Stellan’s grey gaze fixed on her, steady against the trembling that rattled her teeth. The shadows behind him seemed to writhe, agitated by the dead woman's name. “Aneta,” he repeated, the sound rough, a question edged with disbelief and a ghost of something else she couldn’t quite decipher. “Who… who is Aneta?” Zofia scrambled back, shards of silver digging into her palms. The phantom kiss on her lips pulsed, a horrifying betrayal. She couldn’t form a coherent thought, let alone a lie. Her breath caught in her throat, thick with the dust of centuries and the impossible truth. How could she explain seeing her own face, a dead woman’s face, reflected in a lover’s embrace? How could she explain a connection that felt both intimate and utterly alien? Before she could stammer out an excuse, a brassy voice boomed through the stone corridors. It came through an Anima-woven horn from the lower ramparts, harsh enough to rattle the loose leaded glass in the window frames. “Open the gates, you pathetic scarecrows!” the voice boomed, sharp as a winter gale. “Baroness Yelena Petrova is here to cleanse this cursed den!” Stellan flinched, his skin rippling toward rough granite before settling back into flesh. His mouth set in a hard, flat line. “Yelena,” he breathed, a name laced with a potent mix of hatred and sorrow. “She’s here. And she found a way past the outer wards.” Zofia, despite her internal turmoil, felt a cold knot of dread tighten in her gut. Yelena. The usurper. The woman who’d cursed Stellan. Her arrival complicated everything, including Zofia’s original plan to simply vanish with the Obsidian Tear. Down in the wind-whipped courtyard, Baroness Yelena Petrova swung down from her black-maned destrier, her riding cloak the color of dried blood. Behind her, a contingent of Ducal Guards in crimson and black wool snapped to attention. At their front stood Captain Ivan Volkov, chin tucked, posture stiff as iron. “Captain Volkov,” Yelena’s voice sliced through the whistling wind, barely needing the magical amplification now. “Have your men sweep the outer bailey. The beast has been dormant too long. It’s grown complacent.” She gestured to a large, ornate casket being unloaded from a heavy wagon. It was crafted from dark iron, etched with arcane symbols that pulsed with a faint, malevolent light. “Bring the Lament Blade. We’ll test its temper on Krov’s most stubborn monster.” Ivan bowed, his movements precise, his gaze fleetingly meeting one of his men – a subtle signal Zofia knew meant ‘delay.’ “As you command, Baroness. My men will search every shadow. But the outer bailey is vast, and the beast is cunning. It may have retreated to deeper, more protected areas.” His words, seemingly dutiful, added a layer of unnecessary caution, directing the initial search away from the main keep, buying precious minutes. Up in the bedchamber, Stellan’s hand clamped around Zofia’s wrist, pulling her to her feet with surprising gentleness. “We have to move. She won’t stop until she finds me, or what she thinks is mine.” He glanced at the shattered mirror, then back at Zofia, his expression still troubled by her whispered name. “The alarms… they were meant to alert only the master of the fortress. They haven’t sounded in decades. Someone in Yelena’s retinue must have found a way to link to them, or to activate a new system.” “What is this Lament Blade?” Zofia asked, her voice still rough, but regaining a semblance of her usual bravado. “What can it do?” Stellan hauled her toward a narrow gap behind a rotting wall hanging. “Anima-forged. Steeped in venom and severed souls. It will peel the beast's hide down to bare spirit. Permanently.” His voice dropped, thick with a century of torment. “It will destroy what little remains of my mind and soul.” They moved through a labyrinth of forgotten servants’ passages, the sounds of Yelena’s search party filtering through the ancient stones – distant shouts, the clatter of armor. The air grew colder, heavy with the scent of damp earth and disuse. “The curse,” Zofia prompted, recalling her initial goal, now overshadowed by the ghost of Aneta and the impending danger. “How long do you have?” Stellan stopped at a narrow archway leading into what looked like a disused pantry, its shelves empty, its floor caked with grime. He turned, his gaze meeting hers, grim and resolute. “The hundredth full moon since the cursing. There are three moons left. If I do not perform a great act of selfless love before then, the beast claims me entirely. There will be nothing left of Stellan Morok but a mindless engine of destruction.” He looked away, pain etched onto his human face. “A fate worse than any death.” Three moons. The timeline was brutally short. And Zofia was supposed to steal a trinket and leave. Now she was entangled in a dead woman’s life and a dying man’s curse. Her gaze dropped to the silver chain beneath her collar, where the teardrop-cut jewel rested against her collarbone. It hummed faintly, as if resonating with the fortress’s awakened magic. A thought, clearer than any she’d had since the mirror incident, struck her. “The Tear,” she murmured, pulling it from beneath her tunic. “It’s not just a gem, is it? It’s a key. Aneta… she didn’t just want it stolen. She wanted it used.” As if in response, the Obsidian Tear pulsed with a vibrant, inner light. The rough-hewn stone wall beside them shimmered, then dissolved into a swirling vortex of shadow and starlight. An Anima-map, intricate and glowing, projected itself onto the crumbling plaster. It depicted the fortress, but with a level of detail Zofia had never seen, even in her extensive research. A single chamber, deep beneath the Grand Orrery, glowed with an ethereal blue – a hidden scriptorium. At the courtyard gates, Yelena Petrova paused, head tilted. Beside the iron casket, a gaunt mage stepped forward, robes snapping in the wind. “Baroness,” he muttered, “a surge from the upper galleries. Deliberate Anima work, not an old ward.” Yelena’s cold smile widened, sharp and predatory. “So the beast still has a few tricks. Or perhaps…” Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it has a visitor.” Back in the pantry, the projected map solidified, and glowing script appeared beneath the marked chamber. Zofia leaned closer, tracing the archaic lettering with a dust-streaked thumb. The words shimmered, leaving an indelible impression on her mind, a new rule carved into the very fabric of her understanding. “The curse is the key is the heart.” The words hung in the stale air, a riddle, a directive, a promise. Before either of them could decipher its meaning, Yelena’s voice, amplified to a terrifying degree, echoed up from the courtyard, seeming to shake the very foundations of the mountain. “I know you’re in there, Stellan. And you have something of mine.”

The Baroness and the Blade