Chapter 638: Brother Ren's Martyrdom

The smell of bitter gum arabic, scorched animal fat, and damp sheep thick parchment always carried a different weight when Brother Ren was in the room. It wasn’t the sharp, chemical tang of the workshop or the sour, metal stench of the city tanneries. It was the quiet, choking odor of a sick room ward at midnight. There, the only movement was the slow rise and fall of chest bandages and the quiet drip of vinegar water into a lead bucket. Ren Vale knelt upon the silver glass of the Inner Sanctum. His fingers stiff and shook as he pressed his palm against his aching ribs. Beneath his lambskin apron, his stomach was a pit of dry ash—the permanent body hunger of Berserker Ren’s exclusion penalty gnawing at his focus like a starving hound. He reached into his leather satchel, pulled out a pinch of potion-made willow-ash, and forced himself to swallow the dry, bitter powder with a sip of packed salt water. It burned his throat. It scraped his gullet raw, but it was the only fuel his ruined spirit veins could accept. Beside him, Mira sat on an overturned gold-silver metal bracket. Her mortal left hand grabbed an unpolished wooden needle. Meanwhile, her right arm—flawless, many-sided smoky quartz from collarbone to narrowed fingertip—glowed with a deep, steady violet radiance, chiming at exactly the concert pitch of pure silver to anchor the surrounding space against the cold void.

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