# Chapter 6: A Debt of Blood
The impact with the sludge at the bottom of the vat was a sickening, wet thud that drove the air from Konto's lungs. The world was a churning chaos of foul water, shredded metal, and the acrid stench of chemical decay. He surfaced, sputtering, his eyes stinging. Liraya was a few feet away, coughing up the vile liquid, her fine clothes ruined and her face smeared with grime. Above them, the circular hatch they'd jumped through was a tiny circle of receding light. The wail of Warden sirens, amplified by the shaft, echoed down into the cavernous space, a hunting cry that promised no escape. They were in the belly of the Undercity, wounded, hunted, and utterly alone. Konto grabbed Liraya's arm, pulling her toward a rusted catwalk. "This way," he rasped, his voice hoarse. "They'll be swarming the maintenance tunnels. Our only chance is to go deeper." As they scrambled onto the walkway, a new sound joined the sirens—a low, rhythmic chanting that seemed to emanate from the very walls around them, a sound that spoke of ancient power and secrets hidden in the dark.
They moved through the labyrinthine bowels of Aethelburg's industrial heart, a world of grinding machinery and steam-vented pipes that hissed like serpents. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and rust, a metallic tang that coated the back of Konto's throat. Every shadow seemed to coalesce into a threat, every distant clang of metal the footfall of a Warden. The rhythmic chanting faded, replaced by the drip-drip-drip of condensation and their own ragged breaths. Liraya, though visibly exhausted, kept pace, her mage's senses on high alert, her hands glowing faintly with a protective ward that shimmered like heat haze in the gloom.
Konto led them not toward the familiar, grimy thoroughfares of the Undercity, but deeper, into forgotten corridors where the city's original foundations were laid with rune-etched stone. He was heading for a place he'd sworn he'd never return to, a place that demanded a price he was no longer sure he could pay. The Dreamer's Sanctuary. It was their only shot. The Wardens would be expecting them to surface in the Night Market or some other smuggler's den. They wouldn't think to look for them in a place that existed outside of conventional reality, a haven for those who were already lost to the dream.
After what felt like an hour of navigating treacherous catwalks over churning vats and squeezing through passages tight enough to scrape the skin from their backs, Konto stopped before a dead end. It was a wall of ancient, black stone, cool to the touch and devoid of any markings. Liraya eyed it with suspicion. "Is this a joke?"
"Patience," Konto murmured. He closed his eyes, not reaching for a lock or a switch, but inward. He focused his mind, pushing past the exhaustion and the lingering psychic sting from his extraction in the penthouse. He pictured the symbol of the Sanctuary—a coiled serpent eating its own stars—and projected it onto the wall. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the air grew cold, and the stone before them began to shimmer, its solid surface dissolving like smoke in a breeze. It didn't open; it simply ceased to be, revealing a corridor that was not a corridor, but a space of impossible geometry, lit by a soft, internal luminescence.
"Welcome to the last place you ever want to owe a favor to," Konto said, stepping through.
The inside was a stark contrast to the industrial decay outside. It was a vast, quiet library, but the shelves held no books. Instead, they were lined with glass jars containing swirling nebulae of color, each one a captured dream, a memory, a secret. The air was still and smelled of old paper and dried herbs. Figures moved between the shelves, their forms indistinct, their faces hidden in shadow. They were the rogue psychics, the dream-walkers who had gone too deep and never fully returned. They were the Sanctuary.
A woman detached herself from the shadows and glided toward them. She was tall and unnervingly still, dressed in simple grey robes. Her age was impossible to determine; her face was smooth, but her eyes held the weary weight of millennia. This was Madam Serafina.
"Konto," she said, her voice a soft, resonant hum that vibrated in Konto's skull. "It has been a long time. You look… unwell. And you've brought a stray from the Spires into my home." Her gaze fell on Liraya, sharp and appraising.
"I need your help, Serafina," Konto said, bypassing any pretense of pleasantries. "The Wardens are hunting us. We need sanctuary. And information."
Madam Serafina circled them slowly, her gaze lingering on Liraya's Aspect Tattoos, which still glowed with a faint, defensive light. "Information is a currency, and sanctuary is a loan. Both must be repaid. You know my price."
"I know," Konto said, his jaw tight. "A favor. Unspecified. Due upon your request."
"A debt of blood is always the most binding," she mused, stopping before him. "Very well. I will grant you refuge from the Wardens. Their sight cannot penetrate these walls. As for information… you seek the Somnus Cartel." It wasn't a question. "They are a plague, but a useful one. They operate out of a pleasure den in the Undercity's Gilded Cage district, a place they call the 'Crescent Veil.' But be warned, they do not welcome outsiders, especially not a Magisterium mage." She looked pointedly at Liraya.
Liraya stepped forward, her chin raised. "I am no longer with the Magisterium. My goal is the same as yours: to stop the source of this corruption."
Madam Serafina smiled, a thin, bloodless expression. "We shall see. Rest here. Gather your strength. Your debt is now mine to claim." With a graceful turn, she melted back into the shadows, leaving them alone in the silent, dreaming library.
