Her gaze flickered to the worn leather in his grip, then back to his face, dissecting. Dust motes hung suspended between them in the cold draft.
“These shelves run deep,” Tadek said, striving for a sovereign's bored drawl. The lie felt thin on his tongue. “One often finds unexpected things.” He knew she wasn’t convinced.
Ivelina pushed off the frame, her boots making no sound on the aged flagstones. She moved with the predatory grace of a trained hunter, stopping just a few paces from him. “Unexpected, perhaps. But also *revealing*. You have Voroshan’s memories, yes. But you lack his particular malice. The conqueror of old would have scorched this library for less than a misfiled scroll, not lingered in the shadows for research.”
A phantom impulse flared in his chest—Voroshan’s old outrage at being slighted—before Tadek smothered it with sheer practicality. He adjusted his hold on the bound leaves.
“What are you implying?” he asked, his voice low. The question was a challenge, a probe for how much she truly knew.
“I’m implying,” she continued, her voice dropping to a near whisper, “that Chancellor Borislav has made a magnificent mistake. He didn’t resurrect our ancient ruler. He grafted an echo onto a suitable vessel. A brilliant vessel, perhaps, but an echo nonetheless.” Her gray gaze remained steady. “Voroshan hated the coming doom with a fanatic’s zeal. Yet, he still failed. He was a weapon, not an answer. What are you?”
Before Tadek could reply, the oak door at the passage end splintered under an etherium charge. Iron shards and jagged timber showered the flagstones. Three enforcers in black and crimson plate pushed through the haze. Behind them, Chancellor Borislav stepped into the opening, a thin smile playing on his lips, his eyes glinting with triumphant malevolence.
“My prodigy,” Borislav said, his tone dry as ground chalk. “And Lady Ivelina. It seems our paths were always destined to converge in this most inconvenient of places.”
The enforcers moved with chilling efficiency. One tackled Ivelina, slamming her against the wall with a grunt before binding her wrists with glowing etherium cuffs. Another, larger than the rest, seized Tadek’s arm, twisting it behind his back with surprising force. The calfskin journal dropped to the floor, spilling its secrets across the dusty tiles.
“Chancellor,” Tadek said, keeping his pulse from coloring his voice. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Meaning?” Borislav chuckled, stepping closer, his gaze sweeping over the scattered pages of Voroshan’s journal. “The meaning is that I cannot allow my most potent weapon to become… compromised. My centerpiece, conferring with an infiltrator, and digging into matters far beyond your station.” Borislav ground a loose page beneath his boot heel. “The ruination? You should be focused on the ascension.”
Ivelina tested the hold on her shoulders. “You think you can bind the deep-spawn? You will bring the ruin down on us all.”
Borislav merely smiled, a chillingly serene expression. “Madness, Lady Ivelina, is a matter of perspective. Come, both of you. I have something to show you. A demonstration of true potential.”
Iron-plated hands hauled them past iron stairwells and unadorned sub-levels carved directly into the bedrock beneath the Academy. The air grew heavy, thick with a strange, metallic tang and a faint, rhythmic thrumming that seemed to vibrate in Tadek’s bones. They arrived at a massive, reinforced chamber, its walls shimmering with containment runes. A thick sheet of arcane glass separated them from the chamber’s terrifying occupant.
Inside, something writhed. It was an amorphous horror, a pulsating mass of obsidian flesh and crystalline tendrils that seemed to drink the light. It had no discernible head or limbs, merely a constantly shifting form that pulsed with malevolent energy. A low, guttural shriek echoed from within its confines, rattling the very glass.
“Behold,” Borislav said, gesturing toward the containment glass. “A nascent terror pulled from the Blighted Vales. An infant, yet capable of leveling an entire quadrant. Imagine what a legion could accomplish under proper command.”
Tadek studied the twitching mass behind the pane. Borislav did not merely want control of Kostany; he intended to weaponize the encroaching end.
“You intend to harness them?” Tadek asked flatly. “Voroshan failed. Every grand warlord before him failed.”
“Ah, but you are unique,” Borislav murmured, closing the distance between them. “Do you wonder why your reserves multiply so swiftly? Why each stride increases your strength? It is no simple side-effect of the rite.”
He reached out, his finger tracing a pattern on the etherium cuff around Tadek’s wrist. A faint pulse of light emanated from the cuff, resonating with the thrumming from the entity chamber.
“The interface you consult,” Borislav said, leaning near, “that silent metric tracking your rise, does not honor natural brilliance. It is a salvaged beacon network bound to your core. Every pulse of etherium, every physical pace you take, ripples across Kostany. And what hunts such concentrated radiance?”
The abyss-dwellers. The silent multipliers, the intoxicating rate of his physical compounding—it was an open flare for the encroaching dark. Borislav had not engineered a savior; he had crafted an etheric flare.
“The interface is a leash,” Borislav said, turning back toward the containment seal. “It guarantees you stand at the front line, drawing horrors from the dark until they break against you. You will harvest them for the Second Dawn, or the tide will swallow you whole.”