The Warden didn’t use magic to cure the hallucination. He used thirty pounds of cold, rusted iron.
With a brutal, unsparing motion, Ren-of-the-Trench hauled young Ren upright by his collar, slammed him against the dark rock face of the central pillar. Then he clamped a heavy iron shackle around his right wrist.
CLANG.
The four-inch lock-hasp snapped shut with the violence of a bone breaking. The cold iron bit deep into the tender flesh of Ren’s wrist, crushing the bruised tendons and grinding against the outward bone.
A blinding spike of pure, pure physical pain tore through Ren’s nervous system.
It wasn’t the cold, ghostly dread of unlived futures. It was the sharp, hot, clear agony of living human tissue being pinched in an iron clamp. The phantom Chancellors, the weeping beggars, the eighty-four dead Rens dissolved instantly, vanishing like grease smoke in a sudden squall.
Ren gasped, his eyes flying wide, his vision snapping back into sharp, painful focus.
He saw the wet dark rock stone two inches from his nose. He saw the salt crust clinging to the Warden’s collar. He smelled the thick, rotten-egg stench of stone oil from the brass trench lantern hanging at the older man’s belt.
