The Grand Exhibition hall fractured into scrambles of panic. Boots scraped stone as students clawed backward from Korvan Geth. A pair of D-ranks against the perimeter pillars locked up entirely, knuckles white against the balustrade. Closer in, celebrated Acolytes and instructors found their Dirge-signatures guttering out, smothered by the predatory force rolling from the disgraced vanguard.
Korvan's vision tunneled. The dark steel had melted across his right forearm, replacing skin and sinew with a twitching silhouette of black iron and curdled mist. It pulled at his marrow, demanding blood. Murmurs rasped within his skull—not the Loom's cold ledger, but the appetite of the iron itself, demanding slaughter.
"Guards! Seize him! Execute the abomination!" Provost Corvus scrambled backward across the flags, silk robes sweeping through grime. "He is the killer! The drained sentries, the shattered wards—this proves it! He is a butcher of the low catacombs! Cut him down!"
The cathedral sentries, clad in fluted iron plate, hesitated with gauntlets locked on their hilts. Their occult sight registered only a bottomless pit where a rogue ought to stand. Corvus caught their indecision and snarled, "Are you deaf? He threatens the cathedral! I command you by the High Conclave!"
Korvan turned his head. The blackened limb flexed, talons of condensed gloom stretching from his knuckles. Old instinct demanded he retreat into the background, yet the parasite grafted to his bones demanded blood. Corvus drew an ornate broad-axe, its steel edge singing with an abjurative seal. The provost surged forward—not toward Korvan, but angling hard toward Pellam Ystmar, who huddled shivering against the flags.
"The relic chose the heir!" Corvus shouted, leveling his broad-axe at Pellam. "This gutter-rat is simply a poisoned lure! I will cleanse the noble!"
The transparent lie brought Korvan back to cold calculation. Pellam was dead weight, but an executed Pellam brought an inquisitor's sweep down upon the entire cohort. And Corvus was trying to erase his own negligence in blood.
Korvan's transformed arm snapped outward. A thin crescent of compressed dark clipped the descending axe. The runic steel screamed, fracturing into jagged iron shrapnel across the flags. Corvus stumbled back, clutching a ruined hilt with bleeding fingers.
"You cracked it..." the provost stammered. "That iron was consecrated! High-tier craft!"
Korvan remained silent. He flicked his wrist. An oily ribbon of dark mist shot across the gap, wrapping Corvus's ribs and wrenching him four feet into the air. The provost slammed back against an octagonal pillar, pinned flat under relentless torque. His legs kicked empty air, throat working as the pressure turned his jowls purple.
Only the provost's choked wheezing and Pellam's whimpers echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling. The guards remained petrified. The alien arm twitched, black vapor rising from its pores, demanding that he close his fist and collapse Corvus's ribcage.
[Mercy is weakness. Inflict pain. Consume the offerings.]
The entity within the dark prompted him onward. He could crush Corvus here and blame demonic frenzy. The panic in the room was thick enough to bury the truth.
A figure cut between them. Nestra Korvath stepped onto the flags, rapier sheathed at her hip, gray eyes locked onto Korvan without a trace of hesitation. She stood dead center between the vanguard and the pinned provost, her balance pitched forward.
"The provost lies," she said, clear and measured. "The residue on the murdered patrolmen was an empty, frozen drain. A slow rot. What clings to his arm is pure abyssal pressure. Different lineage entirely."
Murmurs broke out across the gallery. The first-ranked duelist had just openly contradicted a Conclave provost to shield an unranked vanguard.
Korvan tracked her shoulder line. Why intervene? Was this an angle to secure his debt before the Night of the Red Fog, or bait to draw his guard down? He hesitated, holding the coil tight around Corvus instead of crushing his spine. Restraint.
[Violation: Failure to inflict necessary pain. Insufficient efficiency. Punishment initiated.]
The shadow behind his eyes erupted in needle-sharp fire. Phantom spikes drove through his temples and down into his collarbones, penalizing the pause. The grafted limb spasmed violently, its ink-black fingers curling inward. Korvan dropped hard onto both knees, skull striking the flags.
The dark lash dissolved. Corvus collapsed onto his hands and knees, hacking for air on the stones. The suffocating pressure collapsed into nothing, leaving Korvan shivering against the masonry as the phantom agony burned his nerves. Pellam gaped from his puddle of spilled wine, mouth slack.
Heavy bootsteps sounded from the iron gantlet above. Rhain Cinder-Grim, the Grandmaster, walked down the spiral iron stairs into the hall. His gaze fixed upon Korvan. Three slow claps struck the hush like mallet hits on lead.
“Remarkable,” Rhain’s voice boomed, deep and resonant, filling the vast hall. “Truly, profoundly remarkable.” He paused, his gaze sweeping over the pale faces of the elite students, finally resting on Korvan, who was now barely conscious, his body wracked by the Loom’s punishment. “The Night-Render has chosen its true master, and in doing so, has revealed a path long thought lost.” Rhain Cinder-Grim descended the last few steps, his heavy boots echoing on the blood-splashed cobblestones that marked Vane’s fallen cleaver. A faint smile touched his lips, a chilling expression that promised far more than it delivered. “Korvan Geth,” he announced, his voice devoid of pity, “your true trial has just begun.