Tenth day of the Eclipse. Hour of the Serpent.I check the Vanguard ledger.Tenth day of the Eclipse. Hour of the Serpent. Vanguard Commander reports final sanctum breached. Complete eradication of the Blackflame root achieved.
The dates do not just overlap; they are a perfect, simultaneous collision. The exact moment the final witches of the Blackflame were slaughtered was the exact moment the ambient magic in Venn Manor inverted. The curse did not cross the Undercity over weeks or days. It was an instantaneous,cataclysmic tether drawn between the dying coven and the victorious house.
Yet Khaelor’s diplomatic records prove he did not return to the estate until three days later. The curse annihilated his mother and sisters, then lingered in the architecture, waiting for the final drop of Venn blood to cross the threshold before it latched onto him.
At my hip, the leather satchel vibrates violently.
I unbuckle the flap and draw out the obsidian relic. The stone is warm, pulsing with a deep, frantic rhythm. I place it on the viewing table, directly next to the massacre documents.
The black-gold aura of the relic bleeds outward, illuminating the table. The light catches on a final, deep drawer at the bottom of the iron cabinet. The drawer is unmarked.
I kneel on the cold stone and pull it open.
Inside rests a single book, bound in an unrecognizable, pale leather that feels terrifyingly like cured skin. It is not a Dark Elf text. The geometric precision of the High Courts is absent. The cover is scorched, the edges blackened by fire.
A confiscated grimoire. A trophy pulled from the ashes of the Blackflame.
I lift it carefully, placing it on the table beside the humming relic. As I open the cover, the scent of crushed ash and dried blood floods the confined vault. The pages are filled with archaic script, herbal anatomies, and lunar charts. But it is the margins that draw my eye.
Frantic, jagged lines are sketched into the edges of the parchment with dark charcoal. It is a ritual diagram, drawn in a hurried, desperate hand. The geometry of the circle is complex, utilizing overlapping heptagrams and anchor points denoting blood sacrifices.
I pull my own ledger and my charcoal pencil. I need to understand this magic. If this is the foundation of the curse, the geometry will reveal the flow of the power.
I begin to sketch, copying the lines from the grimoire into my book. The relic pulses faster, the vibration rattling the wood of the table.
I draw the outer boundary. I connect the primary anchor nodes. I trace the inner heptagram, the friction of the charcoal against the vellum producing a harsh, scraping sound in the silent vault.
As I draw the final, intersecting line at the middle of the diagram, the temperature in the room instantly spikes.
The stone walls of the catacomb vanish.
The iridescent light of the lumen-orb is swallowed by a roaring, apocalyptic dark. I am no longer sitting at the viewing table. I am kneeling on scorched earth. The air is so thick with heat and smoke that every breath is a laceration against my throat.
Fire surrounds me—towering walls of unnatural, obsidian-black flame.
Through the distortion of the heat, I see them. Robed figures, their garments stained with soot and fresh blood, swaying in a perfect, agonizing rhythm. They form a circle around me. They are chanting, their voices layered in a terrifying, unified frequency that vibrates through my bones. The language is ancient, tasting of iron and vengeance, pulling raw, catastrophic power from the earth itself.
I look down. My hands are coated in dark, wet ash. I am pressing my palms against the soil, completing the very diagram I was just sketching. The raw magic tearing through my veins is absolute, blinding rage.
Let the house rot from within!The collective scream of the coven tears through the vision.
The fire surges inward, consuming the robed figures, their bodies turning to ash to fuel the cataclysm.
Through the roar of the inferno, a single voice cuts through the destruction. It is an elder’s voice, broken and dying, speaking directly into my mind.
Anchor the flame, Purna.I gasp violently, my lungs seizing.
The vision shatters. The black fire dissolves, throwing me back into the frigid air of the underground vault.
My chair tips backward, scraping harshly against the stone floor. The charcoal pencil slips from my numb fingers, clattering into the dark. My chest heaves, dragging in the scent of stagnant water and old dust.
I stare at the open grimoire, the frantic drawing of the ritual circle burning behind my eyelids.
The word echoes in the empty chamber, heavy and impossible.
Purna.
10
