The roar of the pyre swallowed the air, hot and hungry. Through the widening gap of the Inner Sanctum’s bronze doors, Vakarė saw not just a fire, but an altar, vast and ornate, crafted from dark, lacquered ashwood. It stretched upward, a monstrous, fluted column, its base wreathed in roaring amber flames that licked at the vaulted roof of the subterranean vault. Thick support beams of polished basalt and iron straps crisscrossed the gloom above, holding back tons of rock. And there stood a skeletal figure against the inferno—Grand Patriarch Orvydas, his gilded mitre drinking the light without reflection, teeth bared like stripped ivory.
Vakarė didn’t break stride. Ignas moved in lockstep beside her, his singed fingers curling into rigid fists. Giedrius, limping hard, his face pale beneath a sheen of sweat, brought up the rear, one hand pressed to the still-aching wound on his side. The heat struck them squarely, smelling of scorched oil and old cedar.
“Welcome, children,” Orvydas’s voice boomed, amplified by some unseen artifice, echoing against the limestone walls. “The cleansing fire awaits its unworthy sacrifice. The True Heir will be reforged in its crucible.”
Vakarė raised an eyebrow, a picture of nonchalant insolence. “Oh, please. Don’t tell me you brought us all this way for a glorified bonfire. My soup kettle has more dignity than this, your Eminence.” She swept a hand towards the towering flames. “And far better ingredients.”
Her eyes, however, were not on Orvydas, but on the massive ashwood pyre itself. Her corrupted blood ran chilled beneath the skin, a steady counterpoint to the heat. She extended a hand, palm flat, a subtle shift in the air, barely a tremor. From her fingertips, a faint, inky miasma seeped, invisible against the billowing smoke, but potent. The thread coiled toward the pyre’s base, not consuming, but rotting the ancient timber. The wood, already ancient, began to groan, a deeper, sicker sound beneath the crackle of fire.
Orvydas’s smile faltered, a flicker of irritation crossing his gaunt features. “Still prattling, demon? You stand on the precipice of obliteration.” He gestured with a skeletal hand. “Behold the Lumen Siphon. It will draw every drop of radiance from the wretch, purifying his marrow and leaving dry kindling for the blaze.”
From the scaffold above the timber, an intricate apparatus descended on greased chains, whining under high tension. It was a lattice of spun moonlight and Keldran glass gliding straight toward Ignas. Its polished facets vibrated, hungry for the pale amber luminescence locked beneath his scarred skin, seizing him in mid-step. He buckled sideways, boots scraping the floorstones.
“Ignas!” Vakarė lunged, but the draw threw a dense pressure across the flagstones. Ignas arched back, sinews corded along his neck against the invisible drag. A pale, luminous vapor bled from his pores toward the glass rig, dragging his knees toward the rock.
“Feel it, turncoat,” the zealot crooned, spitting phlegm into his beard. “Feel your power drain, your very essence ripped from your unworthy vessel. The Radiant Core of Jūrapolis will be ours!”
The brightness around Ignas flared white, his marrow stripped thread by thread. Her throat dried. He was her hound, her quiet creature who took scraps from her fingers and bled where she pointed; she would not let this dried-up fanatic hollow him out.
Direct assault would incinerate her marrow. Sabotage, however, required only contamination—the bitter, tainted vintage coursing behind her ribs.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Vakarė snarled, a feral glint in her eyes. Her voice was sharp, cutting through the chamber's roar. “You want an offering, old man? Take this broth!”
Vakarė hurled herself forward across the stones, intercepting the lattice's descent. Ignas choked out her name, groping blindly through empty air. The apparatus hitched on its links, gears grinding as foreign pressure jarred its balance.
Before the high priest could signal his guards, Vakarė sank her molars deep into the meat of her forearm until skin tore and black fluid welled. She smashed her bleeding wrist directly into the nearest bevel of Keldran glass. The core shrieked like shearing brass as her tainted vitae flooded the channels, turning the clean glow into an oily, curdled sludge.
“Vessel of filth!” the old priest shrieked, clawing at the winch ropes. It was futile; the opposing forces snarled within the crystal prisms, fractures blooming across every pane.
The crystalline engine rattled violently, its whine shrill enough to set teeth aching. Murky radiance flashed through the fissures. Vakarė wrenched her arm free and threw her weight backward; Ignas tumbled toward her in the dark, caught by Giedrius’s good hand just behind the collar.
The glass sphere shattered in a deafening crack. Jagged slivers screamed through the air like thrown needles. The high priest took the brunt of the burst; shrapnel peppered his chest and shredded his cheeks, sending his tall cap spinning across the floorstones in a spray of scarlet.
The concussive force slapped the vault's basalt piers. Mortar burst from seams; iron hoops popped with gunshot cracks, dumping shale and mortar down from the fractured ceiling.
The priest staggered through the falling grit, one side of his face torn open to the jawbone. He made a wet, rattling noise in his throat, sightless rage fixing his remaining eye on Vakarė. Through the haze of falling rock, he lunged forward, clawed fingers reaching not for her chest, but directly for her—