The edge of the shadow-blade bit into the sinew cord suspending Jorvel. Sparks flared violet against the iron fetters, spitting grease across Korvan’s knuckles.
A concussive jolt punched through his forearms. The impact sent him skidding back across the stone, boots leaving parallel gouges in the grime.
[Sacrifice unfulfilled. Impure tithe rejected. The seal demands unblemished Dirge marrow.]
Inside Korvan’s skull, the needles pricked deep. The Loom hissed its disapproval, punishing his clumsy strike with cold spasms that twisted the sinews in his neck. Suspended overhead, Jorvel groaned, head lolling against a chest crusty with dry bile. The rot had colonized his neck, thick as tree bark.
"Don't force it," a voice spoke from the fissure behind him.
Korvan spun, the black weapon snapping to guard in a single reflex. The blade hummed, hungry for meat.
Nestra Korvath emerged from the split rock. She had stripped away her formal mantle. Her dueling tunic was spattered with brackish water, silver hilt held loose in her right grip. She never flinched at the dark blade leveled at her throat.
"You track poorly for someone hiding among the dregs," she said, breath misting pale gray. "Grandmaster Rhain sealed the lower gate twenty minutes after you descended. He failed to lock the drainage flues."
Korvan kept his weight centered, paranoid instincts screaming that this was an elaborate ambush. "Turn around, Nestra. Go back to your high seat."
"Rhain murdered five of my house retainers to grease these stones," she said, stepping past his guard without dropping her chin. "I knew the numbers were falsified. The academy records showed three dozen initiates dying to subterranean drafts. Drafts never leave hollow sternums." She paused beside the pulsing mound of blighted tissue, looking up at Jorvel's limp form. "He’s your leverage. Without him, you're just another blade waiting to be broken."
"He is my brother in arms," Korvan grated. "Step back. The cord reflects kinetic force."
"Because it craves bloodline, not steel." Nestra unclasped her dueling bracer, letting the worked silver clatter against the stone. Beneath it, her skin was pale, scored by the precise, surgical runic scars of the northern peerage. "The lock requires uncorrupted Dirge magic to invert the current. You carry a void-shard. Touch that anchor with your shadow and you'll pop his lungs like wet parchment."
She reached out, fingers hovering inches from the central knot of black sinew.
Korvan caught her wrist. His fingers were cold, calloused from a lifetime of ditch-fighting; hers were smooth, hard as carved marble. "If you bleed your core dry, you won't survive the climb back."
Her gray eyes fixed on his. For a second, the mask of the untouchable prodigy cracked, exposing something hollowed out by grief and fury. "Then don't let me fall, rogue. Prove you aren't the monster Rhain claims you are."
She pulled her wrist free and drove her bare palm into the braided black junction.
Nestra gasped. A sharp, clear light—pure as winter frost—surged from her palm into the blighted mass. The pulsing mound shrieked, an organic wail that rattled Korvan’s teeth. Black ichor hissed, turning to white ash where her skin met the corruption. Her knees buckled under the drain, her breath rattling in her throat. She was burning her own core to unlock Jorvel’s chains.
"Korvan! Now! Cut the counter-weight!" she choked out.
Korvan leaped, the dark blade extending into a whip of liquid shade. He aimed for the high pulley—
"Nestra! Step away from that gutter-rat!"
The shout echoed through the limestone archway.
Pellam Ystmar stumbled out of the gloom, clad in full ceremonial plate, his engraved broadsword drawn and trembling. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, face florid with panic and wounded pride. "I followed your trail! The instructors said he stole the relic—that he was a traitor! Get back, Nestra, I will claim this bounty!"
"Pellam, freeze!" Nestra screamed, blood dripping from her nostrils onto the tether.
Pellam ignored the floor. In his rush to present his sword, his gilded boot slammed down onto an elevated slab of obsidian—the chamber's keystone.
A sharp click echoed through the crypt.
The floor beneath them groaned. The central mound tore in half with the sound of ripping canvas. A vermilion fracture split the flagstones, spewing a foul, iron-heavy fog that tasted of rusted needles and scorched fat. The red vapor coiled instantly around Pellam's greaves.
"What—what is this?" Pellam shrieked, backing away. The mist touched his gilded scabbard; the gold blackened instantly, peeling away like burnt paper. He tripped over his own scabbard, sprawling into the muck, sobbing as his pristine armor began to pit and corrode. "Help me! My hands! It burns!"
The rift widened. The true breach was opening. The rust-colored fog poured out in choking sheets, rising toward the rafters, threatening to snuff out the fragile pulse remaining in Jorvel's neck.
Nestra collapsed to her knees, her Dirge resonance flickering down to a dying ember. "I can't... hold the seal..."
Jorvel sagged, the red fog rising toward his ankles, flesh already beginning to blister where the mist brushed him.
Korvan stood between the bleeding rift and the two people who anchored him to this wretched life. The needle pricks in his mind turned to an icy roar.
[Accept the pact. Drink the deep grave. Seal the maw with your own marrow.]
The weapon bound to his soul thrashed, begging to slip its leash. To seal a breach of this magnitude, he couldn't use simple techniques. He had to let the void-blade swallow his arm completely, invite the parasite past his shoulder, into his ribs, into his beating heart.
If he did, the rogue named Korvan Geth would cease to exist. A hollow shell of the grave would take his place.
Failing that, Jorvel would die in three breaths. Nestra in four.
Pellam was crawling on belly and knees, weeping, dragging himself toward the entrance. "Nestra, save me! I'm an Ystmar!"
Korvan ignored the sniveling noble. He looked at Nestra. Her sight was dimming, her mouth flecked with scarlet foam, but her gaze remained locked on him—watching, measuring, entirely without fear.
"Hold on to him," Korvan whispered.
He gave no space for an answer. Korvan took the handle of the shadow-blade in both hands, turned the obsidian tip inward, and plunged the hilt deep into his own left shoulder.
The agony was not fire; it was absolute frost.
A tide of pure, abyssal blackness erupted from his flesh, swallowing his torso, his neck, his vision. The blighted fog screeched as the shadows devoured the red light, the rift howling in protest against a predator far older than the mist.
Through the roaring darkness, his humanity tore away piece by piece, leaving only the hunger of the grave.