The walls shuddered, more violently this time. Dust rained from the ceiling. One of the windows cracked.
"And you?" Seraphina's eyes narrowed. "Were you manipulated too, Reaper? Or did you know exactly what she was doing when you brought her into all our courts?"
"If I were working with Caelum, why would my realm be suffering the same soul-starvation as yours?" His voice came out dangerously quiet. "Why would I let my Tower of Screaming Winds go silent? Why would I watch my Weeping Marshes dry up? Why would I allow my ward-stones to fail one by one while my entire domain crumbles?"
"Why would I risk what I've built?" he continued. "My power, my domain, my people. All of it depends on the same soul-flow he's stealing. What possible reason would I have to destroy my own foundation?"
"Maybe you didn't know he'd betray you too." Thessa's form solidified completely. "The spirits show me that you were meant to be spared. Your realm was supposed to remain intact. Part of whatever deal you'd made."
Her translucent eyes moved between him and Brynn, reading something in the shadows that connected them.
"But something changed. Something he didn't plan for."
A pause.
"He didn't expect you to make her your companion."
The words fell into silence.
He felt Brynn's confusion ripple through the shadow-threads, her spine stiffening as she processed Thessa's words.
She looked up at him, questions in her eyes.
Then she turned back to face the others.
What followed was her explanation of the refinery. The extraction chambers. The assembly lines processing souls like raw materials. The army of weaponized victims.
He watched their expressions shift from suspicion to horror as she laid out the scope of what Caelum had built.
"How do we stop him?" Seraphina asked.
"Not here." He pushed away from the throne. "War room. Follow me."
He led them through palace corridors, Brynn staying close to his side.
The war room had been designed for precisely this purpose. Stone tables dominated the center, their surfaces enchanted to display magical projections. Ward-stone maps covered the walls.
He moved to the central table, shadows pouring across its surface. The enchantments responded, and the three-dimensional map of the ward network materialized above them.
It should have been beautiful. Golden light pulsing, connecting all the realms in perfect harmony.
Instead, most of it bled red. Failing. Corrupted. Dying.
"Show them." He looked at Brynn. "Everything you saw."
She stepped forward, and he watched her confidence grow as she moved into familiar territory. Technical knowledge grounding her, giving her something solid to hold onto.
"The refinery is here." Her hand hovered over the pulsing point in the display. "The extraction chambers process souls and weaponize them before adding them to his army."
She traced the energy flows back through the network. Every channel, every court's pipeline, all of it converging on a single point. Her finger stopped moving.
The Mourned Court. The deep-water harbor. The one place all the roads led.
She'd mapped this exact pattern in the library that night, tracing diagrams by firelight while he watched.
"The refinery isn't the actual target.” Her voice quieted. "It's just the surface. He built it directly on top of the ward-core. The gateway is underneath."
"If we can reach it, I can shut it down." Steadier now. "The protocols that created it should respond to my bloodline."