Konto let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He'd done it. He'd bought them time. But the cost hung over him, a future as ominous as the Arch-Mage's plot. He turned to Liraya, intending to discuss their next move, but found her leaning against a shelf, her face pale and beaded with sweat.
"Liraya?"
"I'm fine," she said, her voice strained. "Just… drained. The fall, the warding…" She winced, pressing a hand to her side. When she pulled it away, her fingers were slick with a dark, viscous fluid. Not blood. It was something else, something that shimmered with a faint, sickly purple light.
Konto's blood ran cold. He recognized the substance. It was dream-ichor, a physical manifestation of a psychic wound. During their escape, in the chaos of the Warden's attack, she must have been clipped by a cursed round or a psychic blade. It was an injury that wouldn't heal with bandages or rest. It would fester, poisoning her mind from the inside out until her consciousness dissolved into the dreamscape.
"Sit down," he ordered, his voice low and urgent. He helped her to the floor, his mind racing. He knew of treatments, of course. Dangerous ones. Forbidden ones. They required a dreamwalker to enter the victim's mind, to find the psychic corruption and excise it like a tumor. It was an act of supreme intimacy, a violation of the deepest kind. It was the one line he had never crossed, the one rule he had kept even in the darkest days of his past. Getting personally involved meant getting tangled in someone else's subconscious, risking your own sanity to save theirs. It was how partners ended up in comas. It was how Elara…
He looked at Liraya, her breathing growing shallow, her eyes fluttering closed. The purple ichor was spreading, staining her clothes. The Wardens were outside. The Arch-Mage was plotting. The city was on a timer. And here was the woman who had trusted him, who had jumped into the abyss with him, dying because of it.
His Lie—that his mind was a weapon to be wielded alone, that intimacy was a liability—screamed at him to leave her. To find the Cartel, to finish the mission. To save himself. It was the smart play. The logical play.
But looking at her face, pale and vulnerable in the ethereal light of the Sanctuary, he saw not a liability, but an ally. A partner. He saw a reflection of the choice he'd failed to make for Elara. This was his Need, laid bare. To trust. To connect. To accept that some debts were worth paying, no matter the cost.
"Damn it all," he muttered, more to himself than to her. He gently took her face in his hands. "Hold on," he whispered. "Don't you dare let go." He closed his eyes, pushed past the fear, and dove into the dark, rising tide of her mind.
The transition was a violent lurch. The quiet library vanished, replaced by a chaotic storm of Liraya's memories and fears. He was adrift in a sea of shattered glass, each shard reflecting a moment from her life: her father's proud smile, the cold halls of the Nyxara Academy, the sting of a rival's insult, the shocking revelation of her father's death. The purple corruption was here, a monstrous, tentacled thing of shadow and malice, wrapping itself around the core of her consciousness, squeezing the life from her.
He fought his way toward it, his own mental form a shield of hardened will. The corruption lashed out, visions of his own failures assaulting him. Elara, lying in a hospital bed, her mind a blank slate. Valerius's face, twisted with disappointment. The faces of every person he'd ever let down. The psychic assault was brutal, designed to break him, to feed on his guilt.
*Intimacy is a liability,* the Lie whispered in his mind. *This is what happens when you let someone in.*
*No,* he thought, pushing back against the tide of despair. *This is what happens when you care.*
He gathered his power, not as a weapon, but as a light. He focused on the memory of Liraya standing up to Madam Serafina, of her jumping into the disposal shaft without hesitation. He poured that trust, that strength, into a single, brilliant point of psychic energy and thrust it into the heart of the corruption.
There was no explosion, only a silent, searing wave of pure light. The shadow-creature shrieked, a soundless agony that echoed in the void, and then it dissolved, its tendrils retracting from Liraya's consciousness. The storm of memories calmed, the sea of glass settling into a tranquil, starlit ocean. He had done it. He had saved her.
But as he pulled himself back to his own body, the cost of the intrusion became terrifyingly clear. A sliver of the purple corruption, a tiny, resilient fragment, had clung to him. It was a seed of Somnolent Corruption, planted deep within his own mind. He had paid the debt, but the interest would be his own sanity.
He opened his eyes. He was back in the library. Liraya was breathing evenly now, the color returning to her cheeks, the purple ichor gone from her clothes. She was safe. He looked at his own hands, half-expecting to see them stained, but they were clean. The corruption was inside, hidden. A secret debt.
Liraya's eyes fluttered open. She looked at him, her gaze clear and free of pain. "Konto… what did you do?"
He forced a weak smile, the lie coming easily, even as a new, terrifying truth settled in his soul. "Just a little first aid. You had a bad reaction to the fall. You're okay now." He helped her to her feet, his touch lingering for a second too long. The connection was there, an unspoken bond forged in the fire of her mind and the depths of his own. He had broken his cardinal rule. And in doing so, he had sealed his own fate, blurring the line between his dreams and the encroaching nightmare.