The black flame of the oblivion gag smelled of burning bone, sulfur, and the cold void of an unwritten page.
On the narrow iron overhead frame, Grand Censor Malachai held the writhing golden sinew aloft in his bare hand. The sky cord hissed against his flesh, but the judge didn’t flinch. The skin of his palms had long been hardened by forty years of handling acid-burning redaction reagents. His lips pulled back over yellowed teeth in a rictus of holy fanaticism as he began the ancient sovereign magic chant:
“By the decree of the First High judge,” Malachai intoned. His deep shook with the terrible, conceptual weight of an empire’s founding curse. “By the seal that bound the deep... By the iron that silenced the star... I excise the names of Vale. I strike their line from the book of life. I return their flesh to unformed mud.”
With each syllable, the unnatural dead zone swelled. The morning light turned to greasy charcoal. The wind died fully, choked by the crushing weight of the royal geas.
Ren Vale knelt on the rusted decking beside Mira. The time ash around his collarbone was hardening into solid dark rock, the cold constriction threatening to crush his throat pipe like an iron collar. Beside him, Mira’s eyes rolled back. Her quartz arm turned dull and grey as the spirit cord sought to erase the very existence of the First Witness.
