The pantry door clicked shut, the sound a dull echo in the suddenly cavernous silence of the inn. Tazeen stood motionless, copper and bile thick on the roof of her mouth. Zulfiqar’s words, “The feast begins tonight,” coiled around her thoughts, a venomous serpent. He had known all along. He had manipulated her, healed her, encouraged her, all for this grotesque ritual. Her family’s legacy wasn’t just dark; it was monstrous. It wasn’t a curse; it was a hungry, deliberate engine of destruction. The realization hit her with the force of a physical blow, bending her over, the air driven from her lungs. She remembered the fragments her mother had whispered in hushed tones, before the sickness took her, before the family disowned them. “Our line… a bargain, child. Not with spirits, but with something far older, far more… consuming.” Her mother had spoken of the ‘First Weaver,’ the true founder of the Dastur bloodline, not the celebrated chef of legend. A being that arrived from the Void of Xylos, a formless hunger that had woven itself into the very fabric of Parshangan’s nascent existence, seeking to replace the raw, vibrant flavors of life with its own cold, alchemical perfection. It had sought control, not nourishment. Her mother had described the First Weaver as a thought, a parasite of pure concept, that had found its first host in a desperate, starving chef, promising him impossible flavors. But the price was not just his soul, but the souls of all who tasted his food, their essences refined and devoured. It bound itself to their blood, twisting their spiritual roots into conduits for its endless hunger. Tazeen’s own root, dismissed as ‘defective’ by her uncle Zahir, ridiculed as ‘thin’ and ‘unworthy’ by her family’s council, was, in truth, an anomaly. A shard of defiance amid endless consumption. It was the genetic echo of a single ancestor who had resisted the Weaver’s first, crude attempts at complete assimilation – a natural immunity, a tiny, flickering shield against its mind-bending influence. It was why she alone felt the prick of guilt, the cold dread, when others simply reveled in the taken joy. This immunity, this weakness, was her strength. It meant she could fight. She wouldn’t be another willing conduit. She couldn’t let the feast begin. Zulfiqar’s quarters were in the deepest, oldest part of the inn, a section usually locked and shrouded in an oppressive quiet. Tazeen moved through the inn’s common room, a ghost in the pre-dawn gloom, her feet barely disturbing the dust motes dancing in the weak light filtering through grimy windows. She found the heavy, ornately carved door, the wood black with age. It wasn’t locked. A deliberate invitation, perhaps? Zulfiqar’s arrogance knew no bounds. The room inside was sparse, almost monastic. A simple sleeping pallet, a low table, and against one wall, shelves crammed with oddities. Not books, or scrolls, but jars. Hundreds of them. Each one a different size, a different shape, but all made of a cloudy, milky glass. Tazeen scanned the shelves. Inside each jar, a faint, swirling mist of color shifted. One, a vibrant, almost violent crimson, beat with an unmistakable thrum of self-importance. Another, a pale, shimmering gold, seemed to hum with contentment, a satisfied glow. A third, a muddy, bruised violet, churned with bitter shame. She recognized them. Each one was labeled with a small, neat inscription in a script she didn't recognize, but the meaning was chillingly clear. ‘Envoy Vesh-Tek: Pride – First Harvest.’ ‘Rogue Cultivator: Joy – Third Harvest.’ ‘Omid Caravanserai Dishwasher: Patience – Final Harvest.’ Her stomach churned. The spiritual essences, the very core of who these people were, stripped bare and bottled. The dishwashers. Plural. Zulfiqar had been doing this for a long time. The man she’d seen snapped in the pantry was just the latest offering. He hadn’t been killed for food; he’d been killed for his ‘Patience.’ The book, the Tome, had been feeding for generations. Her gaze dropped. On the floor, directly in the center of the room, intricate channels were etched into the stone. They didn't glow, not yet, but she could feel a faint hum from them, a resonance with the jars. This was the array. The final piece of Zulfiqar’s ritual, meant to channel the collected essences into the Tome, to complete the ‘Final Banquet’ that would devour them all. It was more complex than any runic scheme she’d ever seen, a spiderweb of interlocking lines and symbols. A single, desperate thought ignited in her mind. Rewrite the array. But how? She had no arcane knowledge, no understanding of these complex sigils. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for anything. Anything at all. Her gaze landed on a forgotten corner, where a few rusty tools lay discarded: a small hammer, a chipped chisel, and a heavy, brutal meat splitter, its edge dulled by years of neglect. It was a physical array. It had been carved into the stone. It could be uncarved. Ignoring the tremor in her hands, Tazeen seized the iron splitter. It felt heavy, cold, and utterly out of place in this room of esoteric power. With a grunt, she brought the dull wedge down, scraping it against the nearest etched line on the floor. A high-pitched screech of metal on stone filled the room. A thin, grey gouge appeared where the blade had passed, marring the intricate network. She scraped again, harder this time, a spark flying. The hum from the floor wavered, a dissonant note introduced into its silent song. She moved with frantic urgency, dragging the steel across the lines, gouging, scratching, defacing the carefully wrought design. Each scrape was a tiny act of rebellion, a small victory against the encroaching darkness. She wasn't an alchemist, or a grand cultivator. She was a cook. And sometimes, a cook just needed to butcher. Bits of stone dust flew, her arms ached, but she kept going, driven by a cold, righteous fury. The humming of the array became increasingly erratic, a dying animal’s whimper. One of the jars on the shelf, the one labeled ‘Envoy Vesh-Tek: Pride,’ flickered, the crimson mist within dimming for a fraction of a second. She hacked at the array until it was a mangled mess of broken lines and shattered channels, completely indecipherable. The hum died entirely, replaced by an unsettling, profound silence. She dropped the iron blade, the clang echoing unnaturally loud in the still room. Her chest heaved. She had done it. She had sabotaged his ritual. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to buy them time. Enough to save them, for now. A flicker of movement at the doorway caught her eye. She turned, a relieved gasp catching in her lungs, ready to explain everything, to apologize for her rashness. But the sound died in her throat, strangled by terror. Standing there, blocking her only exit, was Vesh-Tek. His eyes were no longer the arrogant, calculating gold she knew, nor the soft, grateful hazel she had seen after her sacrifice. They were voids, utterly, unnervingly black. His alien weaponry, usually sleek and silent against his uniform, now gave off a low, malevolent hum. He took a single, slow step into the room, his gaze unseeing, unfeeling. The air around him crackled with a cold, controlled power that was not his own. He was a puppet, his strings pulled by a hand unseen.

Jars of Pride