A wet, ragged wheeze bubbled through the puddle of black blood at Patriarch Morvane’s knees.
The fallen elder clawed at the stone shingles with shaking, blood-stained fingers.
His eyes darted frantically toward the smoking ruins of Booth Nine, where Kaelen Vance stood casually wiping dust from the sleeve of his gray bathrobe.
“You think... you think you’ve won?” Morvane spat, his teeth coated in dark crimson foam.
With his trembling left hand, Morvane reached into the lining of his torn silk sash.
He pulled out a triangular slip of blackened animal hide inscribed with pulsing, carmine runes.
It was an ancestral blood-escape talisman.
A single drop of Golden Core heart-blood would dissolve his physical body into shadow, carrying him twenty miles downstream to the fortified gates of the Iron Citadel.
