“Forfeit?” Inesca said, the word scraping like pumice against dry stone. To yield her place, her final bid at restitution, directly to *him* was unthinkable. The air thinned, choked by the sour, sulfurous stench drifting from the tainted spool.
“You heard me, Velarde.” Thiago took another half-step forward. “Unless you prefer the Silkworm Wastes? A suitable burial ground for an artisan who cannot protect her own warp.”
Ramiro bristled, a low growl escaping him. “That’s enough, Montoya. You have no right to—”
“He has every right,” Inesca cut him off, fingers locking rigid against the hem of her apron. The memory of the Velarde manor's stripped colonnades settled behind her ribs. “A wager, then. Midnight. But if I cleanse it, you will publicly acknowledge my skill and withdraw from the Master title contention.”
Thiago’s lips curved into a smile devoid of warmth. “Ambitious. Very well. Midnight. The Grand Conservatory clock tower. Don’t be late.” He gave her one last, assessing glance, then turned and strode away, his cloaked form dissolving into the deepening twilight.
Inesca watched his cloak cut through the dusk, the spoiled skein sagging dead and grey between her fingers. “Ramiro. The sub-aqueduct lab. Now.”
Ramiro nodded, his usual flamboyance muted by the gravity of the situation. “Lead the way, Inesca. I’ve got just the thing to strip that rot, even if it’s a Cordero household special.”
“A Cordero hex?” Inesca’s head snapped up. “What makes you say that?”
“A hunch,” Ramiro said, already pulling a coil of rope from his satchel and securing it to a crumbling gargoyle. “And the unmistakable stink of dried marigold and rendered beetle carapace. It’s their signature counter-agent base. If they worked it into the filaments, it’s designed to dissolve the inherent charge entirely, not merely numb it.”
They descended swiftly, slipping through a hidden grate beneath one of Olaria’s less-traveled aqueduct bridges. The descent was a dizzying drop into the city’s underbelly, past dripping conduits and glowing algae. Ramiro’s secret lab was a riot of color and chaotic precision, tucked into a cavernous, forgotten cistern. Glass vials of every imaginable hue lined shelves carved into the damp rock, bubbling with iridescent liquids. Gleaming alembics hissed steam into the humid air, and the scent of arcane dyes, crushed petals, and esoteric minerals was almost overwhelming.
“Right,” Ramiro said, parting a curtain of green algae hanging over a stone portal. “Over here. We need the heavy iron basin for this scale of work.”
He laid the damaged skein across an unvarnished marble slab. Inesca traced the pitted fiber; black pustules ate steadily into its silver sheen.
Ramiro began his preparations, a whirlwind of focused energy. He poured a shimmering indigo liquid into a heated crucible, adding pinches of powdered obsidian and a few drops of a viscous, crimson oil. The mixture began to bubble, releasing thin tendrils of smoke that twisted like living shadows.
“The curse isn’t just chewing through the grain,” Inesca said, tracing the blotches under the lamplight. “It’s *mimicking* it. Replacing the natural luster with a false gloss meant to hold until the Gala shears cut the ribbon.”
“That’s the Cordero hallmark,” Ramiro confirmed, stirring his concoction with a glass rod. He glanced at Inesca, his usual playful spark replaced by something grim. “They’re not subtle, but they are thorough. They like to watch things decay from the inside out.”
**Jolt 1:** Inesca pressed her knuckles into the cold stone. “Beatriz Cordero… She wouldn’t risk it. She leaves no seams.”
“Oh, she would,” Ramiro scoffed, clattering iron tongs against the basin rim. “And she plans every fold. Always hiding behind wide eyes and quivering lips. Remember that disaster with the blighted Vesperine shawl last winter? The one that nearly bankrupted the Montoya atelier?”
Inesca remembered. Beatriz had sobbed while pulling the cursed wrap from a customer's chest, naming Thiago’s looms as the source. It took Inesca two nights of testing dye runoff to recognize the signature copper salts found only in Cordero storage vaults—evidence she had locked away rather than invite their assassins.
“It fits her pattern,” Ramiro continued, pouring a fine, silver dust into the cauldron. “Sabotage, then feigned innocence. And if it’s her, this isn’t just about stopping you from winning. It’s about humiliation. Ruin.”
His voice dropped, the usual theatricality gone. “Inesca, I need this. Not just for you, but for me. The secondary prize at the Gala, the ‘Weaver’s Endowment’… it comes with a contract buyout. My mother, she’s still tied to the Eldrin Dye Guild. An abusive contract. If I don’t win that endowment, she’ll be stuck there another ten years. This isn’t just your family’s estate on the line. It’s my mother’s freedom.”
Inesca stared at his stained fingers. For all his grandstanding, Ramiro kept his ledger shut; to see him spread it bare left an uncomfortable dryness in her throat.
She gripped the edge of the workbench. “We strip the rot. Whatever it costs.”
A sharp rattle echoed from the grate overhead. A tall figure dropped through the iron ribs, landing silently upon the flagstones. Thiago Montoya straightened his doublet, his focus tracking instantly to the tainted spool on the slab.
Inesca’s hand flew to a nearby dye-knife. “Montoya! How did you find this place?”
“Residual resonance,” he said, crossing the room without hesitation. His gaze cut straight to the spool. “You drag an unshielded trail behind you. Sloppy, Velarde. Especially against Cordero venom.”
He knew. Before Ramiro had brought the crucible to heat, Thiago had already identified the craft. Had he followed her steps from the very start?
**Jolt 2:** Thiago’s gaze narrowed to cold measurement. From his cloak he drew a faceted glass phial filled with swirling silver vapor. “Rime-Dew from the Serpent’s Coil. Drawn from subterranean cavern moss. It binds parasitic rot without stripping the thread's core grain.”
Inesca stared at the flask. Such distillations were guarded ferociously beneath the low tunnels, priced beyond three years of guild dues. Why bring it here? Why extend it to her?
Thiago stepped in until his leather cuffs brushed her sleeves. No smirk curved his mouth. He held the phial between them, inches from her palms. “This is larger than your contest piece, Velarde,” he said quietly. “Cordero rot has ruined four private looms this month. Always targeting independents who lack faction retainers. She is clearing the roster before dawn.”
Inesca felt her calculations shift. Thiago had not come simply to claim an easy forfeit; he had mapped an entire cull she had ignored in her singular drive to reclaim her name.
“She’s sweeping the board clean,” Ramiro muttered, wiping ash from his cheek. “Not just for the ribbon. For absolute control of the Loom council.”
A guttural roar ripped through the rock above them, shaking the very foundations of the cistern. The glowing vials on the shelves rattled, and a shower of fine dust rained down. A second, louder detonation followed, a deafening crack that reverberated through their bones. The ground lurched violently, and a jagged fissure snaked across the ceiling.
A cascade of splintered glass, thick as a man’s arm, began to plunge through the new cracks, raining into the aqueducts above them, carried down by a sudden, gushing torrent of water. The Grand Conservatory was collapsing.