The corridor didn't just feel infinite; it felt alive. The walls, lined with that same oppressive, silver-veined marble, seemed to pulse with a rhythm that matched the frantic thudding in Asteria's chest.
Every few steps, the architecture groaned, shifting inches to the left or right, as if the palace itself were trying to reorient its internal compass now that its heart had been stolen.
"Do you know where the safest place is within this kingdom?" Valerius probed, his voice echoing off the polished surfaces. He didn't sound panicked; he sounded like a man who had just finished a particularly difficult game and was looking for the next opponent.
Asteria squinted, her mind racing through the maps she had seen and the sensations still clinging to her skin from the Queen's touch. The memory of the stillness, the absolute, frozen security of the depths, surfaced through the haze of her exhaustion.
"The Vault of Splendor," she whispered.
"The Vault of Splendor," Valerius repeated, his voice dropping into a perfect, low synchrony with hers. He spared her a side-glance, his eyes glittering with a sharp, dangerous approval.
"We're going... back there?" Asteria asked, her stomach churning at the thought of those glass-trapped smiles. "We don't have Aris' keys, Valerius. We'll be trapped..."
"Precisely! I knew I could count on you!" Valerius stopped abruptly, spinning on his heel to face her. He looked her up and down, taking in the frayed edges of her silk gown and the glow beneath her skin. "Now, tell me how you're going to get in, since you were so confident."
Asteria felt a phantom weight against her collarbone. She closed her eyes, reaching into the soul sea where the golden spark was currently causing a tempest. She didn't reach for the spark, though. She reached for the small memory of the Queen's favour – the cold, heavy object that led Asteria to this nightmare.
With a flick of her wrist, she summoned the [Monarch's Talisman].
The object materialized in a flurry of white sparks. It was a disk of dark, translucent glass, etched with a single, weeping eye – the Queen's personal sigil.
"Will this work?" Asteria asked, her voice trembling slightly.
Valerius leaned in, his eyes wide as he inspected the talisman. A slow, predatory smirk spread across his face.
"Asteria," he whispered, "you aren't just a thief. You're a disaster. Let's go."
They moved with a desperate, driven speed. Valerius led the way, his knowledge of the spire's construction allowing them to take shortcuts through the stone that Asteria would have walked right past.
As they descended, the air grew colder and heavier. The distant, harrowing music of the Cathedral was replaced by a silence so thick it felt like physical pressure against their eardrums. The endless corridor finally gave way to the grand archway of the Vault's entrance.
The Great Doors stood shut – two slabs of midnight stone that looked like they had been forged from the very concept of 'The Void.'
"If this is a trap," Asteria muttered, "I'm going to spend my eternity as a statue haunting your study."
"A charming thought," Valerius replied, stepping back to give her room. "But do hurry. I can hear the Guards waking up above us."
Asteria stepped forward. She felt the Spark within her leap toward the door, a magnetic pull that nearly took her off her feet. She pressed the [Monarch's Talisman] into the door.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, the weeping eye on the disk flared with a blinding, sapphire light. A deep, resonant thrum shook the floor, the sound of a thousand locks disengaging at once. The slabs didn't swing open; they dissolved into a fine, black mist, revealing the long, silent gallery of the Pavilion.
They stepped inside, the mist reforming behind them into a solid wall.
The Vault was exactly as she remembered, yet entirely different. Without the Queen's presence to "warm" the room. The long corridor with countless doors on either side – and a large Pavilion at the end; the statues looked less like peaceful dreamers and more like horrifying casualties. The rows of glass-encased subjects stretched into the gloom, their frozen expressions mocking the living.
"Don't look at them," Valerius warned, his voice tight. "Keep moving."
Asteria nodded. The disk in her hand was vibrating now, pointing her toward the back of the pavilion, past the empty pedestals and the rows of "favoured" citizens. They walked deeper into the dark, the sound of their boots the only disturbance in the tomb.
They reached the very back of the Vault, a place where the floor sloped downward into a natural cavern. Here, the polished marble gave way to raw, jagged crystal.
The talisman led them to a specific section of the wall – a murky, irregular pane of glass embedded directly into the living rock.
"This is it," Asteria said, her hand reaching out instinctively.
Through the murkiness of the glass, she could see something moving – faint, swirling shadows that looked like ink in water. It was the same energy she had seen in her second vision.
"This isn't just a vault, is it?" she asked, turning to Valerius.
Valerius stood beside her, his face pale in the dim light of the talisman. He looked at the murky pane with a mixture of reverence and absolute dread.
"I don't know," he whispered. "I wasn't aware this was here – let alone how to enter it."
Asteria pressed the talisman against the murky glass. The surface didn't break; it rippled like the surface of a pond. The shadows on the other side surged forward, pressing against the pane as if trying to reach her.
The talisman shattered.
[Your memory has been destroyed.]
The shards didn't fall to the floor; they were sucked into the murky pane, – though she swore she saw a singular spark dissolve into her chest – which began to clear, revealing a narrow, winding path made of starlight and smoke that led straight into the heart of the kingdom's greatest secret.
Asteria looked at Valerius, then back at the dark path. Behind them, the Vault doors groaned under the impact of someone trying to force their way in from the other side.
"There's no going back, is there?" she asked.
"There hasn't been since the moment you woke up, Asteria," Valerius replied, stepping into the murk beside her.