The churning maw of the drain swallowed the first ropes of gristle, a wet, slurping sound that drowned out Olenka’s choked cries. Her nails scraped uselessly against the slick, pink muscle constricting her leg, already disappearing into the swirling darkness. Drevik, still clutching the viridian shaft, watched the pull with a stunned mind. A carrion-warden’s duty was to usher the dead. To cleanse. To perform the rites of passing. But this wasn’t death. This was…something else, something that defied every sacred text, every etched bone-scroll. This was boundless hunger, a mockery of cessation. His gaze snapped from Olenka’s terrified face to the quill in his hand, then to the swirling drain. The Ossuary-Crane, keeper of finality, abhorred such un-death. Its spirit demanded the definitive end, a clean severing. But Olenka was not dead. Not yet. “The blade! The one from the wall!” Olenka shrieked, her voice thin with panic, her torso arching backward, fighting the inexorable pull. The fleshy cables thickened around her, climbing her calf, rattling the water-slick flagstones. Drevik’s eyes darted to the tool racks. His bone-chisel, a relic of a forgotten age, felt like a child’s toy against the brutal reality of the Flesh-Exchange. But there, hanging beside a coiled hose, was a pneumatic saw—a wicked, gleaming arc of teeth designed to shear through bone and gristle. It pulsed with a contained power that felt alien, anathema to his very being. His teachings screamed, a chorus of ancient voices condemning the desecration of living matter, even this corrupted mockery. The sacred rites demanded reverence, a slow, deliberate separation of spirit from form. Not this. Never this. This was butchery, raw and profane, exactly what he swore to dismantle. But Olenka’s face, pale and distorted by fear, was not a spirit to be ushered. She was a living, breathing woman, dragged toward a fate worse than any he could conceive. He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, the cords now snaking past Olenka’s knee, drawing her closer to the pit’s abyss. Then, with a guttural roar that felt torn from his very soul, Drevik lunged. He snatched the pneumatic saw from its hook. The cold metal hummed, vibrating with latent power, foreign in his hands. It was heavy, imbalanced, nothing like the elegant arc of his staff. He fumbled with the trigger, his thumb slipping on the greasy casing. The cords tightened further, Olenka’s leg now almost fully submerged. “Drevik!” Her voice was a desperate gasp, her fingers scrabbling at the rough stone. He found the trigger. With a violent hiss of compressed air, the saw blade whirred to life, a high-pitched whine that cut through the cacophony of the draining vat. Instinct, crude and desperate, took over. He raised the trembling saw, aiming it not with precision, but with a visceral need to *cut*. He brought it down, not on the thinner strands wrapped around Olenka, but on the thicker, anchoring mass that still snaked across the floor, connecting to the main bulk of the shattered vat. The saw bit deep. A spray of pinkish fluid, thick as rendered fat, erupted. The air filled with the sickening smell of burnt protein and the high-pitched shriek of the blade tearing through corrupted meat. The flesh, ceaselessly regenerating, fought back, clinging to the saw, trying to bind it. But the teeth, honed for butchery, tore through it with brutal efficiency. Drevik gritted his teeth, pressing harder, the saw bucking in his hands. He felt the resistance give, a sickening pop and tear. The main mass, severed from its source, writhed like a dying serpent, thrashing wildly. The loops around Olenka’s leg went slack, then recoiled, retracting into the main, twitching pile on the floor. She screamed again, this time a cry of pain as her leg, raw and abraded, was finally released. The force of the sudden release sent her tumbling forward, away from the drain, skidding across the wet flagstones. Drevik dropped the saw, his hands shaking, his chest heaving. He scrambled toward her, pulling her away from the convulsing remains of the vat’s contents. Her leg was a mess of scrapes and deep gouges, oozing a clear, caustic liquid that immediately began to blister her skin. He looked at the saw, still humming on the floor, then at the twitching, severed flesh. He had butchered it. He had desecrated his own oath. But Olenka was alive. “Are you… mad?” Olenka gasped, pushing herself up, wincing as she put weight on her injured leg. She stared at him, then at the saw, then back at him. She stared with a mix of shock and wary disbelief. “You just… you just hacked it apart.” “It had you,” Drevik rasped, his throat raw. The smell of scorched flesh clung to his nostrils, a vile perfume. He looked down at the viridian feather, still clutched in his hand. It pulsed, but its light seemed dimmer, chastened. “My ways… they are dead. This place… it demands something else.” He gestured vaguely at the ruin of the vat, the severed flesh still twitching, refusing to completely die. “This un-death… it cannot be guided. It must be… sundered.” Olenka pushed herself fully upright, favoring her leg. “Good. Took you long enough to realize.” She glanced at his left arm, where scarlet droplets from the acid-soaked plumage had begun to raise angry red welts. “Come on. We need to move. You’re bleeding, and those burns are going to be a problem.” She led him, limping slightly, toward a narrow, reinforced door set into a distant wall. It hissed open onto a cramped, frigid corridor, lined with racks of bundled, pale meat—the discarded byproducts of the Margrave’s endless harvest. Cold vapor plumed from their mouths as they entered. “Cold storage,” Olenka muttered, her breath a visible cloud. “Usually deserted this time of night. Give me your arm.” Drevik sank onto an upturned crate, his muscles aching. The air was thick with the scent of brine and chilled flesh, a sterile, suffocating cold. Olenka rummaged through a small pouch at her belt, pulling out a roll of treated bandage and a small, stoppered vial of dark liquid. She dabbed at the weeping burns on his arm with a practiced hand. The cold, stinging balm made him hiss. “This won’t stop it from scarring,” she said, her voice flat, “but it’ll keep the rot out. And it’s not like you were ever going to be a court dancer, were you, carrion-warden?” A faint, bitter smile touched her lips. “What’s another scar to a man who just used a bone-saw to save a packer from a giant, meat-squid?” Drevik looked at his raw arm, then at the feather in his palm. The viridian shaft pulsed with a renewed, cold light, as if approving his brutal choice. “This… the quill still thrums. It wants the other pieces. It wants… an end.” “Then we go to the last one,” Olenka declared, tying off the bandage. She leaned against a meat hook, her face grim in the dim light of the storage locker. “The youngest. Volkov. They don’t keep him upstairs like the others, not anymore. Too… messy.” “Where then?” Drevik asked, pushing himself to his feet, a renewed, stark resolve hardening his features. His body ached, but his mind, stripped of ancient pretense, felt shockingly clear. Olenka pointed to a heavy, rust-stained door at the far end of the cold storage, barely visible through the swirling mist of their breath. A faint, rhythmic thrumming vibrated through the floorboards, a deep, resonant rumble that felt like the pulse of the entire Ghol Flesh-Exchange. “The boiler room. They say he’s not even a *him* anymore. Just… fuel.” They pushed the heavy door open. The heat struck like an open furnace draft, carrying superheated air, steam, and the thick, metallic tang of scorched gristle. The sound was deafening, a monstrous roar of immense furnaces. Drevik blinked, his eyes adjusting to the hellish glow. Towers of black iron, crisscrossed with steaming pipes and pressure gauges, dominated the cavernous space. And at its heart, glowing with a ghastly, visceral light, was the main boiler. Its massive firebox was not fed by coal or wood, but by a pulsating, grotesque mass of living, regenerating flesh, continuously consumed, continuously growing, the youngest heir, Volkov, assimilated into the very engine of the abattoir, his agonizing burn fueling the entire profane operation.

Severing the Past