The sea wind whistled through the shattered balustrades of Crater Island.
Kaelen Vance stood with the silver soul-lantern resting in his palm. His flannel bathrobe fluttered slightly in the cold morning draft.
“You have an odd way of asking for help, Inquisitor,” Kaelen said. “Most people send a polite letter. You chased me across two continents and broke my nice deck chairs.”
Thorne-Crow coughed, black blood dripping through his grey beard.
“If I had sent a letter,” Thorne-Crow rasped, “Solon would have burned my tongue out before the ink was dry.”
The inquisitor tapped his own chest plate with a trembling, calloused finger.
Beneath the jagged cracks in his grey armor, a pulsing crimson mark glowed faintly against his flesh. It was shaped like an eye surrounded by eight interlocking iron chains.
It was the Imperial Censorate Heart Curse-Seal.
