I stepped over them without breaking stride. The Shinobi variant hummed approval beneath my skin, ten knives already recalculating, already finding the next targets, already mapping the chaos unfolding around us.
The first barrier blazed red. Heat rolled off it in waves, blistering the air, warning me what would happen if I touched it without permission. I didn't have permission. I had Silas, whose expertise in movement really shined in my eyes right now.
Across the throne room, the world was ending in miniature. Nobles screaming, shoving, trampling each other in silk and velvet. Guards torn between protecting the pretenders and responding to the explosions still shaking the walls. Another blast, closer now, and I felt the floor tremble beneath my feet.
Kay's riot exploded.
Somewhere out there, twenty-five people from the Sump were bleeding for this moment. Twenty-five people who had grown up hungry in streets the empire forgot existed. Twenty-five people who had looked at an impossible plan and said yes anyway, because Kay asked them to, because the city needed them to, because for once in their miserable lives they could make the bastards in silk pay attention. The Shinobi Variant gave me clarity that went in many more ways than standard yozi is used to.
I could picture Kay in the courtyard, directing his people with hand signals and sharp whistles, keeping them alive while they set fires and drew guards and bought us the seconds we needed. He wasn't doing this for Damian or the throne or any promise of power. He was doing it because every guard rushing toward the courtyard was a guard not patrolling the Sump tonight. Every noble screaming in panic was a noble who might think twice before raising taxes on people who couldn't afford to eat.
He was giving his city a fighting chance. The only way he knew how.
And cutting through the chaos inside, one figure moving against the current.
The best thief in Zetun.
He slipped between panicking bodies like smoke through fingers. A noble grabbed his arm. Silas twisted, ducked, vanished. Reappeared ten feet closer. Something brass glinted in his hand.
Valric Thenn stumbled after him, robes torn, face purpling with rage.
"The Seal! He has the Seal! Stop him!"
No one stopped him. The guards were gone, rushing toward Kay's fires. The nobles were too busy saving themselves. Valric lunged and caught an elbow to the throat instead.
He went down. The crowd surged over him. Feet stamping. Bodies pressing.
Silas reached me. Pressed the Seal into my palm. Brass, warm from Valric's body heat. Blood on his forehead. Grin on his face.
"Fire barrier," I said.
"Bloodline recognition. Press it against the glass."
I pressed.
Heat flared through the metal. My palm blistered. I didn't flinch. The Shinobi variant had already calculated the damage, already dismissed it as acceptable, already moved on to the next problem.
The red barrier flickered once, twice, and died.
Silas was already moving. Vial in hand. Acid for the anchor points.
He poured. The silver disc sizzled, began to dissolve.
Second anchor. Third anchor. His hands steady despite the screaming, despite the explosions, despite everything trying to distract him from the work.
The silver barrier stuttered. Flickered. Went dark.
Two down. One to go.
The black barrier remained. Absolute. Final. The Tear floated behind it, a fist of darkness drinking the light, and I could feel it watching me. It wanted me.
"Touch it wrong and you lose your hand," Malgrin said. "Touch it very wrong and everyone dies."
I didn't hesitate.
The Shinobi variant shifted in my blood. The throwing knives dissolved. Reformed. Became something thinner. Needles of shadow, each one sharp enough to cut between atoms, each one an extension of a will that no longer felt entirely like my own. The barrier existed in reality. My blades existed in the space between.
I found the gap.
First needle in. Carving a line of absence in the black surface. Second needle. Third. Tracing a circle just large enough for my hand. The barrier fought back. Trying to close around my blades. Trying to crush them out of existence.
But it didn't matter. Shadow were stubborn and inch by inch, rhe circle grew.., And the thing guiding my hands had been doing this longer than the barrier had been standing.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Yozi."
Nyssara's voice. Sharp. Urgent. But something else underneath it. Something that made me look up.
Mordris stood ten feet away.
He'd shed his clergy robes. The ritual scars covered his arms, his chest, his throat. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Each one a channel for the magic that made him what he was.
His eyes were solid red. His smile was rust-colored.
But I wasn't looking at Mordris.
Nyssara had visibly changed. Not physically, not in any way a stranger would notice. But I knew her face. I knew every careful mask she wore, every wall she built to keep the world from seeing what lived underneath.
Those walls were gone.
What stood between me and Mordris wasn't the woman who had held me through the night. It wasn't the former Inquisitor with her controlled movements and measured responses. It was something older. Something that had been waiting for permission to surface.Her eyes had found Selyse across the throne room. The Commander stood by the eastern wall, watching the chaos with that careful attention, not moving to help, not moving to stop us. Just watching. Just waiting.
And Nyssara was looking at her the way a wolf looks at something it plans to eat.
"The Tear belongs to the Grey Hand," Mordris said. Voice wet. Drowning in itself. "Step away and I'll make it quick."
Nyssara didn't answer him. She answered me.
"Finish the barrier. I need to warm up."
She moved before Mordris finished raising his hands.
The scars on his arms split open. Blood welled up. Defied gravity. Flowed outward into shapes. Blades. Hooks. Things with too many edges to have names.
They launched.
