CHAPTER 71: THE GIRL WHO CHOSE WAR
SILVER'S POV
The scrying crystal sitting on the corner of my lacquered mahogany vanity did not shatter under the pressure of the transmission. It did not burst into thousands of glittering shards or make a dramatic, echoing sound that would alert the guards stationed down the corridor. Instead, it simply began to bleed. A slow, thick, oily trickle of corrupted silver fluid began to seep directly from its crystalline core, bubbling up through the fracture lines before pooling across the dark wood and slowly, methodically ruining the meticulous layout of my charting papers. I watched the dark liquid stain the maps of the lower conduits, the ink running and blurring until the neat geological lines looked like veins torn open on a fresh battlefield. My informants in the lower subterranean networks of Nocturne had been thorough, but the message they had left behind in the fluid was an absolute, unmitigated death sentence.
