The hall shrieked with light. Emerald fire scorched the air, weaving with a bone-white luminescence that clawed at Bogdana’s vision. Her muscles spasmed, a searing ache igniting in her blood, travelling from her gripping hands into the core of her being. The Vratnik Key, fused to Kazimir’s sternum, pulsed with a predatory, primordial rhythm. The Saint’s Ribcage over his heart thrummed, a hungry conduit, drawing in the life she had just claimed. Power, raw and untamed, surged through her, not as a river but as a tidal wave, ripping through the dams of her fear, tearing down the walls of her carefully constructed indolence. The marrow in her skull hummed with calcified fury. Irises that had once mirrored salt flats burned ivory beneath the glare. The air snapped with sulfur and raw friction, standing the hairs on her forearms on end as marrow-deep agony ground through her ribs. She was a vessel, thin glass holding a roaring inferno, and for a terrifying, exhilarating moment, she felt the Kosciany Bog itself stir within her, a dormant titan awakened. Emperor Valeriyan II, his face contorted in a mask of shock and avarice, staggered back from the surge. His elite Obsidian Wardens, cloaked in charcoal grey, drew their runic sabers, advancing with cold, practiced precision. “Seize her!” he bellowed, his voice cracking with a manic glee. “The power is ours!” Bogdana did not turn. Her gaze remained fixed on Kazimir’s pale face, on the relics now deeply embedded in his small form. But she felt the guards’ approach, a faint tremor in the air, a disruption in the newly amplified hum of the world. A sensation, cold and absolute, bloomed in her awareness: the guards were an irritation. Not a threat. Merely a speck of grit on the primeval, terrible canvas she had just unfurled. She lifted one hand, slowly, deliberately. No incantation, no gesture, merely a thought. A silent, terrifying articulation of will. The Obsidian Wardens, mid-stride, their sabers glinting, froze. Their armor, usually so unyielding, seemed to ripple, then shimmer. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through them, before their forms began to unravel. Not melting, not burning, but disintegrating, atom by atom. Their heavy cloaks collapsed first, settling into dark puddles on the ornate floor. Then the polished greaves and breastplates dissolved into fine, black grit. Finally, their bodies, their very bones, crumbled inward, reduced to shifting heaps of cinder where formidable men had stood moments before. The air filled with the scent of ozone and something akin to burnt stone. Damir, blood streaking his face from a gash above his eye, staggered back against a gilded pillar, his lungs stuttering on ash. His weapon, still clutched in his hand, seemed insignificant, a child’s toy against the raw, annihilating force he had just witnessed. His expression was a complex weave of terror, awe, and a profound, dawning understanding. This was not the Wskrzesa he knew. This was something eldritch, something beyond human. Valeriyan, however, saw only victory. His eyes gleamed, bright with a maddened triumph that overrode any sense of caution. He watched the dissolving guards, not with horror, but with an almost sexual delight. “Magnificent!” he shrieked, his voice raspy with anticipation. “The Kosciany Bog’s true vessel! You have done it, Rostova! You have bound the eternal engine!” He took a step, then another, arms outstretched, his decrepit frame trembling. “Now, bestow it! My immortality! My eternal reign!” He moved toward her, his face a grotesque rictus of greed, utterly convinced of her servitude. Bogdana turned then, slowly, her head tilting. The chalky light still pulsed in her eyes, a cold, indifferent fire. Her voice, when it came, was not her own. It was a chorus, deep and resonant, a whisper from a thousand graves. “Immortality?” The word echoed, a chilling question in the suddenly silent hall. “You misunderstand, Valeriyan. The Mandate doesn’t grant life. It *collects* it.” She extended her hand, not to embrace him, but to point. A single, unwavering finger. And in that gesture, the air itself seemed to crackle and warp around the Emperor. His triumphant smile faltered, replaced by a confused frown, then a widening horror. “What—what is this?” he gasped, his voice thin. The emerald light intensified, coalescing around Valeriyan, swirling like a hungry vortex. And then, the suffering began. A thousand lifetimes of pain, compressed into an instant. The crushing toll of every soul his empire had plundered, every village razed, every family destroyed. Memories, sharp as obsidian shards, tore through his mind: the pleas of the dying, the cries of the tortured, the silent despair of the enslaved. His body began to contort, muscles twisting, bones creaking audibly. His skin, once merely aged, withered and cracked, like parched earth under a merciless sun. His stare, fixed on Bogdana, went hollow beneath an eternity of agony. His fine robes, once embroidered with gold and silk, frayed and disintegrated, turning to dust as his very cells collapsed. His meticulously coiffed hair, once white, became brittle, then simply ash, flaking from his scalp. He aged, not by years, but by millennia, his form shriveling, shrinking, becoming a desiccated husk. The light consumed him until only a faint, shimmering outline of a man remained, before even that faded. A faint cloud of gilded ash, shimmering with the last vestiges of his vanity, drifted down to settle on the floor where Emperor Valeriyan II had stood. The raw power, having found its true target, receded from Bogdana. The emerald light faded, the bone-white glow dissipated, yielding to the soft, flickering copper cast by distant braziers. Her knees buckled. The world spun. A crushing exhaustion dropped upon her, stripping away the borrowed strength and casting her to the floor, hollowed and trembling. She crumpled, the metallic tang of blood in her mouth, her vision blurring at the edges. A faint groan reached her ears. Kazimir. He stirred on the arcane seat, his small fingers twitching. Kazimir squinted against the haze, unfocused, but alive. A weak cough escaped his lips. He was frail, fragile, but he was breathing. He was *hers*. The vaulted ceiling groaned too, a deep, ominous rumble that resonated through the floor. Dust rained down from the ceiling. A wide, jagged fissure snaked across one of the grand, painted murals, spreading like a spiderweb. The foundations of the palace, unable to withstand the raw magic unleashed, were beginning to give way. Damir was at her side in an instant, his hands gentle as they found her. He pulled her against him, shielding her from the falling debris, his own body protesting his movements. He looked from the lingering golden motes of ash where Valeriyan had been, to Kazimir, then back to Bogdana’s rapidly fading consciousness. He lifted her, carefully, into his arms. The palace moaned around them, a death rattle, as the world began to truly fall apart.

A Requiem of Bone and Ash