The audience chamber smelled of dust and old blood, a scent that clung to the air with the stillness of a crypt. Velvet thrones, their crimson fabric faded to the color of a dried scab, were webbed with shrouds of thick cobwebs. On marble tables, untouched crystal goblets of sweating blood sat beaded with a faint, cold condensation. Veridia stood before the vampire council, the life-link to her sister a low, irritating thrum beneath her skin, a constant reminder of their shared cage. The ancient vampires watched them, their gazes holding the lazy, predatory amusement of cats observing two mice tied together at the tail.
The Progenitor, a desiccated creature whose skin was stretched tight over bones as delicate as a bird's, tapped a single, long nail against his armrest. The soft *click-click-click* was the only sound in the oppressive silence.
"A curious predicament," he mused, his voice a dry rustle of dead leaves. "Two halves of a single, spiteful whole. Tell me, Princess," he fixed his sharp, intelligent eyes on Veridia, "does it vex you more to be bound to your lesser, or to know she feels every bit of your pathetic desperation?"
Veridia's spine stiffened. The insult was a physical blow, but the truth within it was sharper. "My desperation is a consequence of my circumstances, not my nature," she snapped, her royal authority a reflex she could not suppress. "We had a deal. We gave you Castian's location. Now, give us the information you promised."
Seraphine forced a smile, a performer's mask slipping into place with practiced ease. "My Lord Progenitor," she purred, her voice dripping with the false honey she'd used on a thousand Patrons. "My sister is… direct. What she means to say is that we are eager to conclude our business so that we might trouble your magnificent court no longer."
"She means she's a graceless cow who doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut," Veridia muttered, just loud enough for the council's keen ears to catch.
Seraphine's smile tightened, a barely perceptible flicker of genuine rage in her eyes. "And she means she'd rather get us both killed charging headfirst into a wall than take a moment to think."
The Progenitor chuckled, a dry, rattling sound that scraped the air. The bickering, the raw friction between them, was clearly the performance he had been waiting for. He was satisfied. "Very well. Your entertainment has earned its wage."
He gestured, and another vampire brought forth a long, yellowed bone, its surface etched with shimmering, silver runes that seemed to shift in the dim light. "Before he retreated to his mountain of stone and silence, the Minotaur you call Asterion was the foremost scholar of symbiotic magic in this age. His private library, a place of immense knowledge, was lost to the Sinks during the wars."
The ancient's eyes gleamed with a cold, academic light. "If a method to sever a bond such as yours exists, its secrets will be found there. In the Sunken Library of Kor-Athek." He slid the bone map across the floor. It stopped at Veridia's feet. "This will guide you. It is your only lead." A cruel smirk touched his thin lips. "Try not to die before you get there. The show is just getting interesting."
***
The Effluent Sinks were a more honest kind of hell than the vampire's court. The air was a toxic cocktail of poison fog and industrial rot, thick enough to taste and leaving a greasy film on the skin. The ground was a treacherous mire, a soup of mud and rusted scrap metal that threatened to swallow them with every step, the silence broken only by the wet squelch of their boots and the distant, gurgling pop of a methane bubble.
Veridia, driven by a furious impatience, pushed the pace. She took a reckless step onto what looked like solid ground, only for it to give way. Her foot sank deep into the brackish sludge. She cried out in frustration as the cold, thick mud sucked her down to her thigh. A violent, sickening jerk answered her—the curse's invisible chain yanking taut. Seraphine was pulled from her feet, landing hard on her knees in the filth beside her.
"Watch where you're going, you clumsy oaf!" Seraphine shrieked, scrambling to get up.
A phantom wave of Seraphine's feeling washed through Veridia via the link. It wasn't just despair; it was the icy, theatrical *performance* of despair, a cloying, artificial emotion designed for an audience. It made Veridia want to vomit. At the same time, Seraphine flinched, her hand going to her own leg as the echo of Veridia's raw, physical struggle pulsed through her—the sharp pain of a twisted muscle, the cold shock of the mud, the burn of pure, undiluted fury.
"If you weren't slowing me down, I wouldn't have to rush," Veridia snarled, hauling her leg free with a wet, sucking sound.
"Slowing you down? I'm trying to keep us alive!" Seraphine shot back, wiping mud from her face with a shaking hand. "Your strategy is to run blindly into every bog and sinkhole until one of us breaks a leg. My life is on the line too, in case you've forgotten. This body is an asset that must be preserved!"
"You think of this as an asset? This is a cage!" Veridia's voice was a low roar of pure rage. "I'd rather risk my neck for a quick end to this than spend another second shackled to your parasitic soul!"
Their core philosophies clashed in the poisoned air. Veridia's reckless pride versus Seraphine's cold, pragmatic self-preservation. They stood glaring at each other, covered in muck, bound by a curse that turned every moment into a shared torment. After a long, seething silence, Veridia pointed a trembling finger toward a slightly more stable-looking ridge of scrap. It was a compromise. A hateful, necessary agreement that left them both burning with resentment.
***
Hours later, they arrived. A colossal dome of black, ancient stone broke the surface of a vast, unnaturally still marsh. The water was like polished obsidian, reflecting the bruised sky with perfect, dead clarity. Black vines and slick, iridescent algae clung to the library's half-submerged architecture. The silence was absolute, so profound it felt like a physical pressure against the ears, muffling the world.
They stood at the water's edge, the oppressive quiet amplifying the simmering hatred between them. The journey, the shared humiliation, the constant, intimate friction of the link—it all boiled over.
"This is where your brilliant plan has led us," Seraphine said, her voice dripping with venom. "To a tomb at the bottom of a swamp. Fitting."
"It's a lead, which is more than your pathetic Orc alliance ever produced," Veridia retorted. "All you did was get us chased across a continent by a fanatic."
"And all you do is fail! You failed our House, you failed in your exile, and you'll fail here. It's the one thing you're truly gifted at, dear sister." Seraphine's words were meant to wound, to remind Veridia of every public humiliation.
"You know nothing of our House!" Veridia's voice rose to a scream, the sound sharp and ugly in the dead air. "You were just a shadow, a tacky little host living off the scraps of my fall from grace!"
As their fury crested, the black water of the marsh began to stir. A faint, shimmering energy, dark and viscous like spilled oil, bled from them. It was their pure, focused spite, their mutual loathing made manifest. The threads of shimmering blackness were drawn from their bodies, a sensation like being leeched from the inside out. They coalesced in the water before the library entrance, weaving together in the depths.
The still surface bubbled violently. From the murky water, a form began to rise. At first, it was just tendrils of shadow and poisoned muck, writhing and twisting. Then, they solidified, nourished and literally constructed by the incandescent hatred pouring from the two sisters. A head broke the surface, eyeless and smooth, and turned directly toward the source of its sudden, violent birth. The thing was born of their rage, and it was hungry.