The iron drop-gate rang with the cold finality of a tomb.
Beyond the iron bars, Envoy Jonathan Vance straightened his plum doublet. He wiped purple ink from his cuff. His face wore the tight smirk of a bureaucrat who had just snapped a lock.
“Spear guards, prime crushing weight canisters in the chimney pipe,” Vance commanded. “Let them breathe lung-rot until the Inquisitorial Choir arrives with binding chains. If the keeper resists, break his knees. The Synod needs his signed name, not his legs.”
Inside the sealed room, Ren Vale knelt, forehead pressed to cold stone.
His body burned with acid-burning agony. The Exclusion Axiom raged through his tiny blood vessels like boiling vinegar. Down his forearms, the veins were hard ridges stained the dark violet of dark oak-ink. Every breath tasted of scorched tannin. When he coughed, black flecks spattered between his knuckles, sizzling against the wax.
A touch like polished ice settled against his neck.
Mira knelt beside him. Her right hand—smoky quartz catching the firelight—pressed against his pulse. The stone chill didn’t cure the venom, but it blunted the fire, drawing heat into stone. A faint ringing hum rang through her wrist.
“Breathe, Ren,” she murmured, her dark eyes fierce. “You broke the pen. Now stop trying to swallow the floor.”
