Casimir's assessment hung between them, more solid than the wet timber of his worktable. Olek, her quiet brother, the one she’d fought through every alley and every treacherous current to protect, was a beacon for the coming storm. The Long Eclipse.
“So, the lens,” she stated, her voice flat despite the tremor that tried to surface. “It works. We need more. A lot more.”
Casimir nodded, turning from the celestial map to a table cluttered with the shards of failures—clouded, warped glass. “The prototype is crude. Prone to fracture. To truly repel the Murk, to establish a stable field, we need resonant mineral silicate. Uncut, pure samples from the deep vein beds beneath the Sunken Spires.”
Those strata anchored the foundations of the city’s oldest, wealthiest houses, private quarries guarded behind private militia lines. Valeska set her shoulders. “The Sunken Spires. Meaning, high society.”
“Meaning, unattainable through conventional trade,” Casimir finished, devoid of judgment. He lifted a small, ground disc no larger than a coin, angling it toward the lamp's pale wick. The beam split along sharp geometric axes, bending into narrow, saturated bands of violet and amber. “A sample blank. A fraction of what true matrix stone would hold.”
Valeska took it, turning the disc against her calloused thumb. The polished surface was cold and uniform, clear as mountain water. Exclusion had ceased being an obstacle years ago. Olek’s pale face, the phantom touch of liquid shadows on his skin—that was all the motivation she needed.
She arrived at the spire district of Aeridor under a borrowed cloak and a cloud of manufactured nonchalance. The air here was thin and sweet, scrubbed clean by filters she could only dream of, and the perpetual fog of Ostrachova thinned to a delicate haze that softened the edges of towering, gilded edifices. The Grand Hall of the Volkov Tower, locus of Nikodem’s newly chartered dynastic network, hummed under incandescent banks that made the Drowned Wards seem submerged beneath an ocean. Marika had summoned every merchant lineage in Ostrachova to witness the ribbon-cutting for the municipal grid monopoly.
Valeska slipped past a distracted guard, the small, flawless glass disc from Casimir tucked into her glove. The hall stretched out in black granite and polished brass, illuminated by copper-wound arc globes that droned with current. String instruments echoed against the vaulted ceiling. When Marika stepped onto the dais in cerulean satin, Nikodem trailed half a pace behind like an unanchored shade. His brow shone with oily sweat, his cheek hollowed out, fingers tapping an erratic rhythm against his thighs. He tracked the recesses between the high chandeliers, murmuring syllables too faint for the audience to catch.
Marika’s voice, amplified and saccharine, filled the space. “And with this monumental contract, my darling Nikodem’s brilliance will illuminate Ostrachova, banishing the old darkness forever!” Her gaze, cold and triumphant, swept over the crowd, landing pointedly on Valeska. “A shame some prefer to wallow in the gloom, clinging to… lesser arrangements.” A ripple of polite, condescending laughter spread through the nearest tables.
Valeska met her cousin’s eyes without flinching. Her attention, however, was on a portly, silver-haired man near the front, his monocle glinting. Lord Rostislav Arkhos. Sole master of the city's quarrying leases.
Ignoring Marika’s bait, Valeska cut through the satin-draped gathering until she stood beside Arkhos. He was turning an uncut fist of cloudy geode over on a velvet pedestal—a crude hunk of raw crystal. “Lord Arkhos,” she said, pitching her voice under the string ensemble. “A heavy paperweight. But hardly the grade your surveyors boast about.”
Arkhos, startled, turned, his heavy jowls quivering. “And who might you be, insolent girl?”
Valeska withdrew Casimir’s glass disc, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. The ceiling arcs caught the bevels. Instantly, the glass split the overhead glare into razor-sharp geometric ribbons, casting an intense prism across Arkhos's starched waistcoat. The beam held its structure across four paces without blooming or scattering.
“My husband, Lord Arkhos,” Valeska said, injecting a subtle, dangerous pride into her tone, “is a master optical engineer. He sculpts light itself. This is but a simple ornament from his workshop, cut from a shard of the purest Krysos. Imagine what he could do with your full output.” She paused, letting the tiny, perfect prism work its magic. “He needs your quartz. All of it. For a project of unprecedented scale.”
Arkhos, usually so dismissive, stared at the glass, then back at Valeska, greed sharpening the droop of his heavy lids. He snatched the disc. “Unprecedented scale, you say? The consortium holds exclusive rights…”
“A monopoly, yes,” Valeska agreed, her smile thin and knowing. “And my husband intends to monopolize the *finished product*. Imagine the profit margins, Lord Arkhos. No more hawking raw mineral ballast to dilettantes. We transform your raw cuts into defense apparatuses no one else can manufacture. Exclusive supply contracts for exclusive distribution rights.” She dropped her tone to a blade's edge. “And wards against the things your current arcs fail to burn away.”
The old merchant's fingers closed firmly around the glass. He glanced back toward the display pedestal with frank disgust. “My townhouse study, seven sharp tomorrow, Chernova. We draft the initial run.”
A harsh pop shattered the room's music. The mercury vapor in the chandeliers dropped two degrees in tone, buzzing low as frost crawled across the nearest brass sconces. From the core housing of the central fixture directly above the stage, an oily coil of darkness oozed outward, jointed segments unfurling like the abdomen of a drowned hornet.
Screams tore through the ballroom. Marika seized Nikodem’s sleeve as he stood paralyzed, mouth slack. The beast uncoiled from the brass casing and plummeted toward the front tables, jagged limbs slicing the air.
A green lance of condensed refraction sliced down from the upper maintenance gallery, hitting the manifestation dead center. The entity did not shriek; it dispersed into thin soot that dissolved before reaching the carpets. The overhead housing gave way in a rain of burnt filament and hot copper shards that missed the couple by inches, shorting the circuit box with a dying groan.
Valeska looked up, searching the high archway. Casimir. He had been watching. And he had saved them.
As the guards finally moved to restore order, and Marika began to shriek about the damage to Nikodem’s precious grid, Nikodem himself stumbled forward, his eyes wild. He grabbed Valeska’s arm, his grip surprisingly strong, almost desperate. His gaze was no longer manic, but raw, terrified.
“The grid… it feeds them.”