Nyssara's sword came up glowing. Pale light. Holy steel. The blood-weapons hit it and shattered like glass against stone. She was approaching, surgically advancing.
Every step she took was a statement. Every swing of her blade was a promise. She wasn't fighting Mordris because he threatened us. She was fighting him because Selyse was watching, and Nyssara wanted her to see exactly what was coming.
Mordris hissed. Drew more blood. Formed a shield this time, a wall of crimson hanging in the air between them.
"Inquisitor."
"Former." She didn't slow down. "The Church wasn't interesting enough for me."
Her blade punched through his shield like it wasn't there. Holy light eating through blood magic, burning it away, leaving nothing but steam and the smell of copper.
Mordris stumbled back. Drew from more scars. Arms. Chest. Throat. Everything he had, thrown at the woman who kept coming, who wouldn't stop coming, who looked at him like he was practice for something that mattered.
I turned back to the barrier. One more inch. Maybe two. The black surface healing almost as fast as I could cut.
Behind me, the sounds of combat. Wet impacts. Steel ringing. Nyssara's breath coming harder, more feral.
The circle completed.
I reached through.
The void pressed against my skin. Wrong. Cold, but I don't mean temperature.
My fingers closed around the Tear.
Three hundred years hit me at once.
Darkness. Isolation. Desperation. The thing inside wasn't evil the way Malgrin was evil. It was just drowning. Had been drowning for centuries. Would do anything to anyone for one more breath.
"Don't listen," Malgrin snapped. "Take it and go."
I pulled back. The Tear came with me, trailing wisps of shadow that dissolved in the light. The black barrier collapsed behind it, folding into nothing.
"Got it."
I turned to find Nyssara standing over Mordris's body.
He wasn't dead yet. The blood mage had opened every scar he had, drawn every drop he could spare, thrown everything at her in a final desperate surge.
It hadn't been enough.
She stood over him with her sword pointed at his throat, her breathing steady, her face utterly calm. But her eyes kept drifting toward the eastern wall. Toward Selyse. Toward the real fight she was waiting for.
"Finish him," I said.
"No." She pulled back. Let Mordris gasp on the ground, his blood pooling around him, his power spent. "Let her see him. Let her know what's coming."
I called the knives back anyway. Six of them. Aimed at gaps in what remained of his defenses.
They flew.
Three found him. Chest. Shoulder. Hip.
He staggered onto his back. Looked down at the blades buried in his flesh. Tried to smile.
The shadows inside the knives woke up.
They spread through his blood like ink through water. Following the channels he'd carved into himself. Filling his scars from the inside.
Mordris screamed.
Darkness erupted from the ritual marks. Arms. Chest. Face. The magic that had kept him alive for thirty years turned against him all at once.
His shield collapsed. His weapons dissolved. The screaming stopped.
He didn't get up.
Nyssara watched him die with no expression at all. Then she looked at me, and for just a moment I saw what Selyse was going to face in that corridor.
I almost felt sorry for her.
"The passage," I said. "Where?"
Nyssara pointed at the wall behind the pedestal. Old sandstone. Geometric prayers. Nothing special.
"Third glyph from the left."
I pressed.
The wall shifted. A passage opened, descending into darkness.
Behind us, someone finally noticed.
"Stop them! The Tear! They have the Tear!"
Guards turning. Weapons drawing. Too many of them. Too close.
And then Damian moved.
He stepped forward on the dais. His eyes went black. All the way black. And when he raised his hands, something older raised them with him.
A wave of shadow toward and crashed into the opposition.
It spread across the throne room in an instant. A wall of absolute darkness cutting us off from the guards, cutting them off from us, cutting everything off from everything.
Damian's voice came through the black. Harmonics in it that didn't belong to anything human.
"Go. We'll handle this."
Outside, another explosion. Kay's people, still fighting, still bleeding, still giving us time we hadn't earned and couldn't repay.
I grabbed Nyssara's arm. Pulled her into the passage.
She came, but her eyes stayed on the throne room until the hidden door slid shut. Stayed on the eastern wall. Stayed on Selyse.
"Soon," she whispered to no one.
The door closed. Darkness swallowed us.
Our footsteps. Our breathing. The Tear pulsing against my palm like a second heartbeat.
The sounds of chaos faded above. Screaming. Steel. Explosions. All of it muffled by stone and distance until there was nothing left but the two of us and the hungry whisper of the gem in my hand.
We ran.
Three hundred years of imprisonment. Three hundred years of waiting.
And now it was free.
--- SPECTACLE REPORT: SYSTEM UPGRADE ---
Performance: ????? (5/5) - Flawless Malgrin's Note: "Finally. The Reaper was fun for making a mess, but the Shinobi? This is art. You dissected that barrier like a master surgeon. And turning the Blood Mage's own veins into a shadow-farm? That was delightfully ironic. I haven't seen a mage implode that neatly in centuries."
COMBAT LOG:
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Target: The Barrier (Breached).
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Target: Abt Mordris (Corrupted/Terminated).
-
Efficiency: 100%.
AUDIENCE ANALYSIS:
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Nyssara: She is currently hunting. Do not get between the wolf and her prey.
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Selyse: She is watching. She knows.
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The Crowd: Panicking perfectly.