# Chapter 968: The Inquisitor's Hunt
The air in the deep cisterns of Aethelburg was a thick, cold soup of ancient stone, damp earth, and the cloying sweetness of decay. Isolde moved through it with the silent, fluid grace of a predator, her boots making no sound on the slick, moss-covered flagstones. Behind her, her handpicked team of Inquisitors fanned out, their polished steel and stark white cloaks a stark contrast to the gloom. Each was a veteran, their faces grim masks of determination. They were hunters, and their prey was close.
The magical signature they tracked was a foul thing, a discordant thrum that vibrated against Isolde's Gift like a scraped nerve. It was the signature of Brother Malachi, a man she had once called colleague, a man whose zealous faith had curdled into a nihilistic madness. He was here, somewhere in the labyrinthine root-caverns that snaked beneath the city, entwined with the very foundations of the World-Tree. He was performing the final stage of his poisoning ritual.
"Signal strengthens ahead, Inquisitor," a voice whispered through the small communication crystal pinned to Isolde's collar. It was Varr, her second-in-command, his voice a low rumble. "The caverns open up. It feels like a… a heart."
Isolde held up a clenched fist, and the team froze in place, a collection of statues in the oppressive dark. She could feel it too. The thrumming was no longer just a vibration; it was a pulse, a slow and deliberate beat of corrupt power that seemed to make the very air around her shimmer with heat. The scent of ozone, sharp and acrid, cut through the smell of decay. She drew her blade, a simple, unadorned longsword of folded steel, its edge honed to a razor's perfection. Her Gift was not one of grand displays or elemental fury. It was a gift of negation, of silence. She was an void, a place where magic went to die. It was a power that made her the Synod's most effective interrogator and its most feared internal enforcer.
She rounded a corner, and the tunnel opened into a vast, natural cathedral. The ceiling was lost in a tangle of colossal roots, thick as ancient towers, that gnarled together to form a dome. They glowed with a faint, sickly green light, pulsing in time with the thrumming that filled the chamber. In the center of the cavern, the roots converged, plunging into a single, massive piece of crystalline obsidian—the heart-stone. And fused to that heart-stone, his arms outstretched as if crucified upon it, was Brother Malachi.
He was not the man she remembered. His body was gaunt, his skin stretched tight over his bones like parchment. Dark, crystalline veins pulsed across his exposed flesh, glowing with the same malevolent green light as the roots. His head was thrown back, his mouth open in a silent, endless chant. The air around him warped, the heat intensifying, the smell of burning stone filling her nostrils. He was a conduit, a living bridge between the poison and the tree.
"Form a perimeter," Isolde commanded, her voice a cold, clear whisper. "Cut off his acolytes. Varr, with me. We end this."
As they advanced, figures detached from the shadows behind the heart-stone. A dozen Ashen Remnant fanatics, their eyes wild with fervor, their bodies covered in crude, ash-grey tattoos. They wielded rusted blades and axes, but they moved with a terrifying, jerky speed, their movements powered by the same corrupting energy that fueled their master.
The Inquisitors met them without a sound. The clash of steel was a brief, brutal symphony in the cavern. Isolde ignored the chaos, her focus locked on Malachi. She and Varr pushed through the fray, her blade a blur of silver, his heavy mace crushing bone and sinew. She parried a wild swing from a fanatic, her nullifying field flaring. The man's Gift, a minor ability to harden his skin, flickered and died, his eyes widening in surprise a moment before her sword slid between his ribs.
They reached the dais. Malachi's eyes snapped open, and they were pools of pure, emerald light. He smiled, a ghastly, rictus grin.
"Isolde," he rasped, his voice like grinding stones. "The Synod's faithful hound. Have you come to bless my work?"
"I've come to end it, Malachi," she said, raising her sword. "Your heresy ends today."
"Heresy?" He laughed, a dry, cracking sound. "This is purification! The Gifted are a plague, a cancer upon this world. The Bloom was not a cataclysm; it was a failed cure. I am simply finishing what it started. I am giving the world the peace of silence."
