To prevent the collision, I yank the curse energy inward, then redirect the sheer, catastrophic overflow downward.
My bare hand slams into the obsidian floor.
The dueling hall erupts. A shockwave of unadulterated, blinding black-gold light tears through the room. The reinforced stone beneath my palm does not merely crack; it vaporizes. A massive fissure rips across the length of the hall, the sound like the earth itself tearing in half.
The concussive force throws Mireya backward. She hits the ground hard, skidding several feet before coming to a halt just outside the expanding crater of boiling, toxic slag.
The heavy dust settles, choking the air.
I stand slowly, my chest heaving, my right hand trembling with the violent aftershock of the output. The curse is screaming in my blood, eager for the slaughter it was just denied. I look across the fractured, glowing stone.
Mireya pushes herself up onto her elbows. She is coughing, her forearms scraped and bleeding from the fall, but her face is completely untouched by the rot.
She looks up at me, the shock finally clearing the fog from her dark eyes.
The anger in my chest threatens to crash my lungs. Not at her clumsiness, but at the devastating, pathetic reality of my own terror. I nearly killed her because she tripped. I am a monster attempting to play at being a man, and the margin for error is nonexistent.
"The session is over," I rasp. The words taste like copper and ash.
"Khaelor, I simply lost my footing. I am unhurt?—"
"I said it is over." I do not look at her. I cannot look at the scrape on her arm without the heavy, sickening guilt twisting my ribs. "Go to your quarters, Mireya. Do not emerge until dawn."
I turn my back to her, stepping into the heavy shadows of the eastern archway, leaving her alone on the ruined floor.
The midnight hoursin Venn Manor belong to the quiet. When the physical world sleeps, the estate settles into a predictable, freezing stasis. I have walked these halls for a century, intimately aware of every draft, every creaking timber, every dormant ward.
Tonight, the house is suffering.
I patrol the length of the grand gallery alone, the velvet cloak heavy on my shoulders. The air is wrong. The temperature fluctuates wildly—freezing one moment, suffocatingly hot the next. A low, tectonic vibration hums continuously through my boots.
The curse inside me is erratic, thrashing against my containment, but it is not reacting to my emotional state. It feels as though a massive, invisible magnet is dragging the magic toward the opposite end of the manor.
I stop before a massive, arched window overlooking the courtyard. I press my bare hand against the stone frame.
To my arcane sight, the Blackflame lattice woven into the walls reveals itself. The geometric lines of the wards, usually dormant or glowing with a faint, steady gold, are currently violently unstable. They are flashing with the dark, toxic ichor of the blood curse, bleeding power at an alarming rate.
The wards are failing. The estate is actively buckling.
I push my own corrupted will into the stone, forcing a surge of localized containment magic into the failing runic sequence.The stone hisses, burning my palm, but the immediate fracture seals.
It is a temporary fix. The entire network is experiencing a catastrophic draw.
I pull my hand back, tracing the flow of the erratic energy. The magical current is not random. It is pulling from the foundations, rushing up the central columns, and channeling directly toward the sealed corridors of the guest wing.
Toward her.
I move. My long strides eat the distance across the gallery, passing the fractured statues of my ancestors. The closer I get to Mireya’s assigned quarters, the heavier the air becomes. The walls are literally trembling, weeping a fine, black dust from the masonry joints.
I reach the heavy oak door of her bedchamber.
The wood is groaning, bowing outward under immense atmospheric pressure. The scent of scorched earth and blood magic is so thick I can taste the iron on my tongue.
I raise my hand to throw the door open, to drag her out of whatever magical flare the obsidian relic has triggered.
But as my fingers graze the handle, the magic flowing through the timber brushes against my own aura.
I freeze.
