I do not fight them.
I slaughter them.
Every strike is final. Every construct that reaches for me loses shape, name, and function. I rip through their bodies, through the sigils feeding them, through the shadow seams they use to reform. I tear one apart with my hands and burn the fragments before they can become smoke. I drive another into the ground so hard the realm fractures beneath it.
There is no elegance now.
No protocol.
No measured infernal restraint.
There is only the line of Sable’s weakening pulse, and everything between us is an error requiring correction.
Corin follows in my wake, striking anything that survives long enough to crawl. He says something, perhaps my name, perhaps a warning, but the words cannot pass through the roar gathering inside me.
Maltherion wanted the Collector anchored.
He wanted to see what a mortal tether could make of me.
Now he will.
15
SABLE
Iwake on stone.
Cold comes first, not as a simple chill against my skin but as a deep, invasive cruelty that presses through my back, my shoulders, my wrists, and the base of my skull. The slab beneath me is not smooth. It is carved with channels that bite shallowly into my skin wherever I shift, thin grooves arranged in spirals and branching lines that slope toward the center of my chest. The air tastes of extinguished candles, old blood, and flowers left to rot in a sealed room, sweet enough to turn my stomach and bitter enough to cling to my tongue.
I do not move at once.
That is the first victory.
My wrists are bound above my head with bands of shadow that feel like soaked silk over iron. My ankles are fixed the same way, drawn apart just far enough to make leverage difficult. The ceiling overhead is not really a ceiling but a black vault of layered stone and darkness, threaded with violet sigils that pulse slowly, each flash sinking into the grooves beneath me like a second heartbeat.
I inhale before panic can seize the breath from me.
One, two, three, four.
I hold.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
I exhale until my ribs ache.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
The tether is still there.
Frayed.
Burning.
Alive.
“Sensible,” a voice says from the darkness. “Disappointingly sensible, but sensible.”
Maltherion steps into view.
