I remember riding the black stallion through the weeping streets of Lliandor, driving the beast until its flanks lathered with foam. I didn't go to the main Temple of the Thirteen in the city center. I went deeper. I went to the under-city, to the hidden shrine carved into the bedrock beneath the sewers, where the air is ripe with the scent of cloying incense and rotting offerings.
The sanctuary of the True Believers.
I remember staggering into the nave. The shadows there were alive, twisting with a sentience that usually comforted me. Today, they recoiled. They hissed at me, sensing the void where my connection to The Serpent used to be.
High Priest Varon was waiting by the obsidian altar. He is a creature of parchment skin and spider-thin limbs, his eyes milk-white with blindness, seeing only the Aether.
"Lord Imas," he rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering on stone. "You smell of emptiness."
I did not kneel. I could not. I marched to the altar and slammed my hand down on the cold stone.
"Fix it," I demanded.
I showed him the ring. The obsidian band, once a conduit that hummed with the chaotic song of the universe, was dead. It was just a rock. A piece of jewelry for a corpse.
Varon reached out, his skeletal fingers tracing the carving of The Serpent. He did not touch my skin. He pulled his hand back as if I were contagious.
"The god is silent in you," Varon murmured. He tilted his head, sniffing the air. "But He is not gone. He is... repulsed."
"Repulsed by what?" I demanded, though the sickness in my gut told me I already knew the answer.
"There is a scent on you, Imas. It is not perfume. It is not magic as we know it." Varon turned his blind face toward me. "It smells of Order. Of Stasis. It smells of the ancient enemy."
He walked around the altar, his movements fluid and unnerving. "You harbor a Purna."
The word hung in the damp air, heavy and lethal.
"She is a slave," I lied, my voice tight. "A tool I am dissecting."
"A tool does not sever the hand that wields it," Varon hissed. "She is anathema. Her very existence is an insult to the Chaos. She projects a poison that calcifies the spirit. She is turning your soul to stone, Imas. She is cutting the throat of your god."
He stopped in front of me. "You came to be fixed? There is only one cure for gangrene. You cut it out."
He reached into the folds of his robes and withdrew a dagger. It was not a weapon for combat. It was a ritual blade, curved andserrated, its handle wrapped in human skin. The metal was dark, drinking the meager light of the torches.
"The New Moon approaches," Varon said. "The Rite of the Blackened Heart. You wished to ascend? You wished to crush Lord Malek?"
He held the dagger out to me, handle first.
"Bring me her heart," Varon commanded. "Place it on this altar while it is still warm. Let The Serpent taste the death of the anomaly. Only blood of the Purna can wash the stain of her influence from your veins. Do this, and your power will return tenfold. You will be a vessel of such ruin that Malek will crumble before you."
I stared at the blade. It was the answer. It was the salvation of my House, my legacy, my life. All I had to do was kill the girl who made the screaming stop.
"And if I do not?" I asked quietly.
Varon sneered. "Then you areDfam. You are meat. And I will send the Temple Guard to tear your estate apart until we find the witch and burn her ourselves."
Burn her.
The image flashed in my mind—Leora, bound to a stake, the fire consuming the fragile line of her throat, the sapphire eyes turning black with agony.
Something in my chest fractured.
It wasn't a thought. It wasn't a decision. It was a reflex, as involuntary as breathing.
I took the dagger.
"I will not beDfam," I whispered.
