A guttural cry of outrage tore through the door as Davorin Cernak’s desperation finally snapped. The heavy oak groaned, then shuddered violently inward, revealing Davorin, bloodshot eyes wild, hair disheveled, a stench of cheap Rot-Ale clinging to him like a second skin. He stumbled into the small antechamber, not even glancing at Kasimir, his gaze fixed solely on Mirela. “You!” he roared, lunging forward, arm outstretched, fingers splayed as if to physically drag her back to his crumbling life. “You will come back! You will fix this!” Mirela did not flinch. Before Davorin’s clumsy lunge could bridge the distance between them, a blur of profound shadow detached itself from Mirela’s side. Mrak moved with the silent, terrifying grace of a predator. The moth-hound unfolded its vast, segmented wings, not for flight, but to generate a crushing burst of air that slammed into Davorin. He stumbled, gasping, but before he could regain balance, Mrak was on him. The creature’s formidable, chitinous forelegs, tipped with hooked claws, shot out, pinning Davorin to the grimy flagstones. One claw pressed directly against his throat, not breaking the skin, but holding him immobile, breathless, his face rapidly purpling. The moth-hound’s multifaceted eyes, usually a dull obsidian, glinted with a cold, spectral light. A low, vibrating growl, like stones grinding in a deep chasm, emanated from Mrak’s shadowy form. Davorin whimpered, pathetic and utterly broken, staring up at the monstrous creature that held him captive. Kasimir watched the scene unfold with an amused tilt to his lips. He leaned against the doorframe, a dark silhouette, making no move to intervene. Mirela, her expression still unreadable, stepped closer to the pinned man. The scent of Rot-Ale was thick, nauseating. “Fix what, Davorin?” Mirela’s voice was as cold and clear as water from a glacier. “Your family’s ruin? The consequence of your own incompetence?” Davorin struggled, a strangled sound escaping his constricted throat. Mrak’s claw shifted, pressing a fraction harder. A tear tracked a path through the grime on his cheek. “The… the inks!” he choked out, fear overriding any lingering pride. “The stabilizer… it backfired! Worse than before! The harvest… it’s all turning to sludge, Mirela! Father… Father’s losing everything!” Mirela’s gaze sharpened. “The stabilizer ink. Describe it.” “T-Tihana,” Davorin stammered, his eyes darting frantically to Kasimir, then back to Mirela. “She… she gave it to me! Said it was a new formula, a gift! To ‘help us reclaim our glory,’ she said! It was supposed to halt the decay in the harvest-inks, increase potency! But it… it mutated them. Turned them… virulent. Our entire stores are collapsing, Mirela! People are getting sick from the fumes, our processing vats are corroding!” Mirela’s mind raced, connecting the pieces. Tihana’s fake concern, the vial of necrotic ink, the mutated fog-ghouls, and now Davorin’s ruined harvests. A 'stabilizer' that caused virulent decay. It wasn't a failure; it was a test. A weapon. “Virulent decay,” Mirela repeated, the words tasting like ash. “Corroding vats. Fumes making people sick.” Her eyes met Kasimir’s over Davorin’s shaking form. The understanding passed between them, swift and chilling. Tihana wasn’t just framing her; she was perfecting the delivery method for the city-wide plague. Davorin’s family had been unwitting guinea pigs, their valuable memory-inks a convenient medium. “Release him, Mrak,” Mirela commanded, her voice devoid of inflection. The moth-hound lifted its claw, allowing Davorin to scramble back, coughing and gasping, shrinking against the wall, a pathetic shadow of the golden boy he once was. “Your family’s collapse is none of my concern, Cernak,” Mirela stated, turning her back on him. “It seems your reckoning will proceed without my help.” Kasimir pushed off the doorframe, falling into step beside her. “So, the blight isn’t just a concept. It’s in active development. And your ‘mentor’ has been using test subjects.” “And this neutral ground is likely where she hides her true work,” Mirela said, her thoughts already calculating routes, risks, and countermeasures. “The ghoul’s cloak, Davorin’s ‘stabilizer’… it’s all leading to a centralized point of origin. A laboratory hidden in plain sight.” They left Davorin a weeping, broken heap in the antechamber, his pleas for help fading behind the heavy door. Mirela felt no pity. Her focus had narrowed, cold and absolute. Tihana had not merely exiled her; she had prepared a global catastrophe. Kasimir led them through a labyrinth of forgotten service tunnels beneath the complex, paths known only to a select few syndicate bosses and the oldest of the city’s engineers. The air grew heavy, damp, smelling of ozone and decay, a stark contrast to the perfumed fogs above. Pipes groaned overhead, thick with the sluggish flow of refined emotions and forgotten memories, the lifeblood of Olovo’s illicit trade. They descended through a rusted grate disguised as a water drainage conduit, emerging into a vast, cavernous space carved into the rock beneath the central abyss. The chamber pulsed with an eerie, greenish-black light emanating from colossal glass vats. These were not the usual pristine, ornate refining vessels of a high-society alchemist. These were brutal, industrial-scale contraptions, crude metal supports groaning beneath swirling, viscous liquids that shimmered with malevolent energy. The air here was thick with a sickly-sweet, metallic odor that made Mirela’s eyes water, a scent she recognized from the mutated ghoul’s cloak. This was the source. This was Tihana’s hidden heart of venom. “The raw memory-inks Kasimir tracked,” Mirela murmured, her voice tight. “All funneled here. Look at the scale of this. She’s synthesizing enough to blanket the entire city.” Indeed, dozens of vats, each taller than a man, churned with the toxic shadow-ink, connected by a network of pipes that snaked across the ceiling and down to a central, heavily reinforced valve system. This was no mere alchemical lab; it was a factory of death. They moved silently, their boots barely scuffing the concrete floor. Kasimir’s hand rested lightly on the hilt of a concealed blade, his eyes scanning for unseen guards. Mrak glided like a phantom at Mirela’s heels, its shadowy form absorbing the ambient light. As they rounded a particularly large vat, a chilling sight brought them to a sudden, terrible halt. In the center of a small, raised platform, bathed in the sickly green glow of the toxic ink, was an extraction chair. Not an empty one, but one occupied. Bozena, Davorin’s stand-in, was strapped to it, her head lolling to one side, hair matted with sweat and tears. Her soft, silk gown was stained, ripped, and beneath her eyes, dark circles bloomed. Tears still streamed down her pale face, endless, silent. A complex array of fine, translucent tubes ran from the chair, piercing her skin at various points – her wrists, her neck, even her temples. These tubes then branched, feeding directly into a smaller, secondary distillation unit, which in turn dripped a concentrated, shimmering liquid into collection vials. She was a living filter, her body processing and refining the very necrotic toxins that filled the vats around them, her despair and fear somehow intensifying the process. Mirela stood motionless. The sight of Bozena, the woman who had unknowingly taken her place, now being used as a weeping, human catalyst for Tihana’s apocalyptic ambition, twisted something cold and hard in Mirela’s core. This wasn’t just about revenge anymore. This was a horror she could not ignore. Kasimir’s gaze flickered from Bozena’s tormented face to the massive valves that controlled the flow of the toxic ink, then back to Mirela. He understood the impossible choice laid before her. Destroy the main valves now, stop the contagion before it could be distributed, but risk alerting every guard in the neutral fortress and condemn Bozena to a slow, agonizing death. Or attempt to save the stand-in, jeopardizing the entire mission, and potentially allowing Tihana to unleash her blight upon Olovo.

Cracks in the Empire