The links, etched with glyphs of siphon-craft, dug into Jahira's wrists and pinned her against the high seat. Davran stood over her, jaw set, charcoal irises unblinking. Her leather-bound journal remained gripped in his left hand, its corners indented by his fingers. He had seen the tallies and the anatomical margins.
“You will burn nothing to ash,” Jahira said, keeping her cadence deliberate. “This is irrational.”
Davran did not drop his grin. “Irrational? Or an adjustment, Teacher? You calculated your departure. You charted my governance down to the decimal. Did you assume I would overlook the markings on your collarbone?” His thumb pressed the twin black reservoirs mapped into her throat, skin cold against her pulse.
“I was protecting you,” she insisted, a futile argument against his unyielding paranoia. “From yourself, Davran. From this throne that bleeds my life away.”
He tilted his head back in a harsh, dry exhalation. “Then we cut away the hemorrhage. If the Enclave structured this curse, the Enclave will strike it. Or cease to exist.”
Before she could protest, the world warped around them. Inky mire broke from his coat, swallowing the dais whole. The hall and its limestone columns sheared away into a pressurized drop. At Jahira's ribs, Gohar remained a coiled mass, undisturbed by the transit. Davran's forearm clamped her ribcage, anchoring her against the drag of non-space.
The dark tore open upon the deep cut of the Enclave of Ghalib. Blue stone vaulted overhead, streaked with veins of wet sulfur and glowing lichen. Carved platforms and glass towers tiered downward into the basin. In the center rose the prime pylon—a fifty-foot cylinder of basalt and tempered quartz, its upper globe dense with midnight-black sand.
But the serene vista shattered instantly. A chorus of shouts erupted from below. “The Shadow Emperor! Davran, the Usurper!”
Strips of focused vapor and light hissed through the gallery. A dozen figures in silver-threaded tabards emerged from the ledges, brandishing rods mounted with cut beryls and tourmalines. Braided tethers of pressurized current snapped across the platform directly toward Davran.
Loom-spun solar rays, bound with high-pressure moisture, wrapped Davran's arms and torso. The dark matter clinging to his skin hissed and dissolved under the filtered glare. A rasp tore from his throat as the counter-matrix pulled taut against his posture.
“The Usurper's shroud is breaking!” shouted the lead caster, displaying the twin-falcon crest of House Al-Sharif. “Lord Tarem Al-Sharif orders you to release the Lady Fazani and submit!”
Davran wrenched sideways, but the filaments dug in, bleeding his circulation. The violent jerk threw Jahira against his hip, dislodging the creature under her coat. Gohar's muzzle popped free of the fabric, amber slits unlatching.
The hatchling whistled a sharp, brassy note. Heat surged from his frame as plates of volcanic jet split along his spine, thickening into jagged armor. Bone lengthened with wet snaps; claws gouged the walkway as his jaw expanded into a broad, serrated beak. Within four strides, Gohar stretched twenty feet from snout to tail, leather wings battering against the stone columns.
He lunged. Lord Tarem Al-Sharif had no room to pivot before the drake's jaws snapped shut across his chest. Cartilage cracked against the blue floor. With the primary caster dead, the light-braids collapsed into smoke, releasing Davran.
The remaining retainers scrambled across the terrace stairs. Gohar slammed his talons into the stone, wings spread wide to herd them away. Davran took two paces forward, re-gathering his spilled mire, his attention locked on the central monument. “Fools,” he muttered toward the glass spire. “You thought this held leverage?”
Davran thrust both palms outward, discharging a brutal concussive wave of black bile. The quartz cylinder groaned under the impact, stress lines fracturing from base to cap. With an ear-splitting crack, the reservoir shattered inward, spraying shards of mineral and thick pane across the plaza.
The central reservoir was gone. The particulate cloud hung suspended above the rubble, thousands of coarse black grains hovering in the cavern air. Then the swarm snapped toward the platform, gathered into a concentrated needle of grit, and drilled straight into Davran's sternum.