The ceiling timbers snapped like kindling. Chenzom's lungs had hours left at dawn; now the sky itself was caving in. He snatched the fleece from the heap of ash on the throne, slick with the dead elder's tallow. It pooled over his arm, heavy as a funeral shroud. The joined ribs and wet bellows of the vessel shuddered on the flagstones, drawing air in jagged whistling gulps. He hoisted the assembly, seating the marrow-bars across his shoulders, the skin dangling down his back. He burst from the Elder’s estate, not through the grand, ash-free courtyards, but straight over the manicured, crumbling balustrade. The descent was no longer a journey; it was a headlong plummet. The upper-slopes, once pristine and unblemished, were now buckling. Cracks spiderwebbed across polished slate roofs, foundations groaned, and the air thickened with the dust of pulverizing stone. The razor-ash dome above was a swirling vortex of annihilation, its lower rim visibly shrinking, tearing away the peaks of lesser homes. Grit skittered under his soles as the slope pitched forward. He had to weave, now, without pause. The carcass demanded completion, and the beast's dead eyes demanded toll. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, not in prayer, but in preparation. The world around him faded into a blur of grey. [Weaver’s Trance initiated. Karmic threads illuminate. Payment: Memory of Chenzom’s first whispered word.] A sharp, cold pang, not of sorrow but of profound emptiness, replaced the warmth of that small, forgotten joy. A blank space opened behind his eyes, cauterized and silent. The world snapped back into focus, sharper, yet colder. The fleece across his shoulders softened to sodden felt. The twin bodkins jerked forward in his fist, tugging his sinews along their path. He launched himself onto a cascading roofline, the slate tiles groaning beneath his weight. His boots slid, sparks flying where they met stone, but his hands moved with frenetic speed. The points punched through hide and slotted into the marrow-struts, cinching the beast together. Each punch of bone through leather was exact, dragged along lines he could see but not name. A riverbank, flat river stones, sun on water—erased, leaving bare granite. The loss was a deepening chill, a further stripping away of the vibrant color from his internal landscape. His hatred, once a burning ember he’d nursed, began to feel like a distant echo, a ghost of a passion he no longer recognized. It was replaced by a stark, terrifying clarity: only the task remained. [Weaver’s Trance maintained. Payment: Memory of mother’s hand in his, guiding his first stitch.] The pelt rippled against his spine, fur parting along a fresh dorsal seam. As the points drove home, the raw underskin knit flush against Namra's sharpened ribs. The rib-cage drew deeper drafts, venting plumes that blew the falling grit three paces back. He saw the narrow, winding pathways of the middle terraces, now choked with desperate, fleeing figures. Mouths gaped skyward beneath shawls grayed with soot. Some ran, others simply knelt, arms raised in futile supplication. Tsongen did not pause, did not slow. The sight, once ripe for his cruel enjoyment, now registered as little more than an obstacle in his descent. He was a force, not a man, driven by a singular, consuming purpose. [Weaver’s Trance maintained. Payment: Memory of Chenzom’s laughter, bright and unrestrained.] Another room went dark in his head. The vindictive spite that had kept his knees working up the mountain simply peeled away, leaving empty marrow and the steady thud of the bodkin through gristle. He slid down a tilted gutter, the stiff hide snapping in the downdraft. The frame rode lighter on his shoulders now, anchored by sixty yards of knotted tendon. Its lungs blew a steady cone of clear air past his temples. He could see the valley floor, his small, dilapidated hut a dark smudge amidst the encroaching grey. The dome was almost upon it, a roaring, churning tempest of razor-edged motes. He had to be faster, even if it meant sacrificing every remaining shard of joy. He yielded his knuckles to the rhythm, the points lacing flank to flank. [Weaver’s Trance intensified. Payment: Memory of his father’s proud smile, watching Tsongen at the loom.] [Weaver’s Trance maintained. Payment: Memory of the warmth of his sister’s hand in his, walking home.] The pelage was seamless now, glowing dull amber over the butcher's rib-work. It hummed against his nape, matching the vibration of the split crags. He dropped into the valley silt, his ankles jarring hard. Behind him, the upper tiers sheared off under the settling gray ceiling with the crunch of grinding millstones. He shoved the hut door inward, the stitched carcass thudding against the jamb. The air inside was thick with ash, still and heavy. “Chenzom!” His voice, when it emerged, was a raw, unfamiliar rasp. The hut was dark, silent. The small cot where she lay was obscured by shadow. He stepped to the cot. She was there. But she wasn't breathing. Her small form was encased, entombed, in a brittle, grey shell of hardened ash, a perfect, chilling cast of her body. Her face, her delicate features, were visible through the translucent crust, serene and utterly still. Tsongen reached out a trembling, ash-dusted hand, but before he could touch her, a hairline crack spiderwebbed across the ash shell, directly over her small, still heart.

The Descent