The jagged iron broadsword scraped across the marble steps with a sound like iron teeth chewing stone.
That evening, Cassian Vance dragged his dying bulk across sixty yards of courtyard gravel.
A thick trail of corrosive black sludge marked his path from the crater to the bottom step. The foul fluid hissed against the polished stone, dissolving the white lime mortar into foul-smelling yellow foam.
Cassian’s body was swollen to twice its natural girth.
Five years of swallowing Crack-Grade pills packed with fifty percent caustic sediment had turned his internal organs into a toxic furnace. His leather breeches were shredded by jagged black crystal growths that protruded from his knees and shins like volcanic spikes.
Every breath he drew tore his throat like boiling oil.
At Hour 530—as Kaelen’s Fallow Slate reached a five hundred and thirty-one times multiplier—Cassian reached the second step of the grand terrace.
The autumn evening air was damp and cold, carrying the faint scent of fallen oak leaves from the riverbank. On the third-floor balustrade, Alchemist Linnea watched with dark, shadowed eyes, clutching her silver diagnostic needle.
