The forge trembled beneath Hatim's knees—not from quake or hammer, but from resonance. A resonance not meant for mortal hands.
Behind him, the conduit thrummed like a living artery of metal and light. Gold laced with violet. Harmony where there should have been fracture. Its song was not just heard—it was felt. A pressure beneath the skin, in the teeth, deep in the marrow. A melody woven into Embermark's very bones.
But to Hatim, the sound was fading—drifting like smoke, distant and unreal.
Lady Aethel's voice sliced the air like a drawn wire.
"Required."
The word tasted of iron and ash. Not a request. Not a command. A verdict. A claim.
His limbs trembled. Vision blurred. The forge—once the center of his world, its glow a hearth of toil and meaning—warped at the edges. Brick and steel flexed like paper beneath water. Glyph-lit rafters bent inward, twisting angles that defied sane geometry.
The stench of molten copper curled sharp in his nostrils, but beneath it… something else. Something rotten. A scent like soured memory. Like tombs left unsealed.
Hatim pressed a hand to the floor. The stone was warm—too warm—and beneath it, he could feel them. The Veins. Thick conduits of living Akar threading through the city's underbelly like sinews of a great beast. Normally, their hum was background—a subtle comfort to those who could sense them.
Now? They felt… awake. Listening. Judging.
A pulse. A rhythm not of blood, but of something older. Something watching back.
His heart kicked against ribs, frantic, unmoored.
Not now. No. No—
Reality ruptured.
A soundless scream—someone else's—knifed through his skull. His lungs convulsed, grasping for breath where none remained. The forge collapsed into shadow, sucked away like embers into a void.
Black. Not simple night. A void that hated light. A hollowness gnawing at reality's edges, stripping it to bone and idea.
Chains. He heard them—not jingling, but dragging. Groaning. Iron links heavy as guilt grinding against something raw. Flesh? Stone? He couldn't tell. Faces loomed—grinned—from carved walls of something vast and cruel. Mouths split wide, but no sound came. Just agony rehearsed a thousand times.
Not again. Not again!
His voice didn't leave lips, but trembled inside ribs—a silent plea.
And then—
A crown.
Forged not of gold alone but twisted razor thorns. Barbs glistened with sap-black ichor. Symbols—fractured, half-forgotten—writhed along its circumference. Some glyphs he recognized from Akar circuits; others… older. Not built for meaning, but binding.
It hovered.
It descended.
He felt it—not as weight, but as definition. As if every fracture in his soul was sutured into place, whether it fit or not. Memories pressed into him that were never his—betrayal, grief, the collapse of things too ancient to name. The thorns bit deep, threading agony into every nerve. Not pain like flame. Pain like understanding.
A sob ripped free. He wasn't sure it was his own.
"No—no—no—"
But the crown did not care.
A pulse. A tremor. Chains groaned louder—or perhaps the Veins themselves.
Then—
Air. Heat. Hammered stone. A burst of coppery light.
The forge. He was back.
But not the same.
His hands—trembling, blistered—pressed against soot-black floor. He stared. Skin. Bone. But wrong. Fingers too long. Skin too thin. As if reality hadn't quite put him back together right.
The golden glow in his veins faded, but beneath it, the violet thread flickered. Coiled in nerves like a sleeping serpent.
His gaze dragged upward. Lady Aethel stood as before. Immaculate. Poised. Her face wore the careful mask of interest. As if none of what had split his reality touched her.
Or worse—she'd expected it.
Kael hadn't moved, face slack with awe and dread. His soot-smeared hands clenched, but eyes refused Hatim's.
The weight of what he'd done pressed in. Not just the conduit's impossible song. Not just the energy forced to obey. But what it had opened. What it revealed.
Deep beneath—beneath forge stone, beneath Veins' arteries—something else stirred.
A call.
A response.
A knowing.
Hatim shuddered. The Veins weren't passive conduits. Not always. They remembered. They knew. His resonance had been heard.
And now something—far below, far older—was singing back.
His breath hitched. He felt it thrumming beneath his feet. A resonance subtle as a chime buried miles below, yet somehow as close as his own pulse.
Not hostile. Not yet.
But awake.
He dragged gaze back to Lady Aethel. Her eyes glittered—not with wonder, not with fear.
With calculation.
She didn't want his craftsmanship. Not truly. The forge was pretense. She wanted what the Crowns always wanted.
Control. Ownership. Leverage.
Her gaze was already turning him into transaction, theory, weapon.
And beneath it all, the conduit still sang.
A perfect harmony of gold veined with violet. A harmony that should not exist.
A harmony that would change everything.
Hatim wiped his hand across his mouth. It came away streaked with soot and—he blinked—something darker. Not blood. Not quite.
His body shook. His Akar drained, frayed at edges, hollowed by something deeper than exhaustion.
Yet the Veins still pulsed beneath him.
In that moment, with terrifying clarity—
This wasn't over.
This was beginning.