Ira knelt on the cold stone, the phantom taste of blood and ink still on his tongue. Zadie's hands were on his shoulders, her voice the only tether to the real world. "Ira! Speak to me!"
He dragged his gaze up to meet hers, the Other Ira's warning a fresh brand on his soul. Love her before you are forced to lose her. He opened his mouth—
A low, pained groan cut the silence.
It was Rust. He clutched his head, his body trembling as if gripped by a sudden fever. "Ira...?" he gasped, his voice strained. "The... the light... it's so loud..."
Zadie was at his side in an instant, her sword forgotten, her hands going to his shoulders. "Rust? What's wrong? Look at me."
Ira's blood ran cold. He saw it—a flicker of wrongness in Rust's eyes, a sheen of yellow that came and went like a dying ember. The map on his chest gave a single, violent thrum—a warning shock. "Zadie, get away from him!" he commanded, surging to his feet.
She shot him a look of pure confusion. "What? He's sick, Ira!"
Rust's trembling stopped. Abruptly. His body went perfectly still. Then, he looked up, and his face was a mask of placid calm. The wrongness was no longer a flicker; it was a settled presence.
"Now, now, Finch," Rust said, his voice a perfect imitation of their friend's lazy cadence. "Is that any way to treat a comrade? She's just trying to help." He smiled at Zadie, a gentle, reassuring smile. "It's alright, Zadie. Just a dizzy spell. The air in here is... thin."
The relief on her face was a knife in Ira's heart. She believed him.
The thing wearing Rust then turned its smile to Ira, and the warmth vanished, replaced by a glint of pure, predatory malice. Its voice dropped, becoming a whisper only Ira could hear, layered with the oily resonance of the shade, Nihil.
She trusts the face. She will never trust the truth. Let's see how deep that loyalty runs.
In a movement faster than a blink, Rust drew a knife. The motion was hidden from Zadie, a subtle flick of the wrist. He lunged at Ira, not with a wild rage, but with a cold, precise thrust aimed at his heart.
Ira twisted, the blade slicing through his tunic and drawing a line of fire across his ribs. He staggered back. "He drew a knife!" Ira snarled.
Rust looked down at his own empty hands, held up in a gesture of innocent confusion. "Ira, I don't have a knife. See?" He looked at Zadie, his expression pained. "The trial... it must have shown him something. Something that's making him see things."
"Stop it, both of you!" Zadie commanded, stepping between them, her hands out. "This is what the chapel wants! It's dividing us!"
Oh, it's so much more than that, Nihil's voice chuckled in Ira's mind.
Rust gave a slow, sad shake of his head. "I'm sorry, Zadie. I think he's too far gone."
As he spoke, he took a step forward, his body positioning itself to put Zadie directly in the line of fire between him and Ira. His eyes, over her shoulder, met Ira's. The yellow glint returned, and his lips curled in a silent, mocking sneer.
He was using her as a shield.
Ira's options vanished. With a roar of frustration, he shoved Zadie aside—not hard, but enough to clear his line of sight. He saw the knife, now visible again, already in motion. He parried the strike with his forearm, a brutal, bone-jarring block, and grabbed the wrist holding the blade. They became a knot of straining muscle.
"Look at his eyes, Zadie!" he yelled, wrestling with the thing that wore his friend's face.
But all Zadie saw was Ira, his own eyes wild, attacking Rust. She saw the violence, the desperation. She saw her worst fear—the mountain and the trials had broken him.
"Let him go, Ira!" she screamed, drawing her sword. "I said let him GO!"
She lunged, not to kill, but to disable. Her blade swept towards his legs. Ira was forced to release Rust and leap back, the betrayal in her eyes a more profound wound than any blade could inflict.
The puppet-Rust didn't miss a beat. The moment Ira was off-balance, it pressed the attack. A knife-hand chop to the throat made Ira gag. A low kick buckled his knee. He blocked a thrust, but Rust used the bind to slam his forehead into Ira's nose. Cartilage crunched. Stars exploded behind his eyes. Ira stumbled back, blood streaming down his face, the coppery taste filling his mouth.
"IRA, PLEASE!" Zadie begged, her sword held ready but unable to find an opening.
Rust feigned a stumble, luring Ira in. As Ira stepped forward, Rust dropped and swept his legs out from under him. Ira hit the stone floor hard, the impact driving the air from his lungs. Before he could roll, Rust was on him, a knee driving into his chest. The knife hovered above his throat.
"See, Zadie?" Rust said, his voice calm and reasonable, even as he pressed the blade down. "It's for his own good. He needs to be subdued before he hurts himself."
Ira, gasping, saw the genuine, terrified conviction on Zadie's face. She believed this. She was going to let it happen.
With a final, desperate surge of strength, Ira bucked, throwing Rust's balance off for a split second. He wrapped his legs around Rust's torso, reversing their positions! Now he was on top, pinning the knife-hand to the floor. He drew back his fist, ready to smash the mocking face beneath him.
"NO!" Zadie's boot connected with his side, a powerful kick that rolled him off Rust. He landed on his back, ribs screaming.
The puppet was up in an instant. It didn't go for Ira. It picked up its knife, and with Zadie now standing protectively over Ira, it gave a shallow shrug.
"He leaves me no choice."
It lunged, a final, brutal, killing thrust aimed straight down at Ira's heart—a move Zadie, from her angle, couldn't fully see, looking like another attempt to subdue him.
This was it. The trap was perfect.
Ira stopped fighting them. He stopped trying to convince her.
He reached inward, to the bond, to the map. He reached for the truth he had anchored in the metaphysical sea. I need the blade that maps all four dimensions of existence, where nothing can escape its ink. The Dagger.
A searing heat bloomed in his empty hand. Light, the color of shifting continents and deep ocean trenches, erupted from his fist. When it faded, the Mapmaker's Dagger was there, its obsidian blade drinking the light, its parchment-wrapped hilt alive with miniature, swirling landscapes.
Zadie froze, her charge halted by the sudden, impossible appearance of the weapon.
The puppet-Rust hesitated, its head tilting.
And in that frozen sliver of time, Ira didn't thrust the dagger at Rust's heart.
He dropped his own guard, embraced the incoming killing blow, and with every ounce of his will, he plunged the Mapmaker's Dagger not into flesh, but into the empty air directly in front of Rust's chest.
The blade met resistance—not physical, but metaphysical. A sound like tearing silk and shattering glass filled the chapel. A web of black and yellow energy—the puppet's strings—flared into visibility around Rust's body, all connected to a central, pulsing tether that led back into the shadows where Nihil lurked.
The dagger was buried deep in that tether.
From the shadows, a shriek of pure, undiluted fury and pain erupted.
The puppet-Rust froze, the knife in its hand clattering to the stone. Its eyes rolled back, and a different voice, thin and shredded with terror, gasped from its lips—the real Rust, surfacing for one agonizing second.
"Ira…? It's so dark in here…"
Then, he collapsed in a heap.
Silence.
The ghostly tether dissolved. The dagger's light faded.
Ira lay on his back, panting, his body a single, screaming wound. He looked at Zadie.
She was staring, not at the unconscious Rust, but at him. Her sword was lowered, her face a pale canvas of shock, horror, and dawning, terrifying comprehension. She had seen the web. She had heard the shriek from the shadows. She had heard the real Rust's voice.
The truth, in all its horrific, undeniable clarity, was now mapped out before her.
The fight was over. The tether was severed. But as Ira met Zadie's shattered gaze, he couldn't help but wonder if his choice to forgo informing her was the best option he had had at the time.
{End of the prologue}
[Authors note: the plot holes will be slowly addressed as we go back to the present day]