He wrenched one hand from the heart-stone. The crystal screamed, and a wave of pure, concussive force erupted from him. Varr was thrown back, crashing into a wall of roots with a sickening thud. Isolde dug her feet in, her own Gift flaring to life, a sphere of absolute nothingness that absorbed the brunt of the blast. The air around her warped and shimmered, the energy dissipating against her void.
"Your silence is a cage, Malachi," she grunted, pushing forward against the pressure. "It is the fear of men like Valerius who cannot control what they do not understand."
"And your order is a leash!" he shrieked, pulling his other hand free. The heart-stone flared, and the green light in the cavern intensified, washing over everything. Isolde felt a searing pain in her arm and looked down to see a dark, crystalline growth sprouting from her leather vambrace. The poison was trying to claim her. She gritted her teeth, focusing her Gift, and the growth blackened and crumbled to dust.
She was upon him. Her sword swept in, a clean, horizontal arc aimed for his neck. He moved with impossible speed, his body twisting, his hand catching her blade. The crystalline veins on his palm glowed, and the steel of her sword began to flake and corrode, turning to rust in his grasp.
"You see!" he exulted, his face inches from hers. His breath was hot and smelled of ash and rot. "This world is rotten! I am the fire that will burn it clean!"
Isolde released her sword, her left hand shooting out to grab his throat. Her nullifying field surged, point-blank. Malachi screamed, a sound of pure agony as the magic sustaining him was violently torn away. The crystalline veins on his skin flickered violently. He stumbled back, clutching his chest, the connection to the heart-stone severed.
The fight became a brutal, desperate brawl. It was no longer a battle of Gifts, but of faith and ideology, of raw, physical will. He swung at her with fists that could shatter stone. She ducked and weaved, her movements economical and precise, using her knowledge of anatomy to strike at nerves and joints. He was fueled by fanatical rage; she was driven by cold, hard conviction.
"You cling to a lie!" he spat, lunging. "The Synod tells you the Gift is a blessing, a holy light! But it is a curse! Every time we use it, we pay a price! The Cinders Cost is not a penance; it is the world itself pushing back against our violation!"
"The Cost is a burden we bear for the sake of others!" she retorted, sidestepping a clumsy haymaker and driving her elbow into his kidney. He grunted in pain, stumbling. "It is the price of power, the price of protection!"
"There is no protection! Only annihilation!" he roared, swinging wildly. Isolde saw her opening. As he overcommitted, she dropped low, sweeping his legs out from under him. He crashed to the stone floor.
Before he could rise, she was on him. She drew a slender, silver dagger from her boot—the tool of an Inquisitor, designed for one purpose. She straddled his chest, her knees pinning his arms, and drove the dagger into his heart.
Malachi's body arched, a final, silent scream tearing from his lips. The green light in his eyes extinguished, replaced by a dull, vacant emptiness. The thrumming in the cavern ceased. For a moment, there was only the sound of Isolde's ragged breaths and the distant clash of steel from her team finishing off the last of the fanatics.
She had won. The heretic was dead.
But as she pulled the dagger free, a look of profound, triumphant peace settled on Malachi's face. His body went limp, but his hand, the one that had been fused to the heart-stone, spasmed. A single, final pulse of energy, far greater than any before, erupted from the obsidian crystal.
It was not a wave of force. It was a spear of pure, concentrated poison, a silent, invisible bolt of unmaking that shot downwards, following the thickest root, the primary artery of the World-Tree.
Isolde felt it not as a sound or a sight, but as a deep, shuddering impact that traveled up through the soles of her boots. It was a final, convulsive throb of pure malice that struck the tree's very heart. The entire cavern seemed to groan, a sound of such profound and ancient agony that it vibrated in her bones. The glowing roots flickered, their sickly green light dimming to a faint, dying ember.
She scrambled off Malachi's body, pressing her hand against the massive root beside her. Through the cold, rough bark, she felt it. A tremor, not of the earth, but of life itself, giving a final, shuddering gasp. She felt the World-Tree's death throes through the stone around her, a silent, psychic scream that echoed in the emptiness Malachi had so desired. The internal threat was neutralized, but the damage was done. The fatal wound had been struck.