerva lay inside, barely recognizable. Her skin was blackened and cracked, patches of hair seared away. The smooth beauty she had carried with such shy grace was gone, sloughed away by flame and agony. But her body had not turned to ash.
She had endured.
Lome reached in with bare hands, untouched by the residual heat, and lifted her gently into his arms. He cradled her like one might a newborn child and pressed two fingers to her neck.
"She lives," he declared, voice steady. "She has survived the crucible. Her path to the mysteries now unfolds."
The gathered acolytes murmured in approval, quiet praise for what had been proven.
The vitalist, the older man from the city, stepped forward. Lome passed the girl to him, and he carried her to a waiting marble basin filled with crimson liquid. It shimmered faintly, thick with suspended herbs and alchemical compounds.
Carefully, he lowered Minerva into the fluid. The moment her body touched it, the liquid began to pulse. Her skin, where it had cracked and bled, slowly began to mend. Her breathing steadied, though she remained unconscious.
"It'll be done in a week," the vitalist said, his voice calm and clinical. "Not a scar will remain."
Yvain watched closely, arms crossed. Celeste leaned in, her breath near his ear.
"I could do it in two days," she whispered, pride and mischief laced in every syllable.
Yvain raised a brow but didn't turn. "You'd turn her into a swan if you were bored enough."
"Only on the outside," Celeste murmured with a wicked smile. "Inside, she'd still be screaming."
He didn't doubt it. Celeste had mastered the art of healing, but more than once, she'd demonstrated that restoration could be just another form of play. A canvas of flesh and nerves, to be sculpted as she pleased.
Yvain returned his gaze to Minerva, who floated in the alchemical bath like a relic half-buried in time. She had endured. That was more than most.
And now, she would never be the same.