He enters through an old service tunnel marked on maintenance maps that predate the station's closure. The darkness is total except for the muted glow of his blessed sword, dimmed to a low burn, just enough light to navigate by without broadcasting his position to everything in a half-mile radius. Three centuries have taught him to control the radiance of his blade and his blessingsrather than storming into every situation with full power, which had been his preferred approach for the first fifty years and had worked about as well as it sounds.
The tunnel slopes downward, the air growing colder and heavier with each step, thick with the residual grief of violent death that has never fully dissipated. His boots splash through inches of stagnant water. The walls are slick with moisture and something darker, old stains that could be rust or could be blood, and in a place where seventeen people died, the distinction barely matters.
The tunnel opens onto the abandoned platform, and Vale stops.
Someone is already here.
The necromancer, The Speaker, is kneeling at the center of the platform, surrounded by a chalk circle he's still drawing. His jacket is off again, discarded beside a bag, and the skin of his bare arms between the tattoos and the corruption is starkly pale in the weak glow of several magelights arranged at intervals around the space. They're flickering, barely holding their form, and it's clear that maintaining them while he works is costing him something he can't afford. The light they cast is thin and unsteady.
He looks worse than last night. Considerably worse.
The black veins have spread across most of his visible skin, crawling up his neck and across his jaw to crest his cheekbones. He's wearing the same clothes, which means wherever he hid, it wasn't home, and he probably hasn't slept. His movements are slow and deliberate, every gesture visibly costing him. His hands tremble as they draw the chalk lines.
But the circle itself is flawless. Precise, practiced, exactly the kind of containment ward that could disrupt a rift if it opens in the right place. The work of someone who knows what they're doing and refuses to do it badly, even while falling apart.
He's doing exactly what he said he would. He's here to stop it.
Vale should announce himself. He should step forward, identify himself, begin the conversation he came here to have. But something keeps him still for a moment longer, watching as The Speaker finishes his circle and sits back on his heels, breathing hard. He presses a hand to his chest, eyes closed, and even from across the platform the pain is written into every line of his face.
Vale hasn't come here to arrest him. He's come to listen.
He steps out of the tunnel entrance and lets his sword's light brighten, not aggressively, just enough to announce his presence without threat.
"I thought I might find you here."
The necromancer's head snaps up. Those storm-grey eyes go wide with shock, then fear, and he struggles to his feet despite the obvious difficulty, shadows already gathering defensively around his hands. Even suffering as he is, he's not going down without a fight. Vale has never known a necromancer to surrender willingly, and he can't imagine this one, stubborn and fierce and burning through his own life to protect strangers, being the first.
But The Speaker seems to register that Vale isn't advancing. Isn't attacking. Is just standing there with his sword lowered and his free hand empty and open at his side.
His own hands lower slightly. The shadows in his palms don't dissipate, but they stop growing.
"Templar." His voice is hoarse, wary, scraped raw by exhaustion and casting. "If you're here to arrest me, can it wait? I'm in the middle of something."
Despite everything, Vale almost smiles. "I know. The rift. It's going to open here in," he checks his watch, "approximately ninety minutes. It took me longer than it should have, but I worked out the pattern."
"Would have been faster if you'd listened to me last night." The necromancer doesn't relax, but he doesn't retreat. His posture is the careful stillness of someone who wants to trust but has been given very few reasons to. "So what now? Are we going to fight while the rift opens and people die, or do you finally believe me when I say I'm not your rift-maker?"
Vale stops at the edge of the chalk circle, careful not to disturb it. This close, the necromancer's deterioration is stark: the unhealthy pallor, the hollows under his eyes, the way he's swaying slightly even while standing still. But he's also as striking as Vale remembers. More, maybe, in the low light. All sharp angles and fierce will, something burning beneath the corruption that refuses to be extinguished.
"I spent today researching you," Vale says. "The Speaker. Eight years of helping spirits pass on. Never binding them, never raising the dead. Violent hauntings decrease wherever you go. The locals protect you. Children sleep better because of you. You've never asked for anything in return."
The necromancer blinks, clearly thrown. Whatever he'd expected Vale to say, it wasn't that. "So?"
"So you're not my rift-maker." Vale meets his eyes directly. "I should have listened last night. I'm listening now."
It's not much of an apology. Vale has never been good at admitting when he's wrong, and he's worse at admitting when he needs help. Three centuries of self-sufficiency have made him better at drawing swords than extending olive branches. But the necromancer seems to read the trajectory of the conversation without Vale having to spell it out.
For a long moment, The Speaker just looks at him. Searching for the trap. Testing the silence for deceit. Those grey eyes are sharp despite the exhaustion behind them, and Vale holds still under the scrutiny, letting himself be read. Then, slowly,the shadows around the man's hands fade. He sways, catches himself.
"August," he says quietly. "My name is August."
Of all the names Vale might have expected from a necromancer, something dramatic, something dark, something that announced itself, this isn't it. It's gentle. Unassuming. The magic found this man rather than the other way around.
"Vale." He offers it back without hesitation. "We don't have much time. What's your plan?"
August gestures to his chalk circle. Having a name makes it easier, something human to anchor the face. "This is a containment ward. If the rift tries to open directly on top of it, the ward should cancel the breach entirely. But I'm guessing at the exact location based on energy patterns in the air, so if I'm off by even a few feet, this only limits the flow instead of stopping it. It will still open and I won't have the strength to fight off the undead and close it."
"That's because you're dying," Vale says. It comes out blunter than he intends, but there's no point in dancing around it. They don't have time for delicacy, and something tells him August wouldn't appreciate it anyway.
