He had changed it again.
NotI surrender the will that divides.
Something else.
Something older.
I answer with the will that chooses.
Sabine repeated his version.
The chamber convulsed.
A sound moved through the stone, low and deep, like a great door shifting under pressure.
The lamps flickered.
Halvine stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor.
Serast’s face lost its calm for the first time.
For one heartbeat, Sabine thought the room would split open.
Then the pressure broke.
The chalice stopped steaming.
The cracked sigil went dark.
Maelor stared at the basin.
Serast’s expression sealed itself again, but now Sabine had seen the thing beneath.
Fear.
Not of her.
Of what had answered.
“The chamber accepts,” Halvine said from the writing table, voice carefully neutral.
Serast turned his head toward her.
She held his gaze.
The crown clerk had already written it.
The chamber accepts.
Record made.
Undoing it now would require explaining what had gone wrong.
Serast looked back to Sabine and Lucien.
“The Trial of Flesh is complete,” he said. “Passage granted.”
Lucien stepped away from Sabine.
