Bitter gall pooled beneath Suyara Veng's tongue. Tyren Jhal, the epitome of highborn pride, was now a groveling cur on the flagstones. Beside her, Vashan coiled, a low snarl scraping past his teeth. “Shameless dog,” Vashan hissed, knuckles whitening as his fingers dug into his palm. “He pledged his blade to the caldera, yet he crawls for an abyssal leech!” Suyara clamped her palm onto his bicep, frost prickling through his threadbare sleeve. “Waste no breath on him. The council must hear of this before Jurok poisons their ears.” Jurok chuckled, lifting the black sphere. A soot-colored thread slithered from the relic into Tyren Jhal's brow. Tyren stiffened, his pupils shrinking to needlepoints before setting into dull, fanatical stillness. “The whelp has sold his marrow,” Skarn’s gravelly growl rasped within Vashan’s mind. “A string-doll now. Move your boots, boy! The Grand Hall. Those withered fogies in the high seats will swallow whatever swill Jurok pours them.” Vashan nodded, the white-hot core of his anger momentarily eclipsed by urgency. He spared one last disgusted glance at Tyren’s new, vacant expression, then spun on his heel. “To the Grand Hall. Now.” They moved with a desperate speed, their footsteps echoing through the fractured corridors. The sounds of distant battle, the clang of steel, and the guttural roars of rift-beasts intensified with every step. The air grew heavy with the tang of ozone and scorched stone. Mid-stride, Vashan hit the wall, daylight dropping out of his sight. A spike of white agony drove straight through the base of his skull. He choked on a breath, skull clutched in both hands as his shins slammed stone. Suyara hooked an arm under his ribs to hold him up. “What’s wrong?” she demanded, her voice edged with concern. *“Look, boy! Witness the truth!”* Skarn’s voice boomed in his mind, not a whisper, but a direct, forceful intrusion. Vashan felt himself falling, not through the physical world, but into a torrent of ancient memories that were not his own. He was no longer in the Enclave corridor. He stood on a desolate, ash-choked plain, under a sky the color of bruised plums. Towering above him, a colossal figure of molten stone and screaming fire, loomed a primordial entity, its form shifting like liquid magma. Its eyes, twin suns of baleful malice, fixed on something unseen. This was a god, not of Okhara, but of something far older, far more terrible. The plateau buckled beneath him as the titan roared. Vashan could decipher no words, yet the intent bit into his bones: complete extermination. A blood-red glyph flared above the cracked earth and descended like a brand. Where it struck, magma died to gray ash, fissures split the sky, and absolute stillness settled over the waste. The memory twisted. A single mortal silhouette planted its feet before the crimson brand, golden geothermal qi burning through raw skin. That ancestral figure sliced an open palm, casting golden blood into an intricate lock-sigil. It clamped over the god's brand, binding the disaster beneath ancient rock at the cost of the warrior's collapsing meridian channels. *“Your ancestor,”* Skarn rumbled, stripped of his usual mockery. *“Bound the calamity into the crust with their own vital essence. That lineage flows in your veins, boy. It forged the lock. It alone unlocks it—or holds the door shut against the void.”* The memory tore away, dropping Vashan back onto the rough masonry. He dragged sulfur-tinged air into burning lungs, cold sweat plastering his bangs to his temple. The glyph remained etched behind his eyelids: he was the seal's surviving anchor. “Vashan!” Suyara’s voice cut through the lingering haze, her hands firm on his shoulders. “We’re almost there. What did you see?” He shook his head, pushing off the wall. “Later. Just move.” His jaw set hard. Settling debts with the upper crust had just become a battle to keep the realm from turning to cinders. They shoved past the bronze doors into the Grand Hall. The chamber was in pandemonium. Sashes and silk robes churned around the central pavilion where the gray-bearded masters stood in disarray. Before them stood Jurok, composed as still water, with Tyren Jhal flanking him like a hollow-eyed sentry. “...and so, venerable masters,” Jurok projected his voice smoothly across the stone tiers, “these two wretches unleashed the blight upon the fortress! They sought the rift's upheaval to overthrow your seats!” He swung his sleeve toward the entrance, stabbing an accusatory finger directly at Vashan and Suyara. Dozens of heads whipped toward the threshold. Sharp shouts and rustling sleeves erupted across the tiered benches. “It’s a lie!” Suyara’s voice, sharp and clear, cut through the din. “Jurok is the true traitor! He’s allied with the cult, he opened the rifts!” Jurok merely smiled, a condescending, pitying look on his face. “A desperate fabrication from those caught red-handed. We discovered them fleeing the caldera, moments after the first rift opened. They collaborated with the cultists to breach our wards, to desecrate our holy sites. And even now, they wield foul energies, proof of their corruption!” Tyren Jhal stepped down a tier, devoid of his usual smirk, speaking with eerie, mechanical certainty. “I saw it myself. Vashan Kor, the dreg, drew abyssal rot through his broken channels to crack the foundational wards. Suyara Veng shielded him. For the survival of the mountain, their heads must roll upon the altar!” “You worm!” Vashan roared, his hand instinctively reaching for his wooden branch, his blood boiling. He took a step forward, ready to tear through the deluded crowd, ready to smash Jurok’s smug face into the dais. Before his boots could cross the threshold, the masters atop the pavilion thrust out their sleeves. Runes cut into the obsidian flagstones flared virulent green. A brutal downward pressure struck Vashan's shoulders, cracking the pavement beneath his soles. His breath hitched in a strangled rasp; his knees smashed down, followed by his chest, pinned flat under the crushing weight of the Grand Suppression Array. Beside him, Suyara hit the flagstones, her knuckles bleeding as she clawed against the immovable gravity.

Weight of the Ancients