"I'll give you your proof, Captain. Just give me tonight," Zoryan ground out, killing the connection before Molchan could bark another reprimand.
He pocketed the phone, his palms slick against the casing. The chapel at the western edge of the Voronin grounds reeked of damp moss and rotted spruce. Moonlight spilled through cracked stained glass, cutting violet angles across shattered pews.
Beside him, Liri floated inches above the flagged stone, her semi-translucent form wavering like chimney smoke. "The fourth flagstone from the altar step. With the cracked cross."
Zoryan wedged his pry bar into the seam. Grout turned to dust. With a groan of rusted hinges, an iron ring gave way beneath the slab, exposing a narrow flight of steps dropping into stale, freezing darkness.
He clicked his flashlight on. The beam carved through centuries of untouched mold to reveal a vaulted cellar lined with lead-bound folios and dry glass retorts. In the center sat an ironwood table bearing a small, black-lacquered chest: the Ebon Casket.
"Open it," Liri urged, drifting through the desk's edge. Her porcelain face was taut with nervous excitement. "It has to be the key. When we seize the artifact from the cabal, the counter-ritual will knit me back into flesh. I'll take a breath again, Zoryan. A real one."
"Don't count your skin before it's stitched," Zoryan muttered, though his chest tightened at the longing in her gaze. He pried open the brass clasps.
Inside lay a single calfskin ledger filled with dense, hurried handwriting—Ilarion Voronin’s final notes.
Zoryan flipped through the pages until the ink thickened with diagrams of the Amulet. He read the Latin marginalia, then checked the translated Cyrillic notes beneath. His stomach dropped.
"Liri," he began slowly.
"What is it? Does it require tallow? Salt? Tell me."
"There is no counter-ritual."
She laughed, a brittle sound that rattled the empty beakers on the shelf. "Don't play games, detective. Not now."
"Look at it yourself." Zoryan angled the beam so the light struck the vellum directly. "The relic doesn't return a soul to clay. It acts as an anchor for extraction. It shreds the tether between anima and marrow to harness the kinetic release, discarding the consciousness like dross. It never brought anyone back. It only ever devoured."
Liri stared at the ink. Her luminous form flickered, edges fraying into ragged wisps. "No. No, he told me—"
"Your ancestor wrote nothing here to save you," Zoryan said, the words tasting like lead. "He wrote it when he realized what the cabal intended to do with you. You're dead, Liri. Permanently. The artifact can't fix that."
She drifted backward, passing harmlessly through a stack of parchment. Her mouth worked without sound. All the bright, brittle charm she wore like armor stripped away, leaving an open, bleeding void. "All this time... I've been chasing air."
"You were chasing hope," Zoryan said. He reached out instinctively, his fingers passing straight through her pale cheek, leaving only an ache of frost in his bones.
Clapping echoed down the stone staircase.
"A tragic realization, isn't it?"
Marek Belinsky stepped into the beam of light, brushing soot from the lapel of his charcoal wool overcoat. He wore leather driving gloves and carried an antique heavy-bore revolver loosely at his side. His smile held all the warmth of a morgue slab.
"Marek?" Liri drifted forward, stunned. "How did you get past the wards?"
"Because your father keyed the ward-stones to his blood and his prospective heirs, my darling," Marek said smoothly. "And on the paper that matters, I was your husband-to-be."
Zoryan stepped between Marek and the ghost, his hand dropping to his service weapon. "You never tracked us. You knew about this cellar all along."
"Of course I did. I needed you to find the notes so I wouldn't waste an afternoon breaking the locks myself." Marek tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over Liri's translucent shape with cold, clinical appraisal. "You look well, my love. A bit thin, perhaps."
"You were there," Zoryan stated, recalling the grainy traffic still from the night she vanished. "Outside the manor gate at 3:14 AM. You weren't searching for her. You left her here to die."
Marek sighed, adjusting his cuffs. "Leave her? Heavens, no. I held the silver pins. Do you have any concept of how much concentrated vitality is stored in old Voronin blood? Generations of careful breeding, bottled up in a girl who cared more about piano concertos than her birthright. It was an appalling waste."
"You killed me," Liri said. Her voice lacked its usual mock-theatrical lilt; it was a flat, horrifying rasp. "We were going to buy the townhouse by the canal. You brought me hydrangeas."
"And they looked lovely against your skin when we laid you out," Marek replied without a trace of remorse. "The cabal required an offering of unblemished pedigree to prime the machine. Once you were gone, your estate’s wards began unraveling, leaving the path clear for the true prize."
"The next alignment," Zoryan barked, leveling his gun at Marek's chest. "Who is the vessel?"
"Drop the iron, Volkov. You won't shoot. You're too clean. Too desperate for regulations that won't save you."
Zoryan didn't lower the barrel. "Try me."
"Fine. Satisfy your curiosity before the curtain falls." Marek's grin turned predatory. "The ritual demands two poles. The first was raw esoteric lineage: Liriana. The second requires administrative blood—an iron constitution descended from the city’s founding inquisitors. The Molchan line."
Zoryan's grip tightened until his knuckles went white. "Katarina?"
"Captain Molchan has been so conveniently vocal about your erratic behavior," Marek purred. "My associates staged a disturbance near her flat ten minutes ago. She answered the call herself, like the dutiful hound she is. By now, she's in chains, awaiting the midnight bell."
"You bastard," Zoryan snarled, squeezing the trigger.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Zoryan glanced down in horror. The firing pin was jammed with black, calcified wax—a subtle curse Marek had worked into the air the moment he descended.
"Did you truly think I would walk into a tomb unprepared?" Marek stepped back onto the staircase. With his left hand, he gripped an iron wheel set into the foundation stones and hauled it down with all his weight.
Metal ground against stone. A heavy portcullis of lead-reinforced iron dropped from the ceiling, slamming into the flags between them with a deafening crash.
"Marek!" Liri screamed, lunging at the bars. An emerald ward flared across the iron, blasting her backward with a shriek of burning ectoplasm.
"Goodnight, Liri," Marek called from the stairs, adjusting his gloves. "I'd say I'll miss you, but you're so much less exhausting like this."
He threw a second rusted lever beside the archway. A shudder tore through the foundation. Deep within the masonry, lead pipes cracked open, and a torrent of icy, black cistern runoff roared out of the vents above, crashing down into the cellar.
The water reached Zoryan's knees in seconds, frigid enough to stop a heart.