The corridor air, usually cool and still, now rippled with a sickening heat. Khaidan slammed his shoulder against the ornate workshop door, the heavy bronze groaning but holding firm. Through the gap beneath, orange light pulsed, painting the polished floorboards in frantic, flickering strokes. He heard the screeching now, not human, but the raw, tortured pitch of captured impressions, stretched past their breaking point. It was a sound that made his teeth ache, a sound of profound violation. Brisela. Roxana. Inside. Trapped.
“Arbiter Voss!” a guild guard yelled, rushing down the hall, followed by two more. “The Palazzo’s main power grid just overloaded! It’s the Kiln of Whispers, sir, it’s going critical!”
Khaidan didn’t acknowledge him. His gaze was fixed on the chamber’s massive, reinforced quartz facade. He could see the silhouettes now, faint and frantic, dancing within the quartz, pressed against the inner surface of the furnace. The kilns weren't just for crafting; they were meant to purify, to contain. An overload meant an uncontrolled discharge, a tempest of torn psychic residue ripping itself apart.
“Get back,” Khaidan commanded, his voice a low rumble that cut through the growing din. He pulled the heavy, metallic bracer from his belt. The Arbiter’s disruption armlet, a relic usually reserved for structural breaches in city-wide emergencies, hummed to life. Its intricate mechanisms whirred, channeling raw resonance into a focused, concussive force.
The guards hesitated, then backed away, their faces pale in the flickering light. The heat intensified, searing his skin through his tunic. Khaidan raised his weapon, aiming its emitter at the reinforced quartz pane closest to the door. He braced his feet, the ornate floor-tiles already radiating an unbearable warmth.
He squeezed the trigger. A deafening *CRACK* ripped through the corridor, followed by a deeper *BOOM* that shook the entire wing. The first pane buckled inward, spiderwebbing with fractures. Stolen thoughts, fragments of joy and sorrow, fear and longing, erupted from the fissures in blinding, chaotic bursts, like shrapnel of raw perception.
The workshop was a furnace, the air inside a shimmering, orange haze. Khaidan could feel the heat scour his exposed skin, a thousand needles of fire. He ignored the pain, ignored the stinging smoke that clawed at his throat. He fired again, and again, the cycling apparatus roaring with a fierce, mechanical growl. Each impact blasted crystalline shards outward, showering the floor with bright splinters that hissed their dying laments.
Another pane shattered, then another. He pressed forward, wading through the torrent of emotional debris, his boots crunching on broken glass. The air in his lungs felt like ash. He saw them then, huddled by a workbench, their forms blurred by the heat haze. Brisela, coughing, her hand pressed against her mouth, Roxana shielding her face, both stumbling.
“Brisela!” he roared, his voice raw. He reached for the nearest structural pillar, using its intact frame to lever himself further into the inferno. He found her through the sulfurous veil, her features streaked with soot, eyelids raw and weeping against the dense fume. She was suffocating.
He grabbed her, pulling her close, shielding her with his own body as he dragged her toward the gaping hole he’d created. Her body felt impossibly light in his arms, trembling. Roxana, coughing violently, stumbled out behind them, her opulent robes singed and blackened. The corridor air felt chill by comparison, though it still prickled hot against his neck.
Khaidan stumbled clear, collapsing onto the cool floor of the corridor, Brisela still clutched to him. His lungs burned. His skin screamed. But she was breathing, raggedly, against his chest. He pushed himself up, holding her face in his soot-stained hands. Her face, usually so guarded, remained slack with exhaustion.
“Are you… hurt?” he choked out, his voice hoarse.
Her gaze cleared, focusing on him, the question a spark in the smoke-filled air. Then she caught his lapels, pressing her mouth hard against his. Her fingers gripped his collar tight, knuckles white against the dark weave. Cinders drifted between them over the ruined flags.
Roxana, having recovered enough to stand, spat a mouthful of soot onto the floor. “That treacherous, conniving viper!” she hissed, her voice a low growl of fury. “Jovena will pay for this! My kiln, my collection…” She gestured toward the smoldering wreckage of her floor, then retrieved something from a shadowed recess, a blackened, singed tome dropped during the chaos. “This. She won’t get away with this.”
She thrust the charred ledger into Khaidan’s hands. Its cover was warped, pages curled and scorched, but the ink within remained stubbornly legible. “I saw it on her desk, among her counterfeiting notes. A list. Her targets.”
Khaidan’s fingers traced the elegant, cruel script. The first few entries listed wealthy patrons known for their vast personal archives, targets ripe for plundering. Then his gaze caught the last entry, inked in an urgent, jagged scrawl and underlined twice.
“No,” Brisela whispered, leaning over his shoulder, her voice rasping as she stared at the ink. “It can’t be…”
Her mother. Lady Morvan. And next to the name, not a date of proposed theft, but a single, brutal note: 'Harvest', followed by 'Tonight'.