I follow it.
The ceiling of the ritual chamber hangs above me as a black, veined membrane of stone, shadow, and stolen threshold law. I do not look for a door. Doors are for entities willing to honor architecture. I drive both hands upward and pour authority into the structure until its binding glyphs shriek apart.
The ceiling collapses.
Stone, shadow, bone-dust mortar, and violet ritual light crash downward in a storm. The chamber below erupts into chaos. Maltherion looks up from the slab, skeletal face twisting with fury as fragments of his protected sanctum fall around him.Ward keepers spring from the walls like knives given bodies, their blank faces opening into vertical slits of light.
Corin drops beside me through the breach with no permission and no hesitation.
A construct launches upward toward him, all hook-limbs and smoke-black sinew. Corin meets it mid-air, tackling the thing with a roar that belongs to neither the sick man he was nor any mortal I have previously catalogued. They hit the floor together hard enough to crack the stone, and he drives an iron stake through its throat before it can reform.
“Get her!” he shouts.
I already am.
The chamber reeks of burned magic, old blood, rotten flowers, and Sable’s fear sharpened into discipline. Siphon channels glow beneath her body, feeding into the hollow in Maltherion’s chest. Black veins branch across her collarbone. Her lips are stained red. Her wrists are bound in shadow.
I cross the chamber in a single step.
Maltherion raises one hand. “Too late, Collector.”
I seize him by the throat before the final syllable leaves his mouth.
His physical form is stronger than the projection, dense with stolen essence and ancient protections, but he has made the mistake of touching what is mine while I am close enough to answer. Raw infernal flame erupts from my hand and pours into him, not shaped into clean destruction, not tempered by law. His hollow chest flares violet as he tries to devour the fire, and for an instant, hunger meets hunger.
Mine is greater.
I tear him apart.
His ribs split under my grip. His limbs distort, smoke and bone separating from infernal essence as I burn through every stolen layer. He screams, and the sound shakes the ritualapparatus until the violet sigils stutter. I drive him backward into the central column of the chamber and rip the binding core from his body in a burst of black-gold flame.
Maltherion’s physical form comes undone.
The siphon channels shatter.
For one impossible instant, I expect relief through the tether.
Instead, Sable’s pulse stops.
The absence is total.
No flutter.
No weak thread.
No rhythm.
The world loses proportion.
Corin’s voice cuts through the chamber from somewhere behind me. “Rhazek?”
I turn to the slab.
Sable lies too still, her skin pale beneath the black veins, her mouth parted around no breath at all. The ritual’s broken light flickers over her face, making her look carved from moonlit ash. The tether hangs between us like a severed cord, burning at both ends.
“No,” I say.
The word does not sound like denial.
