The Dimeritium cuffs didn't just block magic; they strangled it.
For Kaelen, the ride through the Weeping District was an exercise in suffocation. Her mind, usually a chaotic train station of sensory input, echoes, and the psychic hum of the city, was now terrifyingly quiet. It felt like being buried alive in a lead coffin.
The only thing that hadn't been silenced was the Voice.
Because the Voice wasn't magic. It was a stain.
He's taking you to the Ossuary, the Voice whispered. It sounded bored, like a critic reviewing a bad play. Predictable. Valerius always retreats to the dead when he's frightened.
Kae didn't answer. She couldn't. The cuffs made her tongue feel heavy, her thoughts sluggish. She slumped against the velvet squabs of the carriage, watching the rain streak the windows. Outside, the gaslights of Obolus were blurring into streaks of sickly yellow.
Valerius sat opposite her, polishing the silver handle of his cane with a handkerchief. He hadn't looked at her since they fled the theater.
"You're bleeding," he said, without looking up.
Kae touched her nose. Her fingers came away red. The pressure of the cuffs was bursting capillaries.
"Take them off," she rasped.
"Not until we are secure."
"I can't… I can't breathe in these."
"You are breathing fine, Vance. You are simply experiencing withdrawal. You are addicted to the intake of other souls. Consider this a detox."
The carriage took a sharp turn, the wheels clattering over loose cobblestones. They were heading toward the river, toward the district where the old plague pits had been paved over to make room for warehouses.
The carriage stopped before a grim, windowless structure of grey stone. It had once been a chapel to a god of mourning, now repurposed by the Inquisition. The Ossuary.
Valerius hauled her out. The rain was freezing, smelling of coal dust and the river's rot. He marched her to the heavy iron door, unlocked it with a key that glowed with faint blue light, and shoved her inside.
The interior of the Ossuary was warmer than the street, but it smelled of dust and old incense. The main chamber was a circular room lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves. But instead of books, the shelves held jars.
Thousands of them.
Inside each jar, suspended in amber fluid, was a memory-strand—a silver wisp of thought extracted from a heretic or a criminal before their execution. It was a library of confessions.
"Sit," Valerius commanded, pointing to a heavy wooden chair in the center of the room.
Kae collapsed into it. "The cuffs, Valerius. Please."
The Inquisitor looked at her. He seemed to weigh the risk. Then, with a fluid motion, he produced the key and unlocked the Dimeritium shackles.
They fell to the floor with a heavy clank.
The rush was immediate.
The silence broke. The mental dam shattered. The hum of the city rushed back in—the distant panic of a thief two streets over, the dull ache of a stray dog, the static of a thousand sleeping minds.
Kae gasped, arching her back as the sensation flooded her nerves. It was ecstasy and agony all at once.
Breathe it in, the Voice encouraged. Delicious, isn't it? The noise of the cattle.
Kae shoved the Voice down, focusing on Valerius. He was busy at a workbench, arranging a series of alchemical vials. He placed a shard of the black mirror—the one Kae had dropped in the theater—into a porcelain bowl.
"The object acts as a anchor," Valerius said, his voice clinical. "It held a projection spell. But it is not standard arcana. The geometry of the spell-work is… wrong."
He poured a clear liquid over the shard.
Usually, a revealing agent would turn blue or red.
The liquid turned black. It began to boil, screaming with a sound like a tea kettle.
Valerius stepped back, frowning. "Void-touched."
"I told you," Kae said, her voice returning to normal. She rubbed her bruised wrists. "He's not a mage. He's a priest. The Laughing God isn't a metaphor."
"The Laughing God is a myth," Valerius snapped. "A fable used to scare novices. Chaos has no deity."
"Then explain the passenger in my head," Kae challenged. "Explain the mirror."
Valerius turned to her. The harsh light of the work-lamps cast deep shadows in the scars on his face. "That is what you are going to do, Vance. You are the expert on mental intrusion."
He pointed to the screaming, boiling bowl.
"Sink it."
Kae stared at him. "You want me to touch that? It's active. It's hostile."
"It is a fragment of his power. If you sink the memory attached to it, you might find his location. Or his identity."
"Or it might finish the job and turn my brain into pudding."
"A risk I am willing to take."
"I'm not!" Kae stood up. "I helped you at the theater. I told you about the trap. I am done."
Valerius moved faster than a man his size should be able to. He was in her space instantly, his hand gripping her jaw, tilting her head back. His eyes were grey flint.
"You are not done, Kaelen. You are infected. If you walk out that door, the infection spreads. You will lose your mind, piece by piece, until you are nothing but a vessel for him. You need me to cure you. And I need you to find him. We are bound."
He let her go.
Kae rubbed her jaw, glaring at him. But she knew he was right. She could feel the Voice scratching at the back of her eyes, reading the titles of the books on the shelves, humming a tune she didn't know.
Do it, the Voice whispered. Touch the glass. I want to show you something.
"Fine," Kae spat. "But if I start foaming at the mouth, you put a bullet in me. Don't let me turn into one of those things in the jars."
"Agreed."
Kae approached the workbench. The shard was still hissing, the black liquid swirling around it. It looked like a portal to a starless sky.
She took a deep breath, centered her mind—building the mental walls she used to filter the city's noise—and reached out.
Her fingertip touched the black glass.
There was no transition. No fade to black.
Kae was simply elsewhere.
She was standing in a room made of white marble. It was vast, endless, stretching out in all directions. But the floor was covered in an inch of water, and the water was red.
Welcome to the Green Room, the Voice said.
The killer was standing ten feet away.
He wasn't wearing the mirror mask this time. He was wearing a suit of immaculate white silk. But his face… his face was a blur. Like a photograph taken in motion. Every time Kae tried to focus on his features, they shifted. A sharp nose became a flat one. Blue eyes became brown. He was everyone and no one.
"You're persistent," the killer said. His voice echoed, bouncing off invisible walls. "Most Mindsinks would have shattered by now. The cognitive dissonance of holding two souls usually cracks the vessel."
"Get out of my head," Kae shouted. Her voice made ripples in the bloody water.
"But I've decorated," the killer smiled. It was a charming smile, which made it worse. He gestured around the endless white room. "Do you see? This isn't my mind, Kaelen. This is yours."
Kae froze. She looked at the white marble walls. Etched into them were names. Dates.
The dockworker. The Banker. The Whore. Her mother.
It was her library. The repository of every memory she had ever stolen. But he had whitewashed it. He had flooded it.
"You're corrupting the archive," she whispered in horror.
"I'm curating it," he corrected. He stepped closer, his shoes making no sound in the water. "You collect pain, Kaelen. You eat trauma to survive. We are the same. I just… externalize my art."
"We are nothing alike. I survive. You destroy."
"Creation is destruction," he said softly. He stopped right in front of her. He smelled of ozone and old blood. "You want to know where I am? You want to give your little Inquisitor a bone?"
He reached into the pocket of his white suit and pulled out a pocket watch. But the face of the watch didn't have numbers. It had symbols.
The hands were spinning backwards.
"I am where time stops," he said. "I am where the city forgets to breathe."
He held the watch up to her eye.
"Find the ticking, Kaelen. But hurry. The curtain rises at midnight."
He clicked the watch shut.
Kae woke up screaming.
She thrashed, knocking the porcelain bowl off the table. It shattered, the black liquid splashing across the stone floor, sizzling where it touched the rock.
"Vance! Vance!"
Valerius was there, holding her down in the chair. She flailed, her fists striking his chest, until she realized where she was.
"He's inside!" she screamed, clawing at her forehead. "He's whitewashing the walls! He's drowning the library!"
"Focus!" Valerius slapped her. Not hard, but sharp enough to snap her head to the side. "Focus on the pain. Use it. Anchor yourself."
Kae gasped, the sting on her cheek grounding her. The Ossuary came back into focus. The dust. The jars. The grim face of the Inquisitor.
"Did you see him?" Valerius demanded.
"Yes," Kae sobbed, dry heaves racking her chest. "He... he showed me a watch. Spinning backwards."
"A location?"
"A riddle. He said he's 'where time stops.' Where the city forgets to breathe."
Valerius straightened up, his brow furrowed. He paced the small room, his boots clicking on the stone.
"Time stops," he muttered. "The Clocktower District? No, that's too obvious. The Museum of Chronology?"
"No," Kae said, her voice trembling. She wiped the sweat from her eyes. "It felt... industrial. Heavy. Like the air was pressed down."
She looked at the shattered remains of the mirror shard on the floor. The black liquid was eating into the stone, forming a shape.
A circle. With a line through it.
"Valerius," she whispered.
He looked down. "What?"
"The Pneumatic Exchange," Kae said. The memory of the sensation clicked into place. The pressure. The feeling of breath being held. "The central air filtration plant for the Guilds. It stops every night at midnight for twenty minutes to vent the Dreg. The city literally holds its breath."
Valerius checked his own pocket watch—gold, mundane, ticking forward.
"It is 11:40 PM," he said.
Kae stood up. Her legs were shaking, but the fear was hardening into something else. Anger. The killer had violated her mind. He had touched her memories of her mother.
"He said the curtain rises at midnight," Kae said. "That gives us twenty minutes."
Valerius moved to the wall, grabbing a heavy, double-barreled shotgun etched with silver runes. He tossed Kae a small, curved dagger.
"You stay behind me," he ordered. "If you feel him taking control, you use that knife."
"On him?"
"On yourself," Valerius said, opening the heavy iron door to the rainy night. "Better to bleed out than to become his puppet."
Kae looked at the knife. It was sharp. Beautiful.
He's right, you know, the Voice whispered, sounding excited. It's going to be a wonderful show. I hope you remembered your tickets.
Kae sheathed the knife. "Let's go kill a god," she muttered, and followed the Inquisitor into the dark.