The floor leached the warmth from her knees. Slowly. Relentlessly.
Valeria rested her forehead against her interlaced fingers, her breathing shallow. A steady, low thrum of a hundred voices vibrated through the stone nave. She couldn't drown it out. She wasn't supposed to.
The Cathedral of the Erynis was drowning in twilight. Thin, tallow candles cast flickering shadows across the faces of the kneeling women. Around Valeria stretched rows of hunched backs wrapped in coarse, gray linen. The prayers to the Lady of Silence sounded like a collective, rhythmic sigh. The words merged into a single, unbroken stream. One voice.
The air was thick with the heavy scent of myrrh, burnt sage, and damp stone. Valeria sniffed. A candle three rows ahead of her was smoking—the wick was too thick, the wax cheap. No one paid it any mind.
High above them, on the carved galleries encircling the altar, stood the Fathers of the Church. Men. Their robes were heavy and opulent—crimson, gold thread, cascades of silk falling to the balcony floors. They remained as motionless as statues.
They looked down upon the sea of gray headscarves. They did not sing. They did not utter the words of prayer.
According to the Oldest Law, their tongues had been precisely excised and burned on the altar on the day of their ordination. The ultimate act of devotion. Proof of entrusting their bodies and secrets to the Erynis.
Valeria swallowed hard. She focused her gaze on the weave of the fibers in her sleeve—gray material, thick and scratchy against her skin. She was mere inches from an old woman rocking steadily back and forth, humming a mantra of obedience. An ordinary service. Nothing betrayed the reason Valeria had come here.
Hidden beneath the loose fabric on her thigh, under a fold of gray linen, lay the Severer. Short and heavy. Twelve inches of cold steel. A blade two fingers thick.
The air around her thickened.
The sound of the hundreds of praying women muffled, as if someone had closed a heavy set of doors. Valeria clenched her fingers until her knuckles turned white.
Inside her skull, just behind her eyeballs, a pressure formed. Cold. Metallic. The weight of a foreign presence. It wasn't a sound; it was pure thought thrust directly into her mind with the force of a physical touch.
"Valeria."
She didn't look up. She didn't need to check who was speaking. Inquisitor Thorne. Her mentor. The voice in her head was crystal clear, devoid of hesitation. Paternal. Stern. The same tone he had used years ago when he pulled her off the streets.
The weight of the sacrifice proved too great.
Thorne's thought spilled beneath her skull slowly, word by word.
"Our brother from the lower choir broke during the morning filtration. The Ether found a way."
Valeria closed her eyes. She knew this scenario. She imagined raw magic twisting bone, seeking an outlet in a weak, human vessel. She had seen it before. She had seen it dozens of times.
"He has been isolated in the third circle of the dungeons. A black iron artifact holds him in the cell, blocking physical rifts. But it is not enough to stop the progressing deformation. He is changing too fast. Prayers will no longer help him. No medic can reverse what the Ether is doing to his body."
For a fraction of a second, Valeria felt something akin to sadness in the transmission. But it was immediately washed away by a cold command. After all, her work was an act of ultimate mercy.
"Go through the vestry. The Filters are waiting for you there. Descend and perform the annihilation before whatever he is becoming breaks its bonds."
The pressure behind her eyes vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
The roar of prayers hit her with redoubled force, filling her ears. The woman beside her continued to sway in her trance, oblivious to the fact that a death warrant had just been signed.
Valeria waited for three long heartbeats. She released the breath from her lungs. She rose from the floor, her knees numb and cold. With a slow, fluid stride, drawing no attention to herself, she moved toward the narrow door leading to the vestry.
The Severer tapped against her thigh with every step. Twelve inches of steel. Two kilograms of weight.
The vestry doors were heavy oak, reinforced with sheet metal. Valeria pushed them open with her shoulder. The hinges groaned softly—well-oiled, but ancient. She stepped inside and closed them behind her.
The silence hit her like a physical wall. The drone of prayers from the nave was cut off, leaving only a muffled, bass vibration seeping through the thick walls.
The room was narrow and long, with walls of bare stone. Beneath the ceiling hung rows of hooks holding liturgical robes—heavy black cloaks for the executioners. Further on stood shelves filled with vials, bandages, and sharp instruments. At the end of the hall, by a steel table, stood two men in leather aprons. Filters.
They turned when she entered. The elder had a thick, gray beard and deep-set eyes. The younger was thin and pale, with burn scars on his right forearm.
"Valeria," the elder said, his voice hoarse. "Thorne sent you."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"Third circle. You know where?"
"I know."
It was a mere formality. Their small ritual, repeated dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. A drop of predictability in an ocean of chaos.
The younger filter pulled a black cloak from a wardrobe and tossed it to her. Valeria caught it with one hand. The material was thick and heavy, impregnated with something that smelled of turpentine and wax. She threw it over her shoulders and fastened it at her neck with a heavy metal buckle.
The elder stepped to the table and began arranging small vials. Glass clinked against metal.
"Three vacuum grenades," he said in a monotone. "One to halt the spell, two spares."
Valeria nodded. She took the vials and slipped them into the inner pockets of the cloak.
"Injections?"
"I have my own."
The younger filter pulled a thick leather glove from a drawer. For the right hand. The black leather was reinforced with metal plates over the knuckles.
"If you have to touch him," he said softly. "This will help. For a while. A gift from me."
Valeria took the glove and pulled it onto her right hand. It was a tight fit. The metal was cold.
"Anything else?"
The elder filter looked at her for a long time. In his eyes, there was something that might have been sympathy. Or pity.
"Don't touch his blood. If it splatters on you, cauterize it immediately. Do you have vinegar?"
"I do."
"Then go."
Valeria turned and headed for the rear door—narrow, metal, leading down. She paused for a moment, hand on the latch.
"How long did he hold the filtration?"
Silence. Then the elder's voice:
"Eight years."
Valeria pushed the door and descended.