Expectant.
She recognized one face immediately, and all hope drained from her body.
Sevrion Hale stepped forward, his face warped into a disgusted sneer. The gag was ripped from her face as a scroll unfurled in his hands.
“Sokâr! You have violated the Sacred Writ,” he intoned. “By tampering with the markings of the Resh’Agar, by attempting to decipher the runic core meant only for divine lineage, and by keeping such records hidden from this Council.”
Auryn struggled against the hands gripping her. “That’s not—I didn’t—”
Sevrion’s voice rose. “You have already been judged.”
“Without a trial!” she shouted.
From behind him, an Archivist stepped forward and threw a pile of parchment at her feet—her own handwriting. Her own notes. Her journals cataloging all the information she’d gathered over years on Kailorien’s runes. Torn. Ripped. Pages scattered like dead leaves.
“We do not permit soul-betrayal within the Lattice,” Sevrion said.
Two Attendants stepped forward to the altar, lifting the covering from the Godblind, a velvet cloth dyed with the ashes of the Condemned.
Auryn’s mouth went dry. Horror bloomed in her chest.
“No—wait. You can’t—listen to me—!”
Sevrion raised his arm. The velvet fell, revealing a branding iron. It drew the eye like a wound—wrong, humming, alive. Its surface shimmered in unnatural patterns twisting away from direct sight, as if the air itself recoiled from its unholy aura.
The Iron of Severance.
The Godblind.
The Unmaker.
A relic which, when infused with mana and ritual, was used to brand one’s very soul—destroying it, obliterating it, and removing it entirely from the cycle of the NineRivers.
The brand head itself was a hollow circle split by a jagged line, like an eye gouged down the center. Auryn’s stomach turned as the scent of burnt bone marrow and river rot filled the air.
It smelled of death.
Hers.
From the corner of her eye, Auryn glimpsed another familiar face. Black hair. Green eyes. A hyena smile. Zeera, dressed in white robes, a hood and mask doing nothing to hide her true identity.
“The judgment is final and unanimous,” Sevrion announced. “On this Fourth Veilday, Opening Turn of the Ice Cycle, Year 1129 of the Broken Era—the Sokâr has been found guilty of breaking Doctrine. She will henceforth be sentenced to Purification by Iron of Severance.”
He paused.
Smiled.
“Effective immediately.”
White-robed mages filed into view, channeling mana into the brand. The end glowed with sinister hunger—not yet hot, but thrumming. Auryn felt it the moment it began to draw from the city’s power. The ever-present hum of the Shields distorted—the pressure in the room spiked.
:: …my…strength…h—ld…you must… ::
Let them burn. I will rise in you. We will rise together.
She screamed.
Thrashed.
