Copper tang flooded her mouth as blue sparks crawled over her collarbones, the air smelling of fried circuits and ozone. The Registry's regulatory circuit buckled; Zehrav's delirium poured across the boundary line, flooding her skull with foreign images.
A candle-lit alcove materialized behind her eyelids, smelling of moldering scrolls. A clean-shaven Zehrav stood rigid across a cedar desk from Neyla, whose sharp jawline and ink-stained knuckles were undeniably real.
“She’s on her way, Zehrav,” Neyla’s voice hissed through the transmission, dry as chalk. “My impossible little sibling, Qamara. She will run headfirst into your path. It is inked into Chapter Seven.”
Qamara jerked back against stone, unable to sever the link. Neyla—who had recited three dozen rules on avoiding this brute, who had sworn he would slaughter continents—leaned across the desk, pleading.
“Keep her breathing,” Neyla demanded, stripped of her usual flippant sneer. “She charges into every spiked trench she sees. Hold onto her. The text is merely scaffolding. Win her over. Ensure she never walks away.”
Zehrav’s younger self, his brow furrowed in confusion, simply stared. “Prophecy? I know nothing of such things.”
Neyla’s lips thinned. “Don’t pretend ignorance. Your bloodline is steeped in Ley-magic. The madness that takes your kin… it will come for you. But if Qamara is there, if she loves you, she can ground you. She is your anchor, Zehrav. The only one. She’ll hate you for it, for being tied to you, for breaking her spirit, but it’s the only way to save you both. The world will burn otherwise.”
The projection ripped apart into whistling wind, splintering roots, and the sickening drop beneath the floorboards. Qamara scraped her knuckles against raw mortar. Neyla had not delivered cautionary warnings; she had laid bait, manipulating both sides so her desert-rat sibling would play personal leash to an empire's doom.
[Tether Toxicity: 78%]
The blue letters flickered in her vision. Thick vines outside snapped like bowstrings. Qamara threw herself across the slanting floor toward Zehrav, rib cage heaving. He was stirring, his body wracked by tremors, a low growl rumbling in his chest. His eyelids wrenched apart, revealing pupils swallowed entirely by pitch-black sclera.
“Qamara?” he rasped, his voice rough, unfamiliar, laced with a predatory edge. He lunged, his Ley-corrupted strength explosive, pinning her against the listing altar. Her head slammed against the cold stone, stars bursting behind her eyes. His grip on her shoulders was bruising, his black gaze sweeping over her face without a flicker of recognition. “Who are you? What is this place? Where is Qamara?”
He was blind with frenzy. Fighting him would only shear the remaining floor joists off the cliff. Neyla’s treacherous blueprint clattered through her mind like dice.
“Zehrav,” she whispered, her voice surprisingly steady despite the tremor in her limbs. She forced herself to look into those inky abysses. “It’s me. It’s Qamara.”
He snarled, a low, animalistic sound, his grip tightening. “Liar. You smell of her, but you are not her. She is… light. You are… fear.”
“No,” she insisted, forcing herself to channel Neyla’s cynical, romantic manipulation. “I am yours. I told you, I would burn a thousand timelines for *you*. You said you would protect me. You said you loved me.” The words, intended to be a lie, felt like a sacred truth on her tongue. The Registry connection along her collarbone flared white-hot, shedding sparks across the flags.
His black eyes flickered, a faint, almost imperceptible warmth blossoming deep within them, like embers in a dying fire. The wild thrashing in his eyes lessened. The bond hummed low, settling to a dull glow between their ribs. His fingers unknotted from her tunic. “Qamara,” he breathed, the name a question, a plea, and a fragile thread of sanity.
Outside, past falling masonry and fraying creepers, a splash of stained silk dangled over the chasm. Jalil hung upside down by his ankles from a braided hemp hawser, squealing in a pitch dogs could hear. An Inquisition enforcer, distracted by the collapsing temple, was clinging to a lower rope, his Command Seal pouch swaying carelessly from his belt. With a dramatic *flourish* that nearly cost him his grip, Jalil snagged the pouch with a hooked finger, ripping it free. He swung himself onto the ledge, triumphant, panting.
“Snagged it!” Jalil shrieked over the howling updraft, pitching a bronze-and-jade cylinder through the split wall. “Downside! Purging him trips the city-wide Ley-grid! Djata drops straight into the canopy!”
Qamara snatched the bronze cylinder out of midair, grazing her knuckles on the altar edge. She looked from the damp metal to Zehrav’s dilated pupils. Djata's bridges hung over the abyss, and Neyla’s damned script offered no safe exit.