Chapter 15
Then the lamp in Verena's hand flickered — once, twice — not gently but violently, like a living thing enraged. Its glow snapped and guttered, shadows stretching sharp and jagged across the parlor walls.
Abaddon's head turned at once, his black eyes narrowing. He felt it — the echo within that flame. His expression shifted, reverence hardening into fury. He fixed Verena with a look that stripped all pretense away, his voice low, cultured, and merciless.
"Woman… you stupid woman."
The words fell like a sentence passed, smooth yet searing. His long nails curled inward, catching the fractured light, every syllable edged with restrained wrath.
"You left my master's body to the carrion hands of the Office of Inquest and Indictment. You let them paw at her remains, dissect her greatness as though it were evidence in a trial." His tone cut sharper, dripping contempt. "To stand by, to permit such desecration—do you fathom what insult you have offered her?"
The golden threads around the twins shivered with the pulse of his anger, the air itself trembling as though the house recoiled.
Abaddon's head inclined slightly, not in deference to Verena but in scorn, his voice now silk laced with venom. "Magistrate, you call yourself. Yet you were nothing but a coward, clutching scraps while betraying the sanctity of the one you should have died to defend."
Abaddon's fury trembled in the air, golden sparks coursing faintly along the seams of his porcelain skin. The lamp in Verena's hand guttered again, furious in its own way, as though echoing his wrath.
At last, his voice cut through the silence, smooth and cultured, yet edged with fire.
"It is time to leave," he said, his black eyes flashing. "Woman — take them with you. All of them."
His talons curled tight, gleaming like glass under flame. "I must recover her body. I will not permit their profane hands to touch her divine form. To allow it would be heresy of the highest order."
The word struck like thunder. Heresy.
His anger boiled higher, the golden threads about the twins pulsing in response. "Go. Leave this house. The wards will hold — nothing, no one, can tear them down."
He turned then, his presence shifting, the storm of wrath narrowing into solemn reverence. Abaddon approached Micah.
When he spoke again, his tone was quieter — deep, cultured, reverent — yet it trembled with something near regret. "Forgive me, my master, for what I must do."
As he closed the distance, his hand lifted with elegant precision. A flick of his fingers, and a white handkerchief materialized, spotless, pristine as though woven from light itself.
Then his long nails unfurled, and he reached for Micah's hand. With a single motion — sharp, exact, practiced — he drew the edge of his nail across the boy's skin.
Micah flinched, a small gasp escaping him as the sting of pain shot up his arm. Blood welled instantly, bright against his pale skin.
Abaddon's hand moved at once, pressing the handkerchief to the wound. He folded it carefully, reverently, allowing the cloth to soak deep crimson.
The Ashling's head bowed low as he held the blood-soaked handkerchief, his voice nearly a whisper. "Her bloodline flows in you. Her legacy endures. By this, I act."
Abaddon's other hand lifted in a fluid, almost disdainful motion. With a flick of his wrist, the air shivered, threads of gold and scarlet unspooling like molten glass.
From the shimmer coalesced a vessel—an ornate bottle of crimson crystal, its surface veined with living light. Feathered wings, pale as frost, curved protectively around its body, clutching the vessel as though warding its secret. Deep within, a fire pulsed, not of flame but of something older, more dangerous—an echo of divinity bound in liquid form.
Verena's breath caught. The lamp in her hand guttered violently, throwing shadows across her face. She knew that shape. That impossible relic. Her knees weakened, nearly betraying her.
"No…" she whispered, the word trembling from her lips. "It cannot be."
But it was. The bottle before her eyes was no mere potion. It was the potion—the creation whispered of in the hidden archives, the very one the Magistrate Tribunal of Magic had once sought to seize, hoping to chain its maker in eternal servitude.
Her mind raced, fragments of history clawing their way to the surface. The Tribunal had failed, of course. For the woman who wrought such power could never be bound, not again. She had lived too long in chains, endured the yoke of tyrants, and had torn free at last with fire and blood.
Radzimira Zoryanna Andrevna Svyatokrov.
The name itself carried weight, like a storm rolling across centuries. Verena's chest tightened, torn between awe and dread. To see the bottle here—summoned by Abaddon's own hand—was to witness a legacy that refused to be buried.
The vessel pulsed in Abaddon's grasp, casting veins of scarlet light across the chamber walls. It throbbed like a living heart, as if the blood within yearned to be freed.
Verena could not tear her gaze away. Her voice broke in a trembling whisper, half to herself, half to the storm of memory clawing at her mind.
"I've heard the tales… wounds closing as though time itself recoiled… flesh reborn, bone reknit. Severed limbs restored. A sip, and one's youth held fast against the gnaw of years…"
Her knuckles whitened on the lamp's handle. "They said it was what kept her alive—that it was her secret, her stolen immortality."
Abaddon's black eyes slid toward her, unreadable, but the corner of his mouth curved faintly, like a man amused by a child's half-truth.
Verena swallowed hard. The firelight caught the gleam of her wide eyes as she whispered, "But even the Tribunal, with all their libraries, never understood…"
Her voice faltered, but in her silence came the truth—unspoken yet heavy in the air. This potion, radiant and divine though it seemed, was not her immortality. Not even her triumph.
It was a trinket.
One of many.
Radzimira Zoryanna Andrevna Svyatokrov had crafted it as a lesser work, a mere indulgence among a thousand greater marvels. For her, this potion—this miracle—ranked lowest, the weakest jewel in a crown of terrors and wonders.
And still, before Verena's eyes, it outshone every work of alchemy the Tribunal had ever dared to dream.
Abaddon uncorked the vessel with a deliberate twist, and the air filled with a scent that was neither floral nor metallic, but something older—like rain falling on stone that had once been holy. A faint vapor curled upward, threads of light rising as though reluctant to leave their prison.
He tilted the bottle ever so slightly, and a single drop of its luminous red essence slid free, clinging to the rim before falling onto Micah's wounded hand.
The effect was immediate.
The blood vanished as though drunk by the potion itself. Flesh sealed, knitting in a blink, pale skin left unblemished, smoother than before—as though the cut had never been. A warmth pulsed briefly under the boy's skin, then faded, leaving only silence.
Verena's lips parted in disbelief. Her heart stammered in her chest. To use that—that relic of legend, that miracle potion coveted by kings, scholars, and tyrants alike—on something so trivial as a scratch? It defied every tale, every notion of war and power.
She shook her head, whispering, "Impossible… wasted… on a mere cut."
But Abaddon did not flinch, nor did his expression shift. To him, the act was neither wasteful nor excessive. It was necessity. Reverence.
Corking the bottle once more, he slipped it away into the folds of shadow that clung to him. His porcelain features inclined slightly toward Micah—almost a bow, almost a prayer.
Then he turned, the golden sparks still trembling faintly across his skin. His black eyes cut to Verena, sharp as the strike of a blade.
"Snap out of it, woman," he said, his cultured tone edged with command. "This is no place for awe or hesitation. Gather them. Leave. Now."
Before her protest could form, before the weight of what she'd witnessed could settle, his figure dissolved into the storm of light and shadow, vanishing from the chamber like smoke drawn into unseen winds.