POV: Alaric
The estate fell silent after midnight.
Alaric stood at the window of his study, watching the last patrol pass beneath the eastern wall. Two guards in Vessant colors carried torches that cut weak lines through the darkness. They moved slowly, unhurried, exactly the way Sergeant Varen had promised they would.
The three vials sat on his desk where Evelyne had left them. Dark liquid pressed against the glass, thick and wrong, pulsing with a rhythm that had nothing to do with his heartbeat. The sealed envelope lay beside them, its instructions already memorized.
He had read the letter six times since she left. Each reading made the steps clearer and each reading made the doubt quieter. The instructions covered everything he needed to know, from where to pour the vials to what words to speak and how long to wait afterward.
His grandfather had called the Wound of Othren a last resort, and his mother had called it salvation in the darkest moment. Tonight, Alaric would call it justice.
He gathered the vials carefully, tucking them into the inner pocket of his coat where they pressed cold against his ribs. The dagger went into his belt, the one with the Vessant crest. The blade was sharp enough to split skin with barely any pressure.
The servant's passage behind his chambers had been built three generations ago, back when Vessant paranoia ran even deeper than it did now. His grandfather had shown him the hidden door when Alaric was twelve, the same night he had shown him the vault.
The old man's warning still echoed in his memory. Never touch what lies inside the deepest chamber. It consumed more than it gave, and I sealed it away so no Vessant would ever be tempted again.
Alaric pressed the hidden catch and the panel swung inward on oiled hinges. The passage beyond smelled of dust and old stone, untouched for years. He stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind him.
The darkness was complete. He did not light a torch because he knew these passages by memory, every turn and every stair learned since childhood. The estate was vast, sprawling across grounds that could house a small village, and the passages ran beneath all of it. He moved through the black with one hand trailing along the wall, counting doorways and junctions. The stone grew colder as he descended and the air grew heavier. Somewhere above him, guards patrolled hallways and checked windows, completely unaware that the man they were watching had already slipped past them.
Sergeant Varen's patrol logs would show that Lord Vessant had paced his chambers all night, muttering to himself, unable to sleep. One of the men had even heard him talking around midnight. The alibi was perfect.
The passage opened into a wider corridor lined with alcoves. Each one held something that gleamed faintly in the darkness, from old weapons to older masks and other things his ancestors had collected over centuries of serving the empire's darker purposes.
The Vault of Ash and Echo waited at the corridor's end.
Torches flanked the entrance, dead and cold. As Alaric approached, they flickered to life without spark or sound, responding to the blood in his veins. The flames burned a sickly orange that cast long shadows across the carved stone archway.
He had only been here twice before. The first time was with his grandfather, when the old man had made him swear never to open the deepest chamber. The second was with his mother, the night before she died, when she had pressed her hands to his face and whispered words he had not understood until tonight.
She had told him that only in the direst moment, only if all hope died, should he release the blood.
The vault's outer door recognized his palm. Wards flared and faded as locks clicked open in sequence, seven of them, each one older than the last.
Inside, the air tasted of ash.
Shelves lined the walls, holding artifacts that hummed with contained power. The Marrowbind brooch gleamed from its velvet case, rubies dark as old blood. Shroudglass medallions hung in rows, their surfaces dull and waiting. A Whisperbind Quill rested in a crystal box, its shape somehow wrong in ways his eyes could not quite track.
Everything in the vault seemed to whisper, not words exactly but something close. The artifacts wanted attention and they promised things to anyone who would listen.
Alaric ignored them all and walked past the shelves toward the deepest chamber, the one his grandfather had sealed three generations ago.
The inner door was black iron banded with silver. Runes crawled across its surface, shifting when he looked directly at them. His grandfather's blood had locked this door, along with the blood of every Vessant heir since.
He drew the dagger and sliced his palm before he could hesitate. The pain was sharp and immediate, and he pressed his hand flat against the iron.
The door groaned as the runes flared red, then white, then nothing at all. The locks released with sharp cracking sounds.
The chamber beyond was small, barely larger than a closet. Empty shelves lined three walls, and in the center, on a pedestal of black stone, sat the Wound of Othren.
It was smaller than he expected. An obsidian crystal the size of his fist, veined with red that pulsed steadily. The red moved beneath the surface, crawling through the black, never still and never settling.
The moment he crossed the threshold, it hummed. The sound started low and barely audible, more vibration than anything else, but it grew as he approached. It pressed against his skull and found the rage he had been carrying since the signing. The artifact recognized his anger and fed on it, amplifying every grievance until his vision narrowed to a single burning point.
They took everything from you.
The thought came unbidden, sharper than his own, but it felt true and right in a way his own thoughts rarely did.
She planned it all along. Every soft word and tender touch and promise she ever made was designed to lead to this moment.
His hands shook as he reached for the crystal. The cold bit into his fingers with an intensity that went beyond anything natural.
Thalion's hands on you in the garden. The laughter you know they shared behind closed doors. Eighteen months of playing the fool while she prepared to destroy you.
He pulled the vials from his coat. The dark liquid inside seemed to pulse faster now, responding to the Wound's presence. He stared at them, at the blood too dark to be natural and too thick to come from anything wholesome.
A flicker of something cut through the rage. A question he should have asked hours ago surfaced in his mind, asking whose blood this was and where it had come from.
But the Wound was close now, so close, and its hunger pressed against his thoughts until the doubt drowned before it could surface. The question faded into static and it did not matter anymore because nothing mattered except making them pay.
He uncorked the first vial and poured it over the altar stone. The blood spread across the surface, smoking where it touched, and the Wound's hum climbed higher. He poured the second and then the third, and the chamber filled with the smell of copper and burning.
His mother's voice echoed in his mind, though not the warning or the caution. He heard only the permission he had chosen to hear, telling him to release the blood.
He held his cut palm over the altar and let his own blood fall. It mingled with the darker offering, spreading through the carved channels as the crystal flared and the red veins blazed bright enough to hurt.
He spoke the words from the letter, syllables that felt wrong in his mouth, sounds that human throats were not meant to make. The air cracked and the altar cracked and something beneath the stone cracked open.
The Wound of Othren rose from its pedestal, hovering and spinning slowly, radiating cold so intense that frost formed on his eyebrows. Across its surface, words appeared in the old tongue that spelled out a single command: ASCEND.
Beneath the hum and the cold and the terrible satisfaction flooding through his chest, Alaric heard something else. It was faint and distant, and it sounded like weeping coming from somewhere far away.
He told himself it was nothing, just the wind through old stone or echoes from a dead past.
He wrapped the crystal in the cloth he had brought, careful not to let it touch his skin again. Even through the fabric, it pulsed with wrongness. The box his grandfather had kept it in still sat on the pedestal, and he placed the wrapped artifact inside and sealed the lid.
The weeping stopped, or maybe he just stopped listening.
Evelyne was waiting in the upper passage when he emerged.
She had changed since leaving his study, dressed now in a servant's wool with her hair hidden beneath a plain cap. She looked practical and anonymous, the kind of woman no one would look at twice.
Her eyes went to the box in his hands and something in her face changed.
"Is that it?"
"It is."
She did not move closer. Her hands stayed pressed flat against her thighs, fingers rigid, and he could see she was fighting the urge to step backward.
"I can feel it," she whispered. "Even from here. It feels like something pressing against my thoughts."
"The intermediary said you would take it to the palace."
"I know what he said." Her voice cracked slightly. "I just did not expect it to feel like this."
Alaric held the box toward her. "You wanted to burn her world down, and this is how we do it."
Evelyne stared at the box and her jaw worked silently. For a moment, he thought she might refuse, might turn and flee and leave him alone with his grandfather's curse.
Then she reached out with trembling hands and took it.
The moment her fingers touched the wood, she flinched. Her face went pale and her breath came faster, shallow and panicked. Her eyes darted around the passage, searching the shadows for threats that were not there.
"What is this thing?"
"Power." He watched her struggle and felt nothing but cold satisfaction. "The kind they will never see coming."
She wrapped the box in her cloak, layering fabric between herself and the artifact until she could not feel it directly anymore. Her hands still shook and her voice still trembled.
"The meeting point is the old chapel near the eastern market, and the intermediary will be waiting."
"Then you should go."
She looked at him one last time, searching for something in his face. Reassurance maybe, or permission to be afraid. He gave her neither.
She turned and disappeared into the passage, carrying the Wound of Othren toward the meeting point outside the estate. The old chapel near the eastern market, where the intermediary waited. Her part would end there. Someone else would carry the artifact into the palace and place it where it needed to go.
Alaric stood alone in the darkness, listening to her footsteps fade.
His palm throbbed where he had cut it. The blood had already dried, crusting brown around the edges of the wound. Tomorrow he would bandage it properly, but tonight the pain reminded him that he had finally done something that mattered.
Dawn arrived over the Vessant estate.
Alaric sat by his chamber window, washed and changed, watching the morning light spread across the estate grounds. Somewhere in the distant capital, in whatever hidden place the intermediary had chosen, the Wound of Othren was already beginning its work.
The letter had described the timeline clearly. Two days for the effect to spread. First the wards would weaken, trust would fray, and memories would twist. Then, on the second day, the dead would rise.
By then, no one would be thinking about investigations or conspiracies or the woman who had signed away their marriage. They would be too busy trying to survive.
A knock came at his door, and the morning guard entered with his breakfast.
Alaric rose and accepted the tray with the distant politeness of a man who had barely slept. The guard noted his pallor and the shadows under his eyes, and probably assumed it was grief or shame. He could assume whatever he wanted.
The tea was bitter, but Alaric had grown accustomed to the taste.
He ate slowly and mechanically, staring out the window at the estate grounds. Seraphina was at the palace right now, warm and safe, surrounded by people who had chosen her over him. She had no idea what was coming, and neither did anyone else.
The letter had promised no cost and no consequence.
He reached back absently, scratching between his shoulder blades.
He still believed that promise, even now.