The needle-pricks struck his veins before Saule took her next step into the vaulted laboratory. It felt as if someone had introduced crushed quartz into his bloodstream, an abrasive scrape grinding along his inner forearms.
[Warning. Proximity to Preserved Timeline Anomaly detected.]
[Rule: To save the lover is to erase the blood.]
Ignas forced his knees to wobble, letting himself slump back against the soot-blackened workbench. Soot coated his collarbones and the bridge of his nose. He smelled of roasted zinc and sulfur from his deliberate explosion. Across the floor, his sister Rasa wiped tears from her chin with a trembling cuff, her small shoulders huddled against the damp stone wall.
Domantas did not care about the soot. The third-year prodigy flicked his burgundy cape over his shoulder, his brass pincers still gripping the neck of a polished flask containing a pearlescent fluid.
"Look at this filth," Domantas sneered, gesturing with his tongs toward the scorched tiles Ignas occupied. "A waste of tallow, a waste of glassware, and an utter waste of citadel rations. Your little sister couldn't even separate the fat from a Bog-Strider's liver without sniveling, and now you burst your cauldron like an unwashed peasant cooking turnip mash."
A spark of blinding, reckless heat surged up Ignas’s spine. For an instant, his fingers curved into an iron claw. He had torn the throats out of elder chimeras with bare fingers; he could crush Domantas’s larynx before the snob even registered a blink. The urge to rip the boy's tongue out for looking at Rasa like cattle thrummed violently in his fists.
"He... he made a mistake, Senior Domantas," Saule’s clear voice cut through the sulfuric air.
She walked straight past the shattered iron fragments, stopping squarely between Domantas and the two Veliura siblings. The hem of her coarse gray novice tunic brushed the ash.
Ignas stared at the curve of her throat. In his memory, black ichor had burst from that very spot when the god Zaltys split the sky, her flesh turning to gray tallow while she pleaded for water he was unable to brew in time. Now, the pulse there was steady, vibrant, totally untainted. It hurt to look at her. It felt like dragging a rusted blade across an open sore.
"A mistake?" Domantas scoffed, his thin mouth twisting into a smirk. "Initiate Saule. Ever the meddler. You spend your nights loitering by the perimeter trench sniffing the mist like a stray dog, and now you want to defend the village idiots?"
"I observe the fog because the wards on the lower ramparts are corroding, Senior," Saule said calmly. She held her gaze steady. "The sulfur bloom in the outer fog is double what the ledgers claim. Someone should care. And Ignas simply used too much vitriol. He didn't harm your station. Your Quick-Argent extract is intact, isn't it?"
Ignas kept his head lowered, letting his unruly hair fall over his eyes. *She is already tracking the mist corruption,* he thought. *Ten years early. Just like before, her damned curiosity will put a noose around her neck.*
Domantas lifted his flask high, catching the cold amber light cast by the suspended moss-lanterns above. Inside, the silvery extract shimmered with crystalline swirls—a Grade-Three Phlegm-Silver potion, distilled from the spinal lipid of a bog-stag.
"Intact? It is flawless," Domantas declared loudly, drawing the fearful gazes of the forty other initiates gathered around the ring of cauldrons. "Grade-Three purity. The instructor will grant me twenty merits for this batch alone. Meanwhile, this idiot Veliura will be scrubbing latrines with a wire brush until winter."
[Crucible Whispers: Curdle the core. Invert the salt. Grind the ego to grease.]
[Recipe: Bitter-Pith Spoilage. Components: 1 grain of charcoal-ash, 1 speck of dried tallow.]
The phantom pain flared in Ignas’s left thumb, a reminder that defiance cost flesh. He yielded to the agony this time.
Ignas dropped to his knees, putting on an exaggerated display of groveling panic. "I'm sorry, Senior Domantas! I'll clean it, I'll clean it right now! Don't report me to the overseer!"
As he scrambled forward, dragging an old rag through the slurry on the floor, his blackened fingernail scraped the mortar between two flagstones. A speck of grease from his own scorched knuckle mixed with the ash beneath his nail. With a clumsy flail of his elbow—appearing entirely like a frightened coward losing his balance—Ignas jerked his hand upward.
A microscopic particle of ash, coated in inverted body heat, flicked from his thumbnail.
It arced silently through the murky air and slipped straight into the unstoppered mouth of Domantas's flask.
Domantas stepped back in disgust, kicking at Ignas’s shoulder. "Get away from my boots, you worm!"
Ignas took the scuff, rolling into the soot and whimpering. Rasa gasped, rushing to clutch Ignas's arm. "Ignas! Stop, please..."
"Stay down, little girl," Domantas laughed, pivoting toward the raised dais where Instructor Gervydas sat with the grading scales. "Instructor! My extract is ready for verification!"
The proctor, a dried-husk of an alchemist with yellowed teeth and scarred fingers, adjusted his magnifying lens. "Bring it forward, boy. Let us see if your hands match your loud mouth."
Domantas strutted up the stone steps like an emperor. He uncorked the flask with a sharp, arrogant pop and tipped three drops into the bronze testing saucer. "Eighty percent purity, at minimum. A distillation fit for the inner garrison."
The drops hit the bronze.
Instead of flashing white, a foul hiss erupted from the saucer.
A stench like rotten tripe baked in marsh-mud filled the room. The pearlescent liquid inside Domantas's flask violently coagulated, degenerating from shimmering mercury into a lumpy, brownish-green curd that sputtered like boiling bilge.
*Pop! Sputter!*
A wad of foul-smelling slime bubbled over the rim, splattering straight onto the front of Domantas's prized burgundy cape.
Silence fell over the cavernous chamber. Then, a collective gag went up from the novices as the foul odor hit their nostrils.
"What... what is this?!" Domantas shrieked, dropping the flask. It shattered on the dais, releasing a splatter of brown sludge that smeared across Instructor Gervydas's boots.
The proctor recoiled, his face mottled with purple fury. "You absolute ape! You brought curdled gut-rot to my table?! Did you brew this with pond scum? You ruined a whole ounce of bog-stag pith!"
"No! It was pure! I swear it was pure moments ago!" Domantas sputtered, frantically rubbing at his cape, which only smeared the foul stench deeper into the fabric. "It was eighty percent!"
"Zero percent! Negative twenty merits for insulting my station!" the old man barked, slamming his wooden ledger down. "Get out of my sight before I have the wardens skin you!"
Snickers rippled through the gathered apprentices. Saule watched Domantas with a quiet, ironic curve on her lips, while Rasa stared in quiet disbelief. Ignas stayed on the floor, his head tucked down, lips twitching into a dark, satisfied smirk.
*That's for Rasa, you strutting peacock,* Ignas thought.
Before the laughter could spread, the heavy iron portcullis at the hall's main entrance slammed down with a deafening crash.
The ambient warmth vanished instantly. Cold, damp air—thick with the coppery smell of freshly spilled beast-blood—flooded the chamber. The mist that perpetually hovered outside seemed to press against the tall, slit windows, staining them an oily purple.
The side doors flew open. Director Valdas strode in.
He wore black plate layered over heavy wolf pelts, his pale, angular face set in brutal lines. Behind him walked six citadel wardens carrying poleaxes wet with dark fluid.
"Silence," Valdas said. He did not yell, but his voice carried the crushing weight of a collapsing mine shaft.
Every apprentice froze. The proctor stood up immediately, bowing low.
"A trench has collapsed in the lower catacombs beneath the Third Vault," Valdas announced without preamble, his eyes sweeping across the trembling students like a farmer selecting sheep for slaughter. "Grave-Spine Crawlers have breached the perimeter wards. They smell our braziers. The upper-years are needed on the primary barricades."
Domantas looked up, still covered in sludge, his face pale.
Valdas didn't even glance at him. The Director’s gaze locked onto the novice ranks, stopping directly on Ignas, Rasa, and Saule.
"The marrow extractors need time to salvage the storage tanks," Valdas continued, his voice cold and flat. "The crawlers must be slowed down in the crawlways. Novices. Take up your field torches and vitriol flasks. You are going into the lower tunnels first."