“Tinny,” she said, fighting the tremor in her fingers. “Is there anything else? Any way to alter the calculations?”
The rust-pocked caretaker tilted its head, a series of low-frequency whirs emanating from its chassis. “Negative, Mistress Markova. The convergence relies on specific celestial alignments. Borjyan’s calculations are precise. Deviation would… destabilize the transference matrix.” Its optical sensors blinked once, then settled on Zinaida. “Master Borjyan is currently in the Grand Periphery. His emotional projections are elevated.”
Elevated. An understatement. The manor hummed, a low, guttural thrum that vibrated through the floorboards. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of scorching wood and distant screams, a familiar, sickening overlay of the past.
“The Grand Periphery?” Zinaida questioned, her mind racing. That was the room at the very heart of the manor, equidistant from all its major wings. A central anchor point. A logical place to prepare.
She moved, a controlled surge of adrenaline pushing her forward. Tinny followed, its clanking steps surprisingly swift. The corridors warped around them. Heat crawled along the cornices in phantom ribbons, casting elongated shadows that mimicked burning rafters. Acrid soot caught in her throat. A child’s faint cry carried through the stone, raw and tinny. The air prickled against her collarbones. The Resonance wasn't just blighting the house; it was actively consuming it, transforming the solid architecture into a volatile, hallucinatory space.
She pushed open the heavy double doors of the Grand Periphery. The room was a maelstrom. Dust motes danced in the air, swirling like embers. The central hearth, usually cold and empty, now glowed with an impossible, ethereal orange. Vano Borjyan stood in the center, his back to her, silhouetted against the phantom fire. He wasn’t performing any ritual, not yet. He was simply… experiencing it. Again.
His broad shoulders were hunched, his posture rigid with an agony that transcended physical pain. The air around him shimmered, distorting the light, pulling Zinaida into the vortex. The heat grew sharp and dry. Heat bit her forearms; the scent of singed hair stung her nose. The stone floor beneath her boots appeared to dissolve into cinder, giving way to the illusion of collapsing ceiling joists. She stood inside his recollection as though it were brick and mortar.
And then she saw him. Not Vano as he was now, but younger, his features distorted by frenzy, dark hair plastered across sweat-streaked brows. He was clawing at a fallen beam, trying to shift it, his bare hands raw and bleeding. His clothes were singed, torn. Above him, on the landing of a grand staircase that was now a charred ruin, a small, terrified figure huddled, engulfed by smoke. Liana.
“Papa!” the child’s voice, raw with terror, ripped through the inferno. It was the same scream that had greeted Zinaida on the docks, the same haunting wail that had twisted the very fabric of this island. But here, it was piercingly clear, immediate, unmitigated.
Air caught in Zinaida's throat. Her diagnostic training demanded emotional distance, yet the phantom conflagration left no room for clinical appraisal. The smoke choked her lungs. Younger Vano’s expression twisted into wild panic as timber cracked under his grip. His hands shook, his magic sputtering out in thin, dying sparks. He reached to summon a barrier, but the surging panic fractured his focus, scattering the currents into useless static. He had not abandoned the child; his power had fractured under the weight of his fear.
He roared, a sound torn from the deepest part of his being, a primal cry of anguish and fury. He lunged toward the stairs, ignoring the collapsing structure, heedless of the heat scorching his tunic, straining toward the small silhouette. The span was too broad. Crossbeams shattered downward. The girl vanished beneath falling timber.
Vano Borjyan, the man standing mere feet from Zinaida in the present, sagged. The roaring fire in the room intensified around him, his immense grief-power threatening to immolate them all. His body trembled violently, his knees threatening to give way. He was lost, utterly consumed by the echo of that night. He was drowning in it, and Zinaida, caught in the wake of the illusion, felt the cold certainty of what would happen if the surge peaked.
Her training, her detachment, her fear of vulnerability… they all dissolved in the face of this raw, agonizing display. This wasn’t data. This was suffering. This was a man, broken beyond comprehension. In a single, unplanned movement, Zinaida took a step forward. The scorching air crackled around her, but she ignored it. She reached out, her hand extending, not to analyze, not to measure, but to connect. She placed her palm flat against the back of Vano’s arm. The fabric of his dark tunic was damp with sweat, trembling beneath her touch. His skin was unnervingly warm, not from the phantom fire, but from the uncontrolled outpouring of his own internal inferno.
The instant her skin met his, the maelstrom around them shuddered. The searing heat receded slightly, the roaring glare muting to an amber hum. The suffocating smoke thinned. Vano stiffened, a sharp intake of breath, a sudden, almost imperceptible halt to his trembling. He didn’t turn, but she felt his muscles tense under her palm, then, just as subtly, relax. For a long, drawn-out moment, he leaned into her touch. It was barely a shift in his weight, but he leaned toward her as though searching for a tether. His chin dropped. In the dim amber glow, she saw the grime and salt on his cheeks, the sudden, raw exhaustion stripping twenty years of iron from his features.
Then, as quickly as it came, the moment shattered. He recoiled violently, tearing his arm from her grasp as if burned. He spun, his stare hardening with fierce, protective wrath. His mouth tightened into a grim line of betrayal. His voice scraped low against the renewed crackle of the illusion. “You feel it too, don’t you? The hope.”