# Chapter 664: The Heart of Corruption
"The final darkness!" the priest cried, pointing a trembling finger at the shard, which now pulsed with a light that seemed to swallow the very shadows in the room. "It is the Withering King's promise made manifest! Do not hinder the cleansing, child of the League. Witness the end of your magic!"
The air in the foundry grew thick and heavy, charged with a palpable dread that had nothing to do with the heat. The dozen Ashen Remnant cultists who had breached the main doors moved with a horrifying purpose. They did not brandish weapons. They did not charge. They fell to their knees on the soot-stained floor, their bodies wracked with ecstatic sobs. Their leader, a gaunt figure in robes the color of dried blood, took another step forward, his hands raised in supplication. His face was a mask of profound, terrifying joy.
Nyra froze mid-leap, her body contorted in the air. The sudden shift in the battlefield's physics was jarring. She had been bracing for impact, for the desperate, suicidal struggle of a madman. Instead, she landed in a tableau of grotesque worship. Rook Marr, still holding the shard, stared at the newcomers with a flicker of confusion cutting through his delirium. His absolution was being interrupted.
"Get back!" he rasped, his voice a raw wound. "This is my penance! Mine!"
The priest ignored him, his gaze fixed solely on the shard. The object in Rook's hand was no longer just a corrupted crystal. It was a beacon. The black energy coiled within it had stopped thrashing and now pulsed with a slow, rhythmic beat, like a dark heart. Each pulse sent a wave of coldness through the sweltering air, a counterpoint to the furnace's roar. The light it emitted was not a reflection of the flames but an anti-light, a void that made the surrounding metal and brick seem dull and lifeless. Nyra could see it now, what ruku bez had tried to describe. The corruption wasn't just in the shard; it was leaking out, staining the very air, crawling like ink up the furnace's iron flue. The heart of the foundry was becoming a heart of corruption.
"Your penance is arrogance, Marr," the priest said, his voice a silken, venomous whisper that carried over the din. "You believe you can burn away a truth? You cannot destroy the King's promise. You can only witness it. You can only serve it."
One of the kneeling cultists began to chant, a low, guttural sound that was soon picked up by the others. The words were in the old tongue, a language spoken only by scholars and madmen, a litany of ash and endings. The sound vibrated in Nyra's teeth, a dissonant hum that clashed with the furnace's deep thrum. The combined frequencies created a sickening resonance that made the iron catwalk beneath her feet vibrate ominously.
She had to act. This was worse than she could have imagined. They weren't here to trigger an explosion. They were here to claim the shard, to treat it like a holy relic. If they succeeded, they would carry this cancer out into the city, a seed of the Withering King's power waiting to bloom.
Nyra tightened her grip on her swords. "Rook," she said, her voice sharp and clear. "Look at them. They don't want your forgiveness. They want that thing. They want to use it."
Rook's gaze flickered from the priest to her, his bloodshot eyes struggling to focus. The burns on his hands were weeping, the skin blistered and blackened, but he seemed not to feel it. "No… they see. They see the sin. They understand it must be cleansed."
"They understand nothing!" Nyra snapped, taking a cautious step forward. The cultists didn't react, their attention entirely consumed by the shard. "They're fanatics. They'll let this whole city burn if it serves their prophecy."
The priest smiled, a thin, bloodless stretching of his lips. "The city is already ash, waiting for the wind. We are merely the breath that will scatter it. You fight for a world that is already dead, Sableki. Your League, your Synod, your precious order… they are ghosts haunting a corpse."
He knew her name. Of course, he did. The Ashen Remnant was more than a rabble of crazed survivors; they had intelligence. They had eyes and ears everywhere.
A tremor ran through the floor, more violent than the last. A shower of sparks rained down from the ceiling as a massive girder, groaning under some unseen stress, shifted a few inches. The shard's pulse intensified. The corruption was actively attacking the foundry's structure, weakening the metal, turning the brickwork to powder. It wasn't just a beacon; it was a weapon.
Nyra saw her chance. While the priest was monologuing, while the cultists were lost in their trance, she could close the distance. She could disarm Rook, grab the shard, and make a break for the roof. It was a suicidal plan, but it was the only one she had. She lowered her center of gravity, preparing to spring.
"Do not move," the priest commanded, his voice suddenly losing its silken quality and gaining the sharp edge of flint. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking past her, toward the main entrance.
Nyra risked a glance. The heavy iron doors, which the cultists had forced open, were now framed by a new silhouette. It was a massive, hulking shape, a mountain of grey flesh and simple, tattered clothing. ruku bez. He stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, his face a mask of exhaustion and fury. He must have heard the chanting, realized the situation inside had deteriorated. He had abandoned his post to come to her aid.
Behind him, the night sky was lit by a sudden, brilliant flare of white light. Isolde. She was signaling, or perhaps providing a distraction. The flare illuminated the rooftop, casting long, dancing shadows into the foundry.
The priest's face twisted in fury. "The unGifted abomination! Defilers! You bring your tainted flesh into this sacred space!"
He raised a hand, and for the first time, Nyra saw the power he wielded. It wasn't a Gift of fire or force. It was a Gift of negation. A wave of invisible energy, cold and absolute, washed over the room. The furnace flames flickered and shrank, as if suffocated. The vibrant glow of the cinder-tattoos on Rook's arms dimmed to a faint grey. Nyra felt a sudden, hollow ache in her bones, a draining sensation as if her own life force was being siphoned away. It was the same principle as the shard, but focused, controlled.
Rook cried out, a sound of pure agony as the nullifying energy washed over him and the shard. The two opposing forces—the shard's corrupting power and the priest's negating Gift—collided. The shard in Rook's hand screamed, a high-pitched, silent shriek that vibrated directly in the skull. The black energy within it exploded outwards, no longer a contained pulse but a lashing tendril of pure darkness.
It struck the furnace.
The sound was deafening, not an explosion, but a deep, resonant *CRACK* like a glacier calving. A spiderweb of black fractures spread across the furnace's iron shell. The white-hot heart within flickered wildly, the flames turning a sickly, bruised purple.
"The final darkness!" the priest shrieked, his voice now exultant, his earlier composure shattered. He pointed at the spreading cracks. "It is the Withering King's promise made manifest! The vessel breaks! The end begins!"
The cultists rose as one, their faces alight with feverish glee. They were no longer kneeling; they were advancing, their hands outstretched, moving not toward Nyra or ruku bez, but toward the furnace, toward the dying heart of the foundry. They wanted to be close when it shattered. They wanted to be consumed.
Rook Marr screamed again, a sound of ultimate despair. The tendril of dark energy was still connected to the shard in his hand, a pulsing umbilical cord. He was being used as a conduit, his life force feeding the corruption. His body convulsed, his back arching at an impossible angle. The burns on his hands were now spreading, the black corruption crawling up his arms like a living thing.
Nyra was trapped. The path to the roof was blocked by the advancing cultists. The path to Rook was through the epicenter of the magical maelstrom. ruku bez was at the door, roaring a silent challenge, but he was too far away, and the priest's nullifying field would sap his strength long before he could reach her.
She had one tool left. The Stasis Field. A small, disc-shaped device given to her by Talia Ashfor. It was designed to contain unstable magical artifacts, creating a pocket of frozen time for a few precious seconds. It was a last resort, a single-use tool for an impossible situation. This was certainly that.
But she couldn't get close enough. The energy arcing between the shard and the furnace was a lethal barrier. To throw it would be to risk it being deflected or destroyed.
Her eyes darted around the chaos, her tactical mind racing, processing a thousand variables at once. The cracking furnace. The advancing cultists. The screaming Rook. The exultant priest. The roaring ruku bez. The flickering lights from Isolde on the roof.
Then she saw it. A heavy iron chain, thick as her arm, hanging from a pulley system directly above the furnace. It was part of the loading mechanism, used to lift massive crucibles of molten metal. The girder that had shifted earlier had strained the pulley's housing. It looked precarious. Unstable.
An idea, desperate and insane, bloomed in her mind.
She didn't aim for Rook. She didn't aim for the priest. She aimed for the wall.
With a flick of her wrist, she sent one of her short swords spinning through the air. It wasn't a throw for killing, but for distraction. The blade sailed past the priest's head and clattered against a far wall, striking a steam pipe with a loud *PING*.
The priest and the cultists flinched, their attention momentarily diverted. It was all the opening she needed.
Nyra sprinted. Not toward the furnace, but toward the massive iron chain. She leaped onto a nearby console, her boots slipping on the grease-stained metal, and launched herself into the air. Her fingers closed around the cold, greasy links of the chain. The jolt nearly dislocated her shoulders. She swung, a pendulum of desperation, directly over the maelstrom of energy.
The heat was immense, a physical blow that singed her hair and threatened to melt the leather of her coat. The nullifying field made her limbs feel heavy as lead, but adrenaline was a hotter fire. She swung back, then forward again, building momentum. Below her, Rook Marr was a convulsing puppet, the shard a dark star in his hand.
On her next forward swing, she let go.
She flew through the air, a human missile aimed at the furnace's control panel. She crashed into it, her shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. Levers shattered. Gauges exploded in showers of glass and sparks. Her hand found the largest, most imposing lever: the emergency crucible release.
She pulled it with all her strength.
There was a groan of protesting metal from high above. The pulley housing, already weakened, finally gave way. The massive iron chain, with its heavy hook, plummeted. It didn't fall on Rook. It didn't fall on the shard. It fell on the furnace itself.
The impact was cataclysmic. The chain, aided by gravity and its own immense weight, struck the cracked shell of the furnace with the force of a battering ram. The spiderweb of black fractures shattered. The entire structure, already weakened by the shard's corruption, collapsed in on itself.
A tidal wave of molten iron, no longer contained, erupted outwards. It hit the floor with a hiss that turned into a deafening roar, sending clouds of superheated steam and ash in every direction. The cultists, who had been advancing with their arms outstretched, were consumed. Their ecstatic chants turned into single, final screams that were instantly swallowed by the inferno.
The priest threw up a shield of negating energy, but it was like trying to stop a flood with a paper cup. The white-hot molten metal washed over his shield, distorting it, cracking it, and then vaporizing him where he stood.
The dark tendril of energy from the shard was severed by the deluge of molten iron. Rook Marr, freed from the conduit, was thrown backward by the force of the explosion, his body limp. The shard, still clutched in his burned hand, flew through the air, tumbling end over end.
It landed on the floor, ten feet from Nyra, sizzling as the superheated metal cooled around it. The immediate threat was over. The foundry was a hellscape of fire, steam, and melting steel. But the shard was exposed. And she was the only one left standing who could claim it.