The door swings open.
Masielle stands in the center of the chamber, staff in hand, gray hair wild around her face, eyes blazing. Dream-crystals hang from the ceiling like pale stars, dimmed but not extinguished.
Behind her, shelves of etched bone and stone tablets line the walls—patterns, maps, conduits, secrets. Routes into the sanctums only a Dreamwright of her rank would know.
Perfect.
“You were not denied,” she says, voice shaking with effort as she raises her staff. “You walked away.”
“I walked away from servitude,” I correct. “Not from Nightfall.”
I step inside. My SoulTakers hang back at the threshold, obedient. This is not their work.
“Look at you,” I murmur, drinking in every crack in her face, every tremor in her hands. “Still clinging to the old stories. The Prime’s martyrdom. The Lords’ noble sacrifices. The glory of feeding the dreams of others while we rot.”
Her jaw clenches. “We do not rot.”
“Oh?” I tilt my head. “Tell that to the families at Stone’s Edge whose children choke on ash in their sleep because there’s not enough ore to keep their hearths lit. Tell it to the miners whose bodies are broken before their fortieth year. Tell it to the widows tending altars to loved ones swallowed by the Ember Vein while the Lords burn their dead on pyres and call it ‘honor.’”
Her grip tightens on the staff.
“That is grief,” she says. “Not rot.”
“It is waste,” I snarl. Power flares out, rattling the dream-crystals overhead. They sway and chime. “We funnel everything we are, everything we have, into worlds that do not know our names. Realities that never once look up from their own miseries long enough to thank the realm that keeps their sinks of despair from overflowing.”
“This is our purpose,” she says, dogged. “Nightfall is the fulcrum. We balance them. That is the bargain.”
“Bargain?” I laugh. “With whom? Did you meet this great negotiator? Did the multiverse come to you politely and ask if we would like to be used?”
She falls silent.
Because we both know the answer.
We were made for this. Crafted as a dam and drain, a stabilizing force. Whether by gods or something worse, we were designed to be the invisible hand that keeps every other world’s madness from tipping over.
No choice.
No consent.
“Slavery,” I say softly. “With fancier words.”
Her staff lifts.
“If you believed we were truly slaves,” she says, “you would not need to break old women to free us, as you say.”
Ah.
There it is.
The last little stab.
“You misunderstand,” I reply, stepping closer. My puppet’s hand closes around her staff, not unkindly. “You are not a victim. You are a tool. The sharpest kind. And I—” I lean in, let her see how bright my certainty burns behind this borrowed face “—am going to use you to cut the leash.”
She spits in my face.
Brave to the last.
I close my eyes briefly and let my temper pass over me like a storm. When I open them again, my hand is steady as I lift it to her brow